Review: People of the Sea

Irish thought exploded into my consciousness during my undergrad. I read Seamus Heaney’s first collection of poetry within a few weeks of being introduced to Samuel Beckett in an acting class. (Yes, it was Waiting for Godot.) I was probably no more than twenty-one. I vividly remember the old book store where I used to loiter on Princess Ave, in Kingston, Ontario; you could buy a book for twenty-five or fifty cents if it hadn’t been commercially “successful.”

The collection fell open to a point where the previous owner’s attention had spent the most time. (Or perhaps had been thwarted.) It was a poem titled “The Grauballe Man,” which was about an archeological find of an iron-age Irish man, preserved in a bog:

As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep

the black river of himself.

So, I guess I knew the book I was about to read was going to have an impact on me, when I found that yer man, Seamus, had written the introduction to David Thomson’s book. (Later, the master of Irish thought and poetry won the Nobel Prize for his work, in 1995, so take that commercial definition of “successful.”)

The People of the Sea: Celtic Tales of the Seal-Folk

The book is an anthropology, a mythology, a poetry of sea and strand. It’s about an interstitial period, published in 1954, when it was possible for someone who had a modern framework to visit people who lived in a previous age.

And it’s about a fella’ who is mad for the seals.

The author is crazy for them. Or, let’s be honest, stories about seals and how they may be more than they seem. He visits the Hebrides in Scotland and the west coast of Ireland, and there, he learns many myths about the selkies – creatures that are born of the sea, but capable of walking on land. And more, as we learn from the multitude of storytellers he interviews.

The author frames the book with own experiences, starting as a child living in Scotland. Then as an adult, he reports on his travels. Each chapter is just that – excellent reportage. He sets the scene: where he is, and who he is with. Then the conversation that unfolds. He’s not a passive observer – he asks questions. And as time goes on and he becomes known to his subjects, they know what he wants. Seal talk.

Mind you, this is all mostly in translation. For he was writing at a time when English was a second language in these places. Most of the tales are transposed from Gaelic or Irish. But still an all, they translate well.

To Me, Ireland Is Magical

Now, full disclosure: I’ve been to Ireland thirteen times. My grandmother was born there, or so I’m told. My first trip was in 1990, before the Republic joined the EU and the transformation of the country into the Celtic Tiger. When I was there, I walked from Kinsale to Galway. (Oh, maybe a few bits of hitchhiking when the weather was really foul or my feet were.) But mostly I did tramp my way around the coast. Always I was almost always in sight of the sea. And there were hardly any seals.

I did see some, on the Dingle peninsula, and on the Arran Islands. On Cape Clear Island, Co. Cork, I was sure I heard them speaking in their way, far below me under the cliffs, but I never saw them. (I was on Cape Clear to see if I could meet Seamus Heaney, who had a cottage on the island, where they were starting an Irish summer school, but alas, I missed him by a few days.) I was more certain I saw fairies. A word of advice, don’t ask about the fairies in a pub there. Irish thought about it varies, of course, but there’s still discomfort.

But even though there is more than thirty years distance from when Thomson wrote the book and when I first went to the west coast of Ireland, there’s no question in my mind: he’s captured the essence of their speech. He’s found a way to translate their sense of wonder at the edge of the world.

It’s a genuine reminder to be curious about the marvels around us. Always.

You can check out The People of the Sea here, on Goodreads.

Image credit: “Kópakonan” selkie-statue, Mikladalur, Kalsoy, Faroe Islands (© kallerna, via WikiCommons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

---