Ep 10 All About Selkies With Dan
What do you know about the folktale of the selkie? Daniel Bell an educator, artist, media creator, and podcaster of Selkie Cast and Breathing Underwater. The mysterious Selkie folklore and culture uncovered through Dan’s research is fascinating. The shape shifting seal stories are both the same in places and drastically different. It’s at the same […]
The post Ep 10 All About Selkies With Dan appeared first on Fabric of Folklore.
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00:00:23:09 – 00:00:48:18
Speaker 1
Welcome, folks. Nice. I am Vanessa Rogers and I’m the host of Fabric of Folklore. This is a podcast where we explore all the glorious quirks and weirdness of folklore, but we also really get into the nitty gritty and try and understand the importance and significance behind the folklore. So we ask the questions that you always wanted to know when you read a folk tale.
00:00:49:04 – 00:01:25:15
Speaker 1
Why? Why is that there? And why are these stories and traditions important? What does it mean to the people that they come from? So today we have a really great guest. His name is Dan. He’s an educator, an artist, a media creator and a podcaster. His most recent endeavor in the podcasting world is called Silky Cast, which explores his silky folklore especially, but also the culture and storytelling and the intersection of all those things together.
00:01:26:00 – 00:01:49:08
Speaker 1
He’s been researching and collecting material ever since. First reading a short story in the early 2000s about a silky boy set in a modern day and which has culminated in Silky Cast podcast, where he is cataloging his research, making connections and exploring silk lore and other related areas more in depth. So thank you, Dan, for joining us today.
00:01:50:09 – 00:02:27:23
Speaker 2
Thank you for having me. I’m I’m honored and humbled because I’ve been catching up on your show. And the folks you’ve had on so far are quite treasures of information and research and qualifications and experience and personality. I feel I feel like I’m more still, even with all the time that’s passed since I’ve gotten into this realm of folklore discovery, I still feel like I’m kind of at the beginning of my journey, especially when it comes to the research and the academia part.
00:02:27:23 – 00:02:41:25
Speaker 2
I actually looked into getting a doctorate around related stuff, using this as a as a starting point. I just need to find the, you know, the means to make that happen. But I.
00:02:42:06 – 00:02:46:06
Speaker 1
Like it’s it like a folklorist degree, possibly.
00:02:48:09 – 00:03:20:02
Speaker 2
Is the degree is a collaborative intersection. It’s called media. I live in Richmond, Virginia, near Virginia, Commonwealth University, VCU, known locally and they have a great program called Media Art and Text. I believe it’s called Media Art and Text. Yeah. So it is it is kind of like it’s a cross curricular look at art through media, you know, the evolution of it.
00:03:20:12 – 00:03:48:10
Speaker 2
And, you know, there’s some kind of like textual output. So I was hoping that that would be my dissertation would be simultaneously like a research paper about the non fiction part of it, as you say, but also a novel or some something graphic novel. I’m a filmmaker by trade and. Right. Yeah. So that would be nice. But that’s that’s a really big undertaking.
00:03:48:20 – 00:03:56:16
Speaker 2
May not be reasonable, but so again, I just feel like I’m kind of I hope I can stack up against your other guests.
00:03:57:01 – 00:03:57:24
Speaker 1
I’m sure you.
00:03:58:03 – 00:04:05:20
Speaker 2
Think to some degree, but I’m not I’m not as professionally renowned or experienced as they are, but definitely is passionate.
00:04:06:20 – 00:04:27:04
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, and I don’t think I mean, I’m sure there are some people who know about selfies, but it’s just not as well known in the outer community. So I’m I’m excited to have you on to talk about this because it is actually one of my favorite folklore stories as well. I was introduced to it through the movie Song of the Sea.
00:04:27:04 – 00:04:34:28
Speaker 1
I think you mentioned that in one of your podcasts and it was my first introduction to it and I actually.
00:04:35:04 – 00:04:36:06
Speaker 2
That’s a wonderful film.
