The Ancient Ballads

The Great Silkie of Sules Skerry

The American Folk Experience

The Great Silkie

by John Fitzsimmons | The American Folk Experience

Child Ballad #113

The silkie be a creature strange
He rises from the sea to change
Into a man, a weird one he,
When home it is in Skule Skerrie.

When he be man, he takes a wife,
When he be beast, he takes her life.
Ladies, beware of him who be
A silkie come from Skule Skerrie.

His love they willingly accept,
But after they have loved and slept,
Who is the monster that they see?
‘Tis “Silkie” come from Skule Skerrie.

A maiden from the Orkney Isles,
A target for his charm, his smiles,
Eager for love, no fool was she,
She knew the secret of Skule Skerrie.

And so, while Silkie kissed the lass,
She rubbed his neck with Orkney grass,
This had the magic power, you see
To slay the beast from Skule Skerrie.

If you have any more information to share about this song or helpful links, please post as a comment.

Thanks for stopping by the site!

~John Fitz

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I am indebted to the many friends who share my love of traditional songs and to the many scholars whose works are too many to include here. I am also incredibly grateful to the collector’s curators and collators of Wikipedia, Mudcat.org, MainlyNorfolk.info, and TheContemplator.com for their wise, thorough and informative contributions to the study of folk music. 

I share their research on my site with humility, thanks, and gratitude. Please cite their work accordingly with your own research. If you have any research or sites you would like to share on this site, please post in the comment box.  Thanks!

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"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry"
Vernon Hill's illustration of the tale. From Richard Chope's 1912 collection Ballads Weird and Wonderful.[1]
Song
GenreFolk song
Songwriter(s)Unknown

"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" or "The Grey Selkie of Sule Skerry" is a traditional folk song from Orkney and Shetland. A woman has her child taken away by its father, the great selkie of Sule Skerry which can transform from a seal into a human. The woman is fated to marry a gunner who will harpoon the selkie and their son.

"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" is a short version from Shetland published in the 1850s and later listed as Child ballad number 113. "The Grey Selkie of Sule Skerry" is the title of the Orcadian texts, about twice in length. There is also a greatly embellished and expanded version of the ballad called "The Lady Odivere".

Shetland version

"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" was collected from a lady from Snarra Voe, Shetland, and 7 verses from its transcription were published by Capt. F. W. L. Thomas in the 1850s. It was later included in Francis James Child's anthology, and catalogued as Child ballad number 113.[2]

Alan Bruford has noted that "silkie" is an anomalous spelling for "selkie", and in other ballad specimens, the mythical being instead of being a "great" selkie is rather a "grey" selkie.[3]

The ballad begins:

1. An earthly nourris† sits and sings,
And aye she sings, "Ba lilly wean,†
Little ken† I my bairn's father,
Far less the land that he staps in."†

2. Then ane† arose at her bed fit,†
And a grumly† guest I'm sure was he,
Saying "Here am I, thy bairn's father,
Although I am not comely."

A synopsis is as follows: A woman, nursing a baby, laments that she does not know the child's father or where he lives. A man rises up to tell her that he is the father, and that he is a silkie — a shapeshifter that takes the form of a man on the land and a seal in the sea, and that he lives on a remote rocky island called Sule Skerry. He gives her a purse full of gold, takes his son, and predicts that she will marry a gunner who will shoot both him and their son.[4]

Orkney version

There are Orkney versions which place the heroine's setting in Scandinavia,[5] opening with the line: "In Norway land there lived a maid".

"The Grey Selchie of Shool Skerry" was published by R. Menzies Fergusson in Rambling Sketches in the Far North (1883), changing its title to "The Grey Selchie of Sule Skerrie" in the second edition, Rambles in the Far North (1884).[6]

The same 14-stanza version with some spelling differences, entitled "The Grey Selchie of Sule Skerry" was printed in the 11 January 1934 issue of The Orcadian newspaper. It was later reprinted by Finnish folklorist Otto Andersson, who also collected a traditional ballad tune for it.[7][8]

This version contains an exchange in which the seal-groom's marriage proposal is declined by the Norwegian nurse.[7] The selkie makes the same fateful prediction as in the Shetland version, that the woman will marry a gunner, who will shoot both the selkie and their son. It further supplies the grim conclusion that the gunner brings back a gold chain which she recognizes as the one that was given to her son to wear.[9]

Lady Odivere

A cognate to the "Grey Selkie of Suleskerry" includes "The Play of Lady Odivere" ("The Play of de Lathie Odivere").[5] This piece is a dramatic ballad in style, over 90 stanzas long.[10] And it may be in large part a piece of contrived fiction by Walter Traill Dennison, mish-mashed into a kernel of a traditional ballad, in the estimation of modern folklorist Alan Bruford.[11]

