Scotland's Storybook: stories in English (1.1 - Education Scotland

THE SELKIE HUNTER
The Pentland Firth is a wild and unforgiving stretch of water. It lies between the
North Highland county of Caithness and the Orkney Islands, and each day sees
the cold grey waters of the North Sea do battle against the might of the Atlantic
Ocean as the two tides meet in the Firth. Whirlpools, powerful enough to sink
ships or to draw them towards the rocks, form as these waters meet. It is not a
place that you can make an easy living, but many generations of fishermen had
to do just that.
A long, long time ago there was a man whose small cottage lay by the shores
of the Pentland Firth, not far from where John O’ Groats House now stands. He
had a wife and bairns who depended on him and he had to reap a cold and
dangerous harvest from these treacherous waters. He fished and he set creels to
catch lobsters and crabs and he gathered shellfish in times of hunger to keep his
family fed. He was also a selkie hunter (as seals are called in the north), and the
skins that he stripped from these animals could fetch a good price at market.
People treated the selkies with caution and respect, because it was believed
that they had the power to take off their skins and become human at certain
times of the tide. Some said that they were the souls of people who had
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