00:04:36:11 – 00:04:46:18
Speaker 1
How beautiful It is. Absolutely beautiful. And that song and this I think it’s the same title, Song of the Sea. I sing that to my kids all the time. It’s just so hauntingly wonderful.
00:04:46:18 – 00:04:47:19
Speaker 2
Lullaby Yeah.
00:04:48:02 – 00:05:03:09
Speaker 1
It’s gorgeous. So what? So let’s get into your background and your journey into what made you even want to start silky cast so that you can answer like your whole, you know, your whole journey in media, in art.
00:05:03:18 – 00:05:35:00
Speaker 2
Okay. And should I say, go back to the beginning and then give give an overview. You know, like I said, I am I’m a I’m a teacher and a writer, so I can be verbose. Feel free to help me truncate my thoughts. But essentially, you know, some of my earliest of course, you know, growing up as a child descendant of my ancestry is Scotch, Irish and German.
00:05:35:00 – 00:06:03:13
Speaker 2
And there and my my mom grew up in the Midwest and she was also, you know, exposed to a lot of Native American law. So there was just a lot of them. We had a lot of Katrina dolls around the house and things. We go visit her mom in Phenix and explore that kind of stuff, too. But I remember, you know, folklore and just stories beyond pop culture were definitely a part.
00:06:03:13 – 00:06:28:13
Speaker 2
I was also, you know, really into comic books and superheroes. And, you know, it’s been interesting to look at that through that lens, too, as I’ve gotten older and, you know, the more like kind of analytical and academics, you know, that film with Bruce Willis and like in on the name Robin Hood’s got in my head now the longer the.
00:06:28:24 – 00:06:29:09
Speaker 1
Oh.
00:06:29:21 – 00:07:00:18
Speaker 2
Yeah. Oh I love that Robin Hood but the the unbreakable unbreakable with with Samuel Jackson And the thesis is that, you know, us collecting superheroes in comic books is just an ancient form of modern, modernizing. Like the people that we would look up to, people that we want to look up to, that we want to believe in our heroes and also our buildings.
00:07:00:18 – 00:07:24:14
Speaker 2
You know, I just you know, that kind of things, but especially because that genre has been so popular and permeating the mainstream in the past couple of decades especially, it’s been fun to look at that, to say, you know, I grew up with all that kind of stuff in my my realm of exposure. But I also remember my my parents used to play over tapes.
00:07:25:24 – 00:07:50:14
Speaker 2
My parents are classical musicians. And so they would they would play either like classical music or movie soundtracks because that was, you know, like modernized classical music or fairy tale books. I remember I had a Hans Christian Andersen tape, you know, cassette tape that we would and it would help get us to sleep. And I remember some of it all like a Little Mermaid and Hansel and Gretel and things like that.
00:07:50:14 – 00:08:12:21
Speaker 2
Some of the early stories I still remember, you know, kind of drifting off to sleep and then having some really gnarly dreams, you know, in this the world and the tone of those characters then ever since I was a little kid, I just really enjoyed, you know, playing with toys, but not not just kind of bastion together. But I would have these very intricate stories.
00:08:12:21 – 00:08:14:17
Speaker 1
And you’re always a storyteller.
00:08:15:09 – 00:08:40:20
Speaker 2
Yeah, I would love to have these ongoing multi day or week scenarios play out and see where it would go. And I try to write novels and things. When I was a kid without understanding, you know, really like the structure, the essence of story. You just wanted to emulate the things that I enjoyed. But you know, then in high school, the tension of being a writer or going out to college, I just didn’t know what exactly I wanted to write.
00:08:41:05 – 00:09:03:10
Speaker 2
And then by the time I was in college and I was exposed to film, I was always interested in film. But yeah, as a actual, you know, professional degree, an avenue for employment. And I would got really interested in that. And then I went to University of the Arts in Philadelphia to study screenwriting and modern anatomy video production.