Here, the Lady Odivere is in peril of being burnt at the stake for adultery by her husband, when she is rescued by San Imravoe, a selchie who is a jarl of high degree in his realm.[5][11] [12]

Ballad tunes

The original tune was preserved by Andersson, who heard it sung by John Sinclair on the island of Flotta, Orkney.[7][8] Andersson said, "I had no idea at the time that I was the first person to write down the tune. The pure pentatonic form of it and the beautiful melodic line showed me that it was a very ancient melody that I had set on paper".[13]

The best known tune today is non-traditional, having been written by Jim Waters in 1954. Child was interested only in the texts of the ballads he collected, and Jim explains that the tune was "just the best I could do as a way to get a fine ballad sung".[citation needed] Over the next two years, he introduced the ballad to the Boston area at a time when "hootenannies" filled the Great Court of MIT on a weekly basis (before recorded folk songs were widely available). Jim Butler added the song to his repertoire, according to his notes, in October 1954, on a page labelled "MITOC Supp.", being the MIT Outing Club addition to his typewritten Child Ballads. Butler taught the song to several people, including Bonnie Dobson. This is the tune that Joan Baez popularized as "Silkie" in the early 1960s. Waters' own daughter recorded a version of the song in 2024.

Although Jean Redpath disparaged Water's tune as "phony", preferring a longer version of Child 113 to another tune, by 1965, Jim Butler had heard Waters' tune sung by a Scottish student at the University of British Columbia, unaccompanied in the traditional style, and under the impression that he had learned it from his grandfather. "This has to be one of the most flattering things that has ever happened to me",[citation needed] added Waters, who eventually copyrighted his version and assigned it to Folk Legacy Records. Folk Legacy reassigned all copyright interest to James Waters in August, 2012.

American folksinger Pete Seeger set the poem I Come and Stand at Every Door by Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet to Waters's tune for "The Great Silkie" in the early 1950s. In this version, the song takes the point of view of a child victim of atomic warfare.

Recordings

  • Joan Baez recorded it as "Silkie" on her 1961 album Joan Baez, Vol. 2.
  • Pete Seeger included his version of Hikmet's "I Come and Stand at Every Door" on a 1964 concert album, I Can See a New Day.
  • The American rock band The Byrds included the Hikmet/Seeger version on their third album, Fifth Dimension (1966).
  • The Seeger song was later covered by This Mortal Coil.
  • Roger McGuinn of the Byrds later recorded the song with its original lyrics as part of his Folk Den project.
  • The English folk rock band Trees included one variant, as "The Great Silkie", on The Garden of Jane Delawney, their debut album.
  • Glasgow-born folk singer Ray Fisher (1940–2011) included the song on her album The Bonny Birdy (1972). Her brother Archie Fisher has a version on his Orfeo (1970).
  • Judy Collins included her version, "Great Selchie of Shule Skerry", on her 1962 album Golden Apples of the Sun.[14]
  • The Breton folk band Tri Yann also penned an adaptation in French called "Le Dauphin" (the dolphin) on their 1972 album Tri Yann an Naoned.
  • The Highwaymen recorded this song twice, with two different versions. The first version was on their 1962 album Standing Room Only, and the second version was on their 2005 album The Water of Life.
  • In 1981 Angelo Branduardi recorded this tune on his album Branduardi '81, with lyrics by Esenin. The song is titled "La cagna". In 2013 re-recorded this tune (titled: "Silkie") with original lyrics adapted in Italian language, on his album Il Rovo E La Rosa.
  • The Irish band Solas included one variant, "Grey Selchie", on their 1998 album The Words That Remain.
  • A version appears on Maddy Prior's 1999 album Ravenchild.
  • Alasdair Roberts included his version of "The Grey Silkie of Sule Skerry" on his CD You Need Not Braid Your Hair for Me: I Have Not Come A-Wooing, released in 2005.
  • Dave Bainbridge and Troy Donockley perform a version of the song on their 2005 album When Worlds Collide.[15]
  • The Breton singer Cécile Corbel recorded it on her album Songbook Vol.2 (2008).
  • Steeleye Span recorded it as a hidden track on their 2009 album Cogs, Wheels and Lovers.
  • Singer/songwriter and cellist Liz Davis Maxfield recorded a version titled “The Great Selkie” on her 2009 album Big Fiddle. [16]
  • In 2011 June Tabor recorded it on her album Ashore.
  • English folk band The Unthanks perform a version of the song on their 2022 album 'Sorrows Away'.
  • Jim Waters' daughter Susan sang this song for the Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive in 2024.[17]

