The Silkie
Song #296 | Written: 4/10/1998

Once there was a fisherman
on the salty sea
Who felt so very alone
That dreamed of a wife
Who could keep him company
And give to him a child and a happy home

One northern summer day
He was paddling his way
Through the tiny islands not far from home
When what did he espy
To his hunter’s practiced eye
But a maiden dancing on the rocks so while and free

Well the sun was in her eyes
So he caught her by surprise
After he had hidden her sealskin
She was a Silkie you see,
A magic creature of the sea
Who sometimes come ashore to walk in human form

Refrain:
Oh to be a Silkie of the sea
Oh to be a magic creature swimming free
Oh to know the secrets of the foam
Oh to love the ocean and to call it “Home”

She begged to be set free
But he said “No. Come with me.
In seven years your skin I will return…”
So sadly she obeyed and turned her back upon the waves
And took a path that led her to an early grave

In the passing of the days,
She gave birth to a babe
A human son with web between his toes
But she’d begun to fade
And to wither all away
A little more with every single passing day.

But she told the child tales
Of seals and fish and whales
She taught him how to sing and play the drum
She told him of the times
When she was strong and fine
She told him of the drier days that were to come

Refrain:

Six years she’d struggled on
Now she was almost gone
And the fisherman grew silent and grim
And still he did deny the quiet pleading in her eyes
As he told himself that somehow she could change her mind

Then one night the child awoke
To a strange unearthly note
A sound from deep beneath the moonlit waves
It was old grandfather seal
A legend now made real
Calling to his own to bring his daughter home

The boy tripped in the sand
And reaching out his hand
Touched the softness of her lost seal skin
The man had thrown it to the deep
Hoping so his wife to keep
But the Spirit of the sea had washed it in again

Refrain:

Well the boy took it to her
And she slipped into its fur
Once again her eyes were full of life
She was a Silkie you see,
And would have died if not set free
She was never meant to be a human wife

The boy began to cry
As she slipped into the tide
But he could not save her any other way
And on certain moonlit nights
He would sometimes catch her sight
And then they’d swim together in the healing waves

Refrain:

Instrumental:

The boy grew to a man
Who knew the ways of land
As well as the secrets of the sea
And I met him one time
Though he was old and almost blind
And he played the drum and sang this very story…

Refrain: