The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry or The Grey Selkie of Suleskerry is a traditional folk song from Orkney. The song was collected by the American scholar, Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century and was published in 1886 as Child ballad number 113 in "The Child Ballads Vol 2"
Francis James Child owed the belated recovery of this extraordinary ballad to his friend and co-worker William MacMath, who spotted it on page 86-89 in Vol 1 of the "Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries" of 1852. Communicated by the late Captain F.W.L. Thomas, R.N.; written down by him from the dictation of a venerable lady of Snarra Voe, Shetland.
See also: Hibbert's "Description of the Shetland Islands" (1822) (pp. 566-571)
There are many different versions of the song, one of which is a part of the epic ballad, "The Lady Odivere".
The Sule Skerry is a rock in the Atlantic about fifty miles southwest of Orkney. Within living memory it was frequented by large numbers of seals. Some of the verses of the ballad are still remembered in the islands of Orkney and Shetland, but the tune was very nearly lost. It was first noted down in 1938 by Dr. Otto Andersson, who heard it sung by John Sinclair on the island of Flotta, Orkney.
Dr 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.”
A full version of the words was sent to Dr Andersson by Miss Annie G. Gilchrist.
First published in 1947 on page 115 of the Budkavlen magazine #XXVI.
Reprinted on page 39 of the Budkavlen magazine #XXXIII, with a slightly different text, taken from an Orkney newspaper: The Orcadian June 11, 1934
In 1955 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.
(o) John Sinclair (1961) (as "The Grey Silkie")
Recorded in the Orkneys, July 1955.
Listen here:
(c) Paul Clayton (1956) (as "Silkie of Sule Skerry")
From the liner-notes of Paul Clayton's album:
SIDE I, Band 6: THE GREAT SILKIE OF SULE SKERRY
(Child #113)
(Ballads of the Supernatural - see pages 27 to 30 )
The inhabitants of the Orkney Islands and the Hebrides
tell numerous tales of the "silkies" or seal-folk.
These enchanted creatures dwell in the depth of the sea
but occasionally doff their sealskins and come upon
land where they pass as ordinary men. Upon such occasions
they are said to accept human partners (as in
this ballad) and it is for this reason that many families
in the islands trace their ancestry to "silkies".
The silkies share in common with other enchanted folk
the ability to forecast future events (see stanzas 12
and 13 in which the silkie foretells the marriage of
the maid to a hunter who will shoot both the great
silkie and his offspring).
Except for some slight dialect changes, the version
sung here by Paul Clayton is essentially that reported
by R. M. Fergusson in Rambling Sketches in the Far
North, 1883, page 140;
The tune was collected in Orkney
by Professor Otto Andersson of Helsinki.
Listen here:
(c) Cynthia Gooding (1957) (as "Great Selchie of Shule Skerry")
Listen here:
In 1954 a new tune was written for this traditional song by Dr. James Waters of Columbia University in 1954.
Child was interested only in the texts of the ballads he collected, and Jim Butler explains that the Waters tune was "just the best I could do as a way to get a fine ballad sung".
Over the next 2 years, Butler introduced the ballad to the Boston area at a time when "hootnannies" 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.
Jim Butler taught the song to several people, including Bonnie Dobson. This is the tune that Joan Baez popularized as "Silkie" in the early 1960s.
(c) Bonnie Dobson (1960) (as "The Silkie of Sule Skerry")
Listen here:
(c) Oscar Brand (1960) (as "Great Selchie of Shule Skerry")
Listen here:
(c) Joan Baez (1961) (as "Silkie")
Listen here:
(c) The Highwaymen (1962) (as "The Great Silkie")
Listen here:
(c) Judy Collins (1962) (as "Great Selchie of Shule Skerry")
Listen here:
(c) The Homesteaders (1962) (as "The Silkie")
The members of The Homesteaders are not identified on the record or the jacket, but the voice of Judy Collins is unmistakable, and the source for this, John Ross, indicates that Judy has confirmed being on it.
Listen here:
(c) The Halifaxx Three (1963) (as "The Great Silky")
Listen here:
(c) The Big 3 (1964) (as "Silkie")
Listen here:
(c) Gram Parsons (1964) (as "The Great Silkie")
Unreleased solo performance.
Listen here:
Or to a sample here: The Early Years, Vols. 1 & 2 - Gram Parsons
(c) John Denver (1968) (as "The Great Silkie")
Listen here:
(c) Trees (1970) (as "The Great Silkie")
(c) Corries (1971) (as "The Great Silkie")
Listen here:
(c) Jean Redpath (1975) (as "The Grey Silkie")
Listen here:
(c) Maddy Prior (1999) (as "Great Silkie of Sules Skerry")
Listen here:
(c) Eyeless In Gaza (2000) (as "The Silkie")
Listen here:
(c) Roger McGuinn (2007) (as "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry")
Listen here: ibiblio.org/jimmy/folkden/php/music/Great_Silkie.mp3
(c) Steeleye Span (2009) (as "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry")
(c) June Tabor (2011) (as "The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry")
Listen here:
(c) Angelo Branduardi (2013) (as "The Silkie")
Listen here:
In 1981 Angelo Branduardi has already recorded an Italian and a French adaptation of the Jim Waters tune, for his album Branduardi '81.
(SEE ON THE BOTTOM OF IN THIS POST)
American folksinger Pete Seeger set the poem "I Come and Stand at Every Door", originally written as "Kız Çocuğu" in 1956 by Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, to the 1954 James Waters tune of "The Great Silkie".
According to Seeger, Jeanette Turner did a loose English "singable translation" of the poem under a different title, "I Come And Stand At Every Door", and sent a note to Seeger asking "Do you think you could make a tune for it?" in the late 1950s. After a week of trial and failure, this English translation was used by Seeger in 1961 with an adaptation of "an extraordinary melody put together by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student James Waters, who had put a new tune to a mystical ballad "The Great Silkie" which he couldn't get out of his head, without permission."
(c) Pete Seeger (1961) (as "I Come and Stand at Every Door")
Listen here:
The American rock band The Byrds sang it on their third album "Fifth Dimension"(1966).
(c) The Byrds (1966) (as "I Come and Stand at Every Door")
Listen here:
The song was covered in 1991 by This Mortal Coil. on their album "Blood".
(c) This Mortal Coil (1991) (as "I Come and Stand at Every Door")
Listen here:
In 2012 Joan Baez also sang "Kız Çocuğu" with its original Turkish lyrics by Nazım Hikmet to a different tune, composed in 1978 by Turkish musician Zülfü Livaneli.
Livanelli's original composition with the Nazim Hikmet lyrics was on the album: "Nazım Türküsü"
Joan Baez' version was released in 2014 on the next various artists album:
Listen here:
The Breton folk band Tri Yann penned a French adaptation of the James Waters tune.
"Le Dauphin" (the dolphin) was on their 1972 album Tri Yann an Naoned.
Listen here:
In 1981 Angelo Branduardi recorded an Italian adaptation of the James Waters tune for his album Branduardi '81. The song is titled "La cagna".
Listen here:
In the same year Branduardi also recorded a French adaptation of the same tune for the French market.
That version was titled; "Les Enfants De La Chienne".
Listen here;
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