References

Citations
  1. ^ Chope, Richard (1912). Ballads Weird and Wonderful. New York: John Lane Company. pp. 8.
  2. ^ Thomas, Capt. F. W. L. (1855), "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 1, pp. 86–89. Reprinted in Child (1886), II, p. 494 and Black (1901), County Folk-lore III, pp. 183–184.
  3. ^ Bruford (1974), p. 63.
  4. ^ Douglas, Sheila (2004). "Ballads and the Supernatural: Spells, Channs, Curses and Enchantments". Studies in Scottish Literature. 33 (1): 363.
  5. ^ a b c Freeman, A. Martin; Gilchrist, A. G. (January 1921). "Extra Note on Song No. 48, verse 7". Journal of the Folk-Song Society. 6 (2): 266 (263–266). JSTOR 4434091
  6. ^ Fergusson (1883), pp. 140–141; Fergusson (1884), pp. 242–244; latter cited in Freeman & Gilchrist (1921), p. 266
  7. ^ a b c McEntire (2007), p. 124.
  8. ^ a b Bronson, Bertrand Harris (1962). "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry". The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. Vol. 2. Princeton University Press. pp. 564–565. ISBN 9781400874828.
  9. ^ Bold, Alan (2017) [1979], The Ballad, Routledge, pp. 44–45, ISBN 978-1-3153-8974-5
  10. ^ McEntire (2007), p. 128.
  11. ^ a b Bruford, Alan (1997), Narvez, Peter (ed.), "Trolls, Hillfolks, Finns and Picts", The Good People: New Fairylore Essays, University Press of Kentucky, pp. 121–123, ISBN 978-0-8131-0939-8
  12. ^ Dennison (1894), "The Play of de Lathie Odivere", pp. 54–58. Reprinted in Black (1901), County Folk-lore III, pp. 183–184.
  13. ^ Thomson, David (2010) [1954]. The People of the Sea, Edinburgh: Canongate Books., p. 212. ISBN 1847674593
  14. ^ Elektra Records Catalogue No EKS 7222
  15. ^ "When Worlds Collide, by Dave Bainbridge and Troy Donockley".
  16. ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=br_4KJnxMkY&list=OLAK5uy_kETeGFo0rFg9TZD5hOZRwGPsdlq_AZps0&index=9
  17. ^ https://fieldwork-archive.com/843.html
Lexicographical citations
  1. ^ "nuris". Dictionary of Scots Language. Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  2. ^ "ba". Scottish National Dictionary (1700–). Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  3. ^ "lillie". Scottish National Dictionary (1700–). Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  4. ^ "wean". Scottish National Dictionary (1700–). Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  5. ^ "ken". A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700). Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  6. ^ "stap". A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700). Scottish Language Dictionaries. p. Definition 16. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  7. ^ "ane". The free dictionary. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  8. ^ "fit". Dictionary of Scots Language. Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  9. ^ "grumly". Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
Bibliography
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Silkie_of_Sule_Skerry

    Source: Mainly Norfolk

    The Great Silkie of Sules Skerry

    [ Roud 197 ; Child 113 ; Ballad Index C113 ; trad.]The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry is a shape-shifting song from Orkney. A silkie is a seal. Sule Skerry (Sula Sgeir) is a rocky islet 25 miles west of Hoy Head in Orkney.

    Most modern recordings use the tune set by Dr. James Waters of Columbia University in the 1950s. The original tune for this song was nearly lost, but was noted down in 1938 by Dr. Otto Andersson, who heard it sung by John Sinclair on the island of Flotta, Orkney. He said, “I had no idea at the time that I was the first person to write down the tune. The pure pentatonic form of it and the beautiful melodic line showed me that it was a very ancient melody that I had set on paper.”

    John Sinclair of Flotta, Orkney Islands, sang The Grey Silkie in a BBC recording made by Sean Davies on the anthology Sailormen and Servingmaids (The Folk Songs of Britain Volume 6; Caedmon 1961; Topic 1970). The album’s booklet lists the date of recording erroneously as June 1964, three years after the album was released. The booklet also commented:

    In the west of Scotland, where seals abound, there are many tales of their response to human contact. I’ve been told again and again of seals that raised their heads out of grey, curling waves, to listen as long as anyone would sing to them. That this is not superstition is confirmed by a contemporary account of an American woman, who made a pet of a seal and swam with it all one summer. The seal would wait in the surf for her every day and call out to her as she came down the cliff to the beach.

