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. ^ "Silkie of Sule Skerry - Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive".
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 Fisher

    by | July 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

    To cast far is to cast well. I’ve always believed that the biggest fish are just beyond my range and lie in dark water I could never swim to. But experience is the wisdom that has me now casting closer to shore, nearest the reeds and overgrowth — a subtleness geared...
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    China Journal: Part Two

    by | July 27, 2015 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    II The grass grows. The rain falls Nothing is done. Nothing is left undone ~Buddha   A day can be perfect. I have to believe this. Today was. Is. Is was a day in china. The sun breaking through today after yesterday’s typhoon. Lazy walk to the coffee shop....
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    The Right Side of the Inevitable

    by | July 27, 2016 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

      Like birds of a feather, we gather together, 'Cuz they're feeling exactly like you... ~John Prine   I am not afraid of being a white minority. I had lunch today with a Jamaican drummer, a Ugandan farmer, and a Senagalese potter. I don’t say this out of...
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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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    The End Is the Beginning

    by | September 2, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    For the past twenty years this night has always been a bittersweet moment. I have never been hobbled by boredom or a lack of "things I love to do," so whatever supposed free time I have is rewarding in whatever I choose to do. The flip side is that I am teacher, and I...
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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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    A Priori

    by | May 24, 2016 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    How do I know what I know? The sharp angles of this simple cottage perfected  in every board sawn, shingle split and beam hewn into place goes together placed, splined, slid together, bound more by intuition than knowing.
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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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    Mum…

    by | May 8, 2016 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    Very jealous today of all the folks I see spending time with their respective moms--and sad for those who can't and for those whose wives were taken from their families too early in life... This is my remmebrance of my "mum" who died several years ago.       I ran...
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    A New Paradigm

    by | November 17, 2013 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

         Sometimes, like right now, I long for a pile of papers on my lap that I could speed through, grade with a series of checks and circles, a few scribbled lines of praise or condemnation, and drop into a shoebox on my desk and say, "Here are your essays!" But I...
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    The Small Potato

    by | October 17, 2014 | Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    Maybe there is a God. I just came home and sat down in the kitchen to grade some papers and input some grades, but the internet is buggy and slow, and I thought, "maybe this is the message" that I am trading my soul for work. I even remember myself  pontificating in...
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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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    The Philanthropy of Maynard

    by | December 13, 2015 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

     I woke up today with chores on my mind. My buddy Josh LoPresti lent me his woodsplitter, and I had dreams of a mindless day splitting wood and heaving it into a pile for my kids to stack along the fence. But the dryer was broken, and it needed to be fixed. Margret's...
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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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    The Storm of Fallibility

    by | October 29, 2017 | Journal | 0 Comments

           One good cigar is better than two bad cigars, or so it seems right now. It is a beautiful and stormy night--pouring rain and howling wind, and I thought a good smoke would be a fitting end to a busy and over-booked week. As it goes, I bought a couple of cheap...
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    Another Wednesday

    by | April 20, 2016 | Journal | 0 Comments

            It is a good night for meatballs. The same meal we have cooked every Wednesday night for thirteen years and counting. Tonight is a beautiful and warm night of vacation week, so more than likely we will have a big crowd joining us—but we never know who. The...
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    Guns, Me, and Rural America

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

         Sometimes I start writing without knowing where I stand—unsure of even where I stand. I have to trust some innate wisdom or audacity will cull through the bullshit we are all heir to in what Hamlet laments is “this earthly coil” we are forced to face when we wake...
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    Dealing with Ether

    by | August 12, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    Trying to only see what is in front of me my eyes are continually drawn away from this page and the work left to be done— my labored words etched and scratched away like fleeting mosaics in dry sand. I need a windowless cell to work the alchemy that shapes the...
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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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    Somewhere North of Bangor

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

    Somewhere north of Bangor
    on the run from Tennessee.
    Lost in back scrub paper land
    in section TR-3.
    It’s hit him he’s an outlaw
    a Georgia cracker’s son,
    who killed a man in Nashville
    with his daddies favorite gun.
    It’s hit him with the loneliness
    of wondering where you are
    on a long ago railway
    stretched between two stars.

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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 Fallacy of Philanthropy

    by | November 11, 2013 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    There are thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root. ~Henry David Thoreau     I just spent a long day deconstructing our backyard. EJ sold his alpacas, and so our fenced in pasture and barn can now return to its suburban origins as a shed...
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    No Dad To Come Home To

    by | August 12, 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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    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 Litter in Concord

    by | July 12, 2016 | Journal | 0 Comments

    I have been following a Facebook thread about the movement in my beloved hometown of Concord to ban plastic water bottles, plastic bags and styrofoam cups. I am trying to discern whether or not my initial responses are pure and true and not simply reactionary and...
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    Pruning

    by | July 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

    These trees have driven so many friends batty, wedged in unstable crotches, embracing hollow, heart-rotted limbs, reaching tentatively, maddened with indecision. From a distance your gestures are very lobsterlike— waving a last embattled claw, as if dueling some...
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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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    How do I know

    by | July 8, 2017 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    what I know? The sharp angles of this simple cottage perfected in every board sawn, shingle split and beam hewn into place goes together placed, splined, slid together, bound more by intuition than knowing.
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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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    Grandma’s Words

    by | April 24, 2018 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    In the beginning was the word... ~Genesis       We do not live in Grandma’s world of words, and neither did grandma live in her grandma’s world of words and on and on and so on in a downwards devolution through untold millennia. From primal grunts, whistles and...
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    The Inn

    by | November 21, 2013 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    Every Thursday, for some thirty years, I have been spending this same time each week wrapping up the loose ends of the day before heading down to the inn to play to whomever and whatever shows up. Tonight looks like a fun night: Maroghini will be with me for his last...
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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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    Goathouse

    by | May 23, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

    Goat house 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...
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    Thinking of My Sister

    by | September 23, 2014 | Journal | 0 Comments

    When Cool Was Really Cool  Life is not counted by the amount of breaths we take,  but of the moments that leave us breathless. ~Unknown             We were coming home from church one morning and Jimmy Glennon pulled up beside us as we approached the Sudbury road...
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    Going Google?

    by | July 1, 2014 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    When you find yourself in the majority, it's time to join the minority ~Mark Twain I have to admit, Google is pretty impressive. The whole set of features that are offered to the public and to educators for free is pretty astounding: email, document creation and...
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    Quit Your Whining

    by | January 31, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    Anything worth succeeding in is worth failing in~Ben Franklin     "Quit your whining and complaining" is probably a clause that can easily be translated into every language in every culture on earth, for, from what I know and have seen in the world, bitching about...
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    Supermoon

    by | August 10, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    Last night the August supermoon reminded me of the fickleness of time and how substance becomes shadow and memories begin to etch themselves immutably into the hardness of what is already lost.
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    Thanksgiving

    by | November 28, 2013 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    I am surprised sometimes by the suddenness of November: beauty abruptly shed to a common nakedness— grasses deadened by hoarfrost, persistent memories of people I’ve lost. It is left to those of us dressed in the hard barky skin of experience to insist on a decorum...
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    Raccoon Welcome

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

    Welcome
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    Dad

    by | December 4, 2013 | Poetry | 0 Comments

    Moaning like a lost whale the thin ice bellowed behind us then cracked and rang as if spit from a whip. The sharp steel of my over-sized skates etched unspeakable joy into the slate-grey, reptilian skin of Walden Pond. Our mismatched hands gripped together in the...
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