00:09:03:10 – 00:09:50:22
Speaker 2
And during that time, as you mentioned earlier, I was I had a creative writing friend at a school in Maryland, and he sent me that story is called Thin Boy. And it was just a paper that he wrote for his creative writing class, maybe sophomore junior year. And there was something about it that just really caught my attention because it was about, you know, there’s a supernatural undertone, but it was really just this family drama about a overly obsessive and neurotic mother that was terrified of her son being exposed to any larger amounts of water because that would expose bring them back to their intuitive, you know, dormant selfishness.
00:09:50:22 – 00:10:11:05
Speaker 2
And they had that particular iteration. He had webbing between the fingers and toes and all that kind of stuff. And I don’t know, there’s something about it just really grabbed me and I got to give credit to my friend, whose name is Chris Harmon. He’s an excellent writer and his his work. I have links on, on my website.
00:10:11:06 – 00:10:12:11
Speaker 1
Yeah, we can definitely link that.
00:10:14:00 – 00:10:51:18
Speaker 2
Thank you. Yeah. And then, you know, I was so inspired by that branch of folk because I also had never heard about maybe I had one. I didn’t realize it, but I was so familiar and, you know, all kind of over a little bit, you know, overwhelmed with the amount of mermaid ness that’s out there. You know, I love The Little Mermaid and stories like that, but I never heard of shape shifting seasons and it just sparked some kind of fascination so that my my senior film was a short film about that self use.
00:10:51:18 – 00:11:22:26
Speaker 2
And I tried to pitch it for my senior screenplay, but they my panel didn’t go for it. They had me do like an action movie, but so it’s been there that the intention has been there for a long time. Just I was just interested at first on more just taking what was already there, just like my friend Chris did, and kind of update and modernize, you know, taking something from a past oral tradition and putting it into a modern setting and just see how it play out.
00:11:23:23 – 00:11:42:25
Speaker 2
My work was just more of an adaptation of what he was doing. And then the years went on and in 2008 I went to Ireland and some of the books I have behind me, I just started I we were in Ireland and I had already started finding some things. I used to work at the Maryland Renaissance Fair and I had been there.
00:11:43:19 – 00:11:46:11
Speaker 2
Oh yeah? Well, where, where are you?
00:11:46:22 – 00:11:48:22
Speaker 1
Hydrographic Group I’m in Texas. Okay.
00:11:49:24 – 00:11:55:15
Speaker 2
Which also has a big renaissance fair from somewhere. Yes. So you’ve been to the Maryland one?
00:11:55:20 – 00:12:05:10
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. We go to the Houston when a lot it’s like it’s the biggest one in Houston is the biggest in the U.S., I believe. But the Maryland, when it’s very of.
00:12:06:11 – 00:12:25:15
Speaker 2
Some of the vendors that I used to work for, I know that they travel, they go to there’s a big one in Phenix, there’s one in Pennsylvania, and they go to the one in Texas. But yeah, I was still a big fan of the Renaissance Fair circuit, but they had a great, you know, a kind of Celtic Renaissance books bookstore.
00:12:25:15 – 00:12:53:13
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah, I found some stuff there. And, you know, I was just flipping through things and I saw this myself because I was like, you know, this is really interesting because this what they’re describing here doesn’t quite line up with what I had originally looked into because Chris, my my friend that wrote the story kind of pointed me to where he got his ideas from, which was he was doing some research from the Orkney Island Heritage Foundation and learned about them from there.
00:12:53:13 – 00:13:28:01
Speaker 2
Yeah, So I was looking at it through that lens, but then I started to notice that, you know, there were different iterations of the story and just, just like there are with every kind of folklore, your, your first guests on your first episode spoke to that so well. Lisa Mm hmm. There was so much that, that she that she touched on that was just, you know, I was like, yes, that’s I find that also incredibly fascinating about the different cultures that how how did they how did they learn about this?
00:13:28:02 – 00:13:56:21
Speaker 2
Was it just a parallel kind of thing or was it you know, it kind of come from somewhere else? And then they had their own cultural take on it that, you know, change it over time. And so the stories that we hear now are this interesting conglomeration of a lot of different influences and factors and not the original story, which is what I kind of took it as or what I often hear people, you know, when they refer to sloppy stories like the story that was told.