    In Scotland, they speak of “seal-people” who are said to belong to a clan whose forbears were seals. In the Shetlands, the folk believed in magical beings who lived in land beneath the deeps of the ocean and put on seal-skin for their ascent through the water. Once on shore, they put off their disguise and appeared as human-beings. Such a one was the Grey Silkie of Suleskerry who wooed and won a Shetland woman.

    Here our ballad begins. A brief version of it appears as no. 113 in Child without a tune, but this is no match for the variant which old John Sinclair of Flotta in the Orkney Isles turned up with in January 1934. He has since been visited by Swedish folklorists [i.e. Otto Andersson] and recorded for the BBC. Bronson remarks that his tune is a variant of the air often associated with Hind Horn, another ballad of traffic between spirits and mortals. Sinclair (who learned the song from his mother), worked all his life as a seaman, and a farmer-fisherman until his retirement. He now lives in a cottage by the sea where Silkies perhaps may still appear.

    Trees sang The Great Silkie in 1970 on their CBS album The Garden of Jane Delawney.

    Ray Fisher sang The Silkie of Sul Skerry in 1972 on her album The Bonny Birdy.

    Dave Burland sang The Great Silkie on his 1975 album Songs and Buttered Haycocks.

    Alison McMorland sang Great Selkie of Sule Skerry on her 1977 Tangent album Belt wi’ Colours Three. She also sang The Silkie of Sule Skerry in 2001 on her and Geordie McIntyre’s Tradition Bearers CD Rowan in the Rock. They commented in their liner notes:

    We owe this version to the Finnish scholar Otto Andersson who collected the tune from John Sinclair of Flotta, Orkney in 1938 and the text from Annie G. Gilchrist.

    Hamish Henderson observes, “… the legend of the seal folk who inhabit a kind of half world between their native element and the littoral inhabited by their human kind is a powerful obsessive folklore motif in all areas where the Norsemen held sway…” For valuable insights into the enduring fascination with the stories and the lore of the ‘silkie’ (Atlantic grey seal) we commend People of the Sea by David Thomson, recently reprinted by Canongate, Edinburgh.

    Sheena Wellington sang The Great Silkie o’ Sule Skerrie in a concert at Nitten (Newtongrange) Folk Club, Scotland, that was published in 1995 on her Greentrax CD Strong Women. She commented in her liner notes:

    Stories and sangs of the silkies or seal-people and their dealings with humankind are found widely in both Norse and Celtic tradition but Francis James Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads has only one short version of this ballad and, of course, no melody. This stark tune and the fuller story were recorded in the thirties from John Sinclair of Flotta in the Orkney Islands. In some versions it is the Silkie who offers marriage the second time but while collating my text from various sources I decided that it was likely that the woman would see marriage as the only way to keep her child.

    The Clutha sang The Silkie o’ Sule Skerry in 1996 on their CD On the Braes.

    Nancy Kerr sang The Great Silkie to John Sinclair’s tune in 1996 on her and her mother Sandra Kerr’s Fellside CD Neat and Complete. Sandra Kerr commented in the liner notes:

    As a small child Nancy was sung this at night in the hope that its undulating melody and imagery of mothers singing lullabies to seal babies might send her to sleep. Recently she confessed that the ballad terrified her and that for years she was puzzled as to why the visiting seal/man should have been “grumbly”.

    Maddy Prior sang Great Silkie of Sules Skerry in 1999 on her album Ravenchild; this track was later included on the Park Records anthology Women in Folk and on the Maddy Prior anthology Collections: A Very Best of 1995 to 2005. Maddy Prior commented in the original album’s notes:

    This eerie ballad from the Shetland isles harks back to the land’s Scandinavian roots. It is a shape-shifting story of a seal / man whose fate is told with great simplicity and grace.

    Elspeth Cowie sang The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry on her 2000 CD Naked Voice.

    Barbara Dickson sang Sule Skerry in 2001 on her anthology For the Record.

    Hector Gilchrist and Liz Thompson sang The Selkie as the title track of their 2003 WildGoose album Selkie. This track was also included in 2007 on the WildGoose anthology Songs of Witchcraft and Magic.

    Hannah James learned The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry from Mary Macmaster at the Folkworks Summer School 1999 and recorded it with Kerfuffle in 2004 for their second album, K2. She returned to it with Lady Maisery when they recorded The Grey Selkie for their 2013 album Mayday. They commented:

    Many of the songs on this album deal with issues of gender and power. The Grey Selkie is an example of how folklore might have been used to justify situations which were perceived as socially unacceptable. Selkies are creatures that only make contact with one human for a brief period before they must return to the sea for seven years, which may have provided an explanation for an absent father or a child born out of wedlock. In this tragic song, the woman is largely at the mercy of others throughout, whether it is society, the selkie, the gunner or ultimately, fate. Hazel [Askew] wrote the new Lydian tune and collated the text from various versions of the ballad.

    This video shows Lady Maisery at Folk East 2012:

    June Tabor sang The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry in 2011 on her Topic album Ashore. She commented

    Seals were once far more common in the seas around these islands than they are today. There was a strong belief in the Northern Isles in the existence of a third race, the Selkies, who lived in a realm below the waves, passing through the ocean as seals but assuming human shape on land. Like the Swan Children of Lir with their cloaks of feathers, for Selkies the sealskin was essential to the act of transformation; its loss or withholding imprisoned them in human form. That fine storyteller the late Duncan Williamson had many tales of the frequently uneasy relationship between Selkies and the men (and women) of the Highlands and Islands. The theme continues to fascinate modern film-makers, artists and writers; for me, of particular relevance are the work of Maria Hayes, and Robin Robertson’s poem At Roane Head.
    This version of The Great Selkie was first collected in 1938 from John Sinclair of Flotta in the Orkneys.

    Marc Block sang Sule Skerry in 2014 on his CD The Hawthorn Spring. He commented in his liner notes:

    My parents used to sing a French version of this song, which is in fact from Orkney, and as a child I was fascinated by the notion of the man diving into the sea and turning into a seal. It seems most versions of The Great Silkie are merely a fragment of a much longer ballad. I found the 93 verses of Lady Odivere on Mudcat, and condensed it down to this version.

    Maz O’Connor sang The Grey Selkie on her 2014 CD This Willowed Light. She performed it at Cecil Sharp House in this 2014 video:

    Lyrics

    Alison McMorland sings The Silkie of Sule Skerry
    In Norway land there lived a maid,
    “Hush, baloo lilllie,” this maid began,
    “I know not whaur ma bairn’s faither is
    By land or sea does he travel in.”
    It happened on a certain day
    When this fair maid lay fast asleep
    That in cam a grey silkie
    And sat him doon at her bed feet.
    Saying, “Awak’ awak’ ma fair pretty maid
    For oh how sound as thou dost sleep,
    I’ll tell thee whaur yer bain’s faither is
    He’s lyin’ close at your bed feet.”
    “I pray come tell tae me yer name
    And tell me whaur yer dwelling is?”
    “My name it is guid Hein Mailer
    I earn ma livin’ oot o the sea.
    “I am a man upon the land,
    I am a silkie in the sea.
    An when I’m far fae every strand
    Ma dwelling t’is in Sule Skerry.”
    “Alas, alas this woeful fate
    This weary fate that’s been laid on me,
    That a man should come frae the West o’ Hoy
    Tae the Noraway lands tae hae a bairn by me.”
    He said, “Ye’ll nurse ma little wee son
    For seiven lang years upon yer knee,
    An at the end o’ seiven lang years
    I’ll come back again an pay the nouris fee.”
    And she has nursed her little wee son
    For seiven lang years upon her knee,
    An at the end of seiven lang years
    He’s cam back again wi’ white monie.
    He said, “I’ll pit a chain roon his neck
    An a gey gowd chain o it will be,
    An if ever he comes tae the Noraway lands
    Ye’ll hae a guid guess on who is he.”
    And he said, “Ye’ll wed a gunner guid,
    And a gay guid gunner it will be,
    And he’ll gae oot on a May mornin
    He’ll shoot your son and the grey silkie.”
    Oh she has wed a gunner guid
    And a gay guid gunner it was he,
    And he gaed oot on a May mornin
    He shot the son and the grey silkie.
    “Alas, alas this woeful fate
    This weary fate that’s been laid on me,”
    She sobbed and sighed and bitter cried
    Her tender heart did brak in three.
    Sandra and Nancy Kerr sing The Great Silkie Maddy Prior sings Great Silkie of Sules Skerry
    In Noroway there lived a maid,
    “Bye-loo my baby,” she begins,
    “Oh know not I my babe’s father
    Or if land or sea he’s living in.”    		 An earthly nourris sits and sings
    And aye she sings, “Ba lily wain
    And little ken I my bairn’s father
    Far less the land that he dwells in.”
    Then there arose at her bedfeet,
    And a grummlie guest I’m sure was he,
    Saying, “Here am I thy babe’s father
    Although I be not comely.    		 Then one arose at her bedfoot,
    And a grumbly guest I’m sure was he,
    Saying, “ Here am I, thy bairn’s father
    Although I be not comely.
    “I am a man upon the land,
    I am a silkie in the sea,
    But when I’m in my own coutrie
    My dwelling is in Sule Skerry.”    		 “I am a man upon the land,
    I am a silkie on the sea,
    And when I’m far and far frae land
    My home it is in Sules Skerry.”
    Then he has taken a purse of gold
    And he has put it upon her knee,
    Saying, “Give to me my little wee son
    And take thee up thy nurse’s fee.    		 And he has ta’en a purse of gold
    And he has placed it upon her knee,
    Saying, “Give to me my little young son
    And take thee up thy nurse’s fee.
    “And it shall pass on a summer’s day
    When the sun shines hot on every stone,
    That I shall take my little wee son
    And teach him for to swim in the foam.    		 “And it shall come tae pass on a summer’s day
    When the sun shines bright on every stone,
    I’ll come and fetch my little young son
    And teach him how to swim the foam.
    “And you shall marry a gunner good,
    And a proud good gunner I’m sure he’ll be,
    And he’ll go out on a May morning
    And kill both my young son and me.”    		 “And you, you shall marry a pround gunner,
    And a proud gunner I’m sure he’ll be,
    But the very first shot that e’er he shoots
    He’ll kill both my young son and me.”
    And she did marry a gunner good,
    And a proud good gunner I’m sure ’twas he,
    And the very first shot he ever did shoot
    He killed the son and the great silkie.
    In Noroway there lived a maid,
    “Bye-loo my baby,” she begins,
    “Oh know not I my babe’s father
    Or if land or sea he’s living in.”
    “I am a man upon the land,
    I am a silkie in the sea,
    And when I’m in my own coutrie
    My dwelling is in Sule Skerry.”