00:13:56:21 – 00:14:16:04
Speaker 2
And I actually didn’t I hadn’t heard of of that author before, and I just bought her books this morning. So I’m really curious to see because that’s how I want to kind of turn the next page for me was, Oh, I’d like to see what other iterations there are out there on this thing. You know, I started getting interested in just collecting.
00:14:16:06 – 00:14:47:24
Speaker 2
I didn’t have any goal in mind at the time. I was just if I came across a story, a book or in a film, you know, I just kind of would get it collected. It was it was my my collecting thing for a while. And then I went to Ireland in 2008 with my parents and I started popping in bookstores and asking some local, you know, people that at the stores and markets and things about what they know and, you know, I was pointed towards a couple of other really wonderful books.
00:14:47:24 – 00:15:13:23
Speaker 2
There’s this book by if I grab it, I’m going to knock over the other one. David Thompson, who wrote this incredible, you know, recounting of oral history, very similar to what like a lot of anthropologists do, where they just go around and talk to they travel to the areas where these myths and legends and folklore from. And they document the oral tradition.
00:15:13:23 – 00:15:53:03
Speaker 2
Yeah. And it’s it’s fascinating how much in these collection of stories from the book by David Thompson The People of the Sea this is what my last episode of the Sulky House was about was was kind of comparing to anthologies of that were like direct transcripts of oral tradition around this. All these stories. One was specific to Scotland that was called The Tales of the SEAL People, Duncan Williamson and the other one, The People of the Sea, by David Thompson, is a little bit broader.
00:15:53:03 – 00:16:13:24
Speaker 2
So Duncan mentions specifically Scotland and the ones by David Thompson are taken from a vast geographical and also cultural scope and over a long period of time.
00:16:13:25 – 00:16:19:22
Speaker 1
So he moved. He’s not just in Ireland and Scotland, he’s elsewhere as well. Where does where else, you know?
00:16:19:22 – 00:17:05:02
Speaker 2
Yeah, he he travels everywhere out of the Faroe Islands to the Orkneys, Shetlands, you know, the coasts of Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Iceland as mentioned there is so there’s a very wide and again, let your guest spoke to this and she was talking about trolls thought was just the parallels the say because I don’t know as much about trolls about what I’ve seen so far about cultures is it’s a great window into folklore in general of of understanding this this cultural evolution, this, this era evolution where it changes and evolves and keeps getting passed down and passed along.
00:17:05:02 – 00:17:35:16
Speaker 2
But that game of telephone is played, you know, where it doesn’t end up the way that it started. So I just think it’s really interesting to hear, to see where it is now. And the most popular and common story that we tend to hear and that we’ve seen translated to film like Song of the Sea. I think they mentioned it, but it was an exact thing I really liked about Song of the Sea was it was a really cool, broader fairy movie.
00:17:35:16 – 00:17:39:14
Speaker 2
It wasn’t just about self use, you know? I love that kind of stuff too, where they.
00:17:40:01 – 00:17:40:19
Speaker 1
Actually.
00:17:43:12 – 00:17:51:00
Speaker 2
I’m obsessed with with self specifically, but I love when they’re like a part of a bigger world.
00:17:51:00 – 00:17:51:09
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:17:51:27 – 00:18:11:06
Speaker 2
Because sometimes I can get a little too myopically focused on this one thing. It’s also just kind of overwhelming to think if I applied this obsession or passion to other things like trolls or fairies or mermaids or whatever it would, it would just be more overwhelming than it already is. I try to stay a little bit more focused.
00:18:11:18 – 00:18:26:17
Speaker 1
Well, can you put on your storytelling hat a little bit and tell us the story of one of the original sulky stories, one of the maybe the one from the Song of the Sea or one of the original ones that you think are most commonly told?
00:18:27:26 – 00:18:53:14
Speaker 2
Well, so I think there’s there’s two different ways to go with that, because the story is that we’re most familiar with, I think. And I think definitely this is something that I’m looking into right now, like I said, I’m kind of at the beginning of my journey. I don’t have all the answers yet. And hopefully someday if I get a doctorate and have a chance and resources to really, like, dig into this on a on an academic level and professional level, that I’ll have more.