    Links

    See also the Mudcat Café thread Origins: The Great Silkie.

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    The March Snow

    by | March 11, 2018 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    An early March snow brought down all these branches Cracking and crashing throughout a long night, Piling them impatiently in the yard Like jacksticks in a child’s messy room. The stepladder I used to rake the ridge Stands like an awkward sculpture draped in white...
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    What Christmas Is

    by | December 25, 2015 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

      I am not sure what Christmas really is anymore. I am almost afraid to think of what Christians are going through in the lands of the original Christian faith. By dint of place and time, I grew up in the Catholic faith, and try as I might, I can’t ever escape the...
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    The Value of a Classic

    by | November 24, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    “Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.” ~Mark Twain A note to my 8th grade class:      All of you are supposedly reading a classic book, but what Twain says is true: few of us go thirsty to the well and willingly read the greatest works of literature...
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    Make Something out of Something

    by | February 26, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    It's hard to make chicken salad out of chicken manure      Dirty hands are a good sign, so hopefully, you got some mental mud on your hands and created some content to work with today.  To a starving man, any food is good food--unless it...
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    You Are All a Bunch of Punks

    by | February 3, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    Poetry without form is like tennis without a net. ~Robert Frost       Free verse poetry is not, as many assume, poetry without rules. It is a measured and thoughtful crafting of an idea into lines, spaces, and breaks intentionally and willfully crafted to heighten and...
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    Evolution

    by | August 19, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    The coyotes and fisher cats seem intent on striking some new deal with each other to toy with our fears in this gentleman's wilderness— patches of dense woods dotted with overgrown fields, riven and intersected by highways, powerlines and quiet, suburban...
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    A New Beginning

    by | November 10, 2013 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

     I guess if there is any constant in my life, it is new beginnings.  This blog--and this website--is another new beginning starting here late on a cold night on my back porch. I've been keeping a blog (in fact several blogs) since the first blogs made their way on to...
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    A Redemptive Moment

    by | November 15, 2013 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    I see the clock ticking towards 7:00. The kids are deep in their weekday world of homework, juggling soccer balls around the house, watching TV, but I am in my “got to rally” and get to the inn mode that happens very Thursday. Tonight I am tired. I’ll admit it, but...
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    Ring of Fire: The Power of Simplicity

    by | March 28, 2017 | Journal, Songs, Teaching, The American Folk Experience | 0 Comments

    In fifth grade my mother finally let me go to the Concord Music store and buy a "45" single.  I bought Johnny Cash’s version of “Ring of Fire” written by his future wife June Carter and Merle Kilgore, a noted country songwriter of his day. There was no doubt in my...
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    The Snow

    by | July 13, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

    has dropped a seamlessness before the plows and children can patch it back to a jagged and arbitrary quilting putting borders to design and impulse. I imagine myself falling everywhere softly, whispering, I am here, and I am here.
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    Denise

    by | August 14, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    There is something about coming hometo this empty house, yesterday'sheavy downpours scouringclean the alreadyweathered deckwhere I sitwishing for,wanting,you.
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    The Old Tote Road

    by | July 25, 2019 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    I clabber down the old tote road towards the red pine forest, leaning on my staff, skirting boulder-strewn ruts and small gullies carved out by two days of heavy rain. It is only a mile or so from our cabin, still, my wife makes me wear a pouch with an iPhone and an...
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    Rainmaker

    by | August 28, 2014 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    I loved the rain last night. Last week, in a bow to reality, I reclaimed my gardens and made them into yard. Four of my kids got poison ivy in the process and I (and more "they") got an extra ten feet of width to add to the soccer field--for really that is about the...
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    The Most Unoriginal Teacher

    by | February 5, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    Yes, that's me. I am a fraudster, thief, and plagiarizer of the worst magnitude. I copy the very styles of classic poets; I steal from Noble Laureate novelists, and I copy words from every and any source I can. And even worse, I steal from myself. If you even dare to...
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    Writing Iambic Dimeter Poetry

    by | February 19, 2018 | Journal, Poetry, Teaching | 0 Comments

    I am sitting here realizing how hard it is to ask you--a bunch of fifteen-year-old boys--to write iambic dimeter poetry, a form of poetry that is more or less ignored nowadays. I (literally) played around for a couple of hours penning these poems, which are at least...
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    The Next Time Around

    by | April 16, 2016 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

            I wonder what the years have really taught me about writing and music. I have gotten so used to preaching and teaching that I am a bit looped by the thought of writing—as in how I wrote before (or how I will claim I wrote) before settling into this somewhat...
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    Waiting for a Poem

    by | August 8, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

      It’s not like a poem to come curl by my feet on this morning too beautiful to describe, though I am looking and listening and waiting: A rooster crows above the low hum of morning traffic; the trash truck spills air from brakes and rattles empties into bins; my...
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    Metamorphoses

    by | August 12, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Songs | 0 Comments

    It’s something I‘ve hardly ever thought of:
    this simple and rattling old diesel
    has always gotten me there and then some;
    and so at first I think this sputtering
    is just some clog, and easily explained:
    some bad fuel maybe, from the new Exxon,
    or just shortsightedness on maintenance.
    I’ve always driven in the red before,
    and these have all been straight highway miles —

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    Calvary

    by | August 23, 2014 | Out of the Forge, Songs | 0 Comments

    It seems like it ain’t been a long time,
    But I’m damn pleased your coming by again.
    It’s been a while since we sat down and rambled
    About this and that and why and who and then
    You said that you had to get a move on,
    Move on and leave a space behind.
    So I spent a while hitting all those old roads:
    Old friends and kicking down the wine.

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    Fenn Speaks…

    by | May 11, 2019 | Essays, Journal, Poetry, Teaching | 0 Comments

    I am You, and You are me... Give a damn & figure it out        I feel like one of my students: it’s the night before my big presentation at All-school-meeting, and I still don’t know what I am going to talk about. I just know I am supposed to talk about me......
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    The Mystery Within

    by | August 15, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    EJ wanted a banana tree for Christmas so that early morning brought a plastic bag, a few meager roots and no directions. I bought some potting soil and a square cedar box EJ placed deliberately by a westward window. He gently splayed the roots, pressed the soil, and...
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    The Threshing

    by | July 11, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

    I trace her charging through the cornfield shaking the timbers of the ready crop startling up the blackbirds, and surprisingly, a jay. It’s the jay who startles me—
who with two quick pulls wrests itself from the transient green, screaming back from its familiar scrub...
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    Reflecting on Literature

    by | March 27, 2017 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    I am constantly asking my students (and myself) to reflect on the literature they, and I, read. As I have grown older—and not necessarily wiser—I find myself only reading literature that I am sure will prod me out of my intellectual and emotional torpor, like a lizard...
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    The Blathering of Teachers

    by | March 4, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities  as you do at conclusions. ~Benjamin Franklin             Maybe we are born more to ignore than to listen. I understand too well how easy it is to ignore the blatherings of teachers. I was a master of it once myself, so why...
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    The Nagging Thing

    by | November 19, 2015 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    Not many more nights like this, warm enough to sit outside on the back porch. The kids and Denise long asleep. Usually, during the school year, this is my "time" to catch up on schoolwork--grading, posting the assignments for the week and playing the general catchup...
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    Know Thyself…

    by | September 29, 2017 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    Writing a Metacognition Know Thyself… Explore, Assess, Reflect & Rethink If we don’t learn from what we do, we learn little of real value. If we don’t make the time to explore, reflect and rethink our ways of doing things we will never grow, evolve and reach our...
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    Goathouse

    by | July 12, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

    In reaching for the scythe I’m reminded of the whetstone and the few quick strokes by which it was tested— the hardness of hot August; the burning of ticks off dog backs. It’s winter now in this garage made barn, and the animals seem only curious that I’d be here so...
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    Joshua Sawyer

    by | August 11, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Poetry | 0 Comments

    I doubt I’d ever have taken this road
    had I known how fallen it really was
    to disrepair: driving comically,
    skirting ruts and high boulders, grimacing
    at every bang on the oil pan.
    I tell you it’s the old road to Wendell —
    that they don’t make them like this anymore.

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    Redefining Literacy

    by | August 8, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

     My life is the poem I could have writ, But I could not both live and utter it ~Henry David Thoreau    The common man goes to an orchard to taste the fruit. The rich man man learns how to plant his own orchard. The poet, however,  grows an even better fruit and gives...
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    No Dad To Come Home To

    by | August 26, 2014 | Dawghouse, Songs | 0 Comments

    Rain’s falling outside of Boston—
    Thank God I’m not working tonight.
    I’ve got six of my own,
    And a stepdaughter at home,
    And a momma keeping things right.
    I wonder if they’re at the table
    With their puzzles, their papers and pens?
    When I get off the highway
    And pull in that driveway,
    Will they run to the window again?

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    Moby Dick: Chapters 42-51

    by | March 1, 2015 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    A literary reflection to my students... The lowering for whales, the appearance of Fedallah's crew, the vivid descriptions of the first chase in a sudden and unrelenting gale, the fatalistic joy of resigning oneself to fate, the awesome poetic intensity of Melville's...
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    Out of the Forge: March 30, 2017

    by | March 31, 2017 | Journal, Out of the Forge | 0 Comments

    Every Thursday Night at The Colonial Inn On the Green, in Concord, Massachusetts This is my first attempt at trying to record a night at the inn, so please forgive my engineering errors as a producer. I simply used the Bose Tonematch into Garageband and called it good...
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    To a teacher

    by | November 14, 2019 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    This shift from fall to winterIs the cruelest month:Long days and nightsIn a blather of responsibility’s I hoist from a murky holeAnd sort and siftOn a messy desk. I pity my students who trembleMy red pen of vengeance;Who wait with fetid thoughtsFreighted by what they...
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    Zenmo Yang Ni

    by | August 12, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Songs | 0 Comments

    I lost the time I hardly knew you,
    half-assed calling:
    “How you doing?
    Laughing at my hanging hay field;
    I never knew the time
    that tomorrow’d bring,
    until it brung to me.

    Yuan lai jui shuo: “Zenmoyang ni?”
    Xianzai chang shu: “Dou hai keyi”;
    Xiexie nimen, dou hen shang ni.
    Xiwang wo men dou hen leyi
    Dou hen leyi

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    A Perfect Mirror

    by | February 11, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself~BuddhaLast night you were so lucky. You didn't have to worry about your grumpy, tired teacher going through hours of journals ands doling out poor grades for what I am sure qualifies for good efforts...
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    How To Be Human

    by | July 24, 2015 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    Mark Twain once wrote that it is good to be a good person, but it is better to tell people how to be good--"and a damn sight easier!" So much of my life is lived in response to the moment and not in a practiced and cultivated wisdom. I sat here this morning looking...
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    The Gift Unclaimed

    by | February 27, 2018 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    I have an old lobster buoy Hanging dully from A wrought-iron basket hook— A rough cutaway Filled with suet, Clabbered in wire mesh. . I had imagined chickadees Squabbling with angry jays And occasional sparrows, finches— Maybe even cedar waxwings tired of scrounging...
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    Practicing What I Preach

    by | April 10, 2014 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    It is not where you go. It is how you go. ~Fitz Is there any value in coming to the page this late at night after three hours of singing in a pub, just because I said I would? I expect you to go to the empty page and pry tired and stubborn thoughts and lay them on the...
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    Chores

    by | May 15, 2016 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    The day sometimes slip away from me, a huge pine half-bucked in the backyard, the kids old tree fort cut into slabs, a ton of coal waiting to be moved in a train of buckets to the bin. Sipping cold water on the back deck, sharpening the dulled teeth of a worn...
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    Redemption

    by | October 3, 2014 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    Finally, the tall green pines standing sentinel around this cold and black New Hampshire pond are framed in a sky of blue. After a month of steady rains, foggy nights, and misty days, I am reborn into a newly created world—a world that finally answered my prayers: no...
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