00:18:53:21 – 00:19:17:07
Speaker 2
I’ll be on the other side of things where I can defend what you say, like, yes, this is the right right now. I from what I understand and just my own DIY research, some of the original stories, at least I’m getting most of this from those books I just mentioned because they focus more on the oral tradition as opposed to a lot of Southeast stories.
00:19:17:07 – 00:19:55:05
Speaker 2
A lot of the books that I’ve collected are like children’s books, or they’re part of anthologies or they’re part of like fairy Bibles and things where they tell the same story, where there is. And I mean, it’s the same story. I don’t want to be redundant. It’s the same story that that you told on, on your first episode where there is a lonely fisherman or crofter that one day is, you know, out at sea or on the Strand, and he sees the most beautiful visage of a woman that he’s ever seen, you know, sunbathing on a rock or or on on the strand in a nearby.
00:19:55:05 – 00:20:26:09
Speaker 2
And then he sees the glistening skin of a seal. And and I guess because understand, it seems that usually they know, oh, it’s a selfie. It’s not like at least for the more modern. I know they’re not like, what is this? They know too. I’m going to I’m going to take that that coat that that I’m going to take that skin and I’m going to hide it in the rafters in my barn or or in a chest.
00:20:26:09 – 00:20:50:23
Speaker 2
I’ve seen stories, you know, where they lock it in a chest or something like that. And then, you know, as we’ve heard many times, the woman has no choice because she is a creature of the land and the sea. Without her skin, she can’t transform back into a seal and return to her family oftentimes are to the sea, which oftentimes consist of a SEAL family or a sulky family.
00:20:50:23 – 00:21:32:23
Speaker 2
And so she bears children with the man. And one thing I find really interesting, especially of an older, is that there is a very there’s a lot of darker tones to a lot of this stuff. Obviously, there’s explores some more shadowy sides of human nature. And one of those is to essentially, you know, trap somebody in a situation that they don’t want to be in, but they often the stories often make the protagonist a little bit more sympathetic, where they’re lonely, they’re not vindictive, they’re not they don’t mean any harm.
00:21:32:23 – 00:22:00:12
Speaker 2
They just want love like we all do. And so they you know, but they’re still kidnaping somebody, essentially. And we can come back to that because you asked about the earlier story, but this is the more the more common modern tale that I’ve come across is, you know, then they they bear children. They have a good life that the mother is happy and loves her children and cares for everybody.
00:22:00:12 – 00:22:21:16
Speaker 2
And it’s a good housekeeper or what have you. And then by some happenstance, you know, somebody is up in the rafter and the kids are playing. They knock the coat down or somebody finds a key and she knows it’s in the chest, that she doesn’t know what the key is. Something like that. They come across the kid. It’s usually the kid, not the wife of some reason.
00:22:22:00 – 00:22:55:05
Speaker 2
That’s kind of interesting, too. There’s maybe a little bit a hint of mischievousness. They’re mischievous mischief. This is the business. And so the mother wife takes goes, finds her coat, puts things in order on the house, says to the oldest, you’re in charge now. And they abscond back to the ocean where they, you know, frolic happily in the surf and reconnect with their family that’s been patiently waiting for them.
00:22:55:05 – 00:22:57:23
Speaker 2
So everything works out except this is a.
00:22:57:25 – 00:22:58:13
Speaker 1
Event, right?
00:22:59:13 – 00:23:33:26
Speaker 2
Yes. Well, and like in the story that the story that your first guest told was the more like the more optimistic version that especially in children’s books, where they don’t just abandon them, they are still part of the life rebels still see them from the shore and they’ll watch over them and they’ll you know, I’ve seen stories where they throw them shells for decorative decorations or then fish the other day for forevermore their fish, their fishing stories are never, you know, lacking.
00:23:33:26 – 00:24:05:08
Speaker 2
And that but the more the more adult like the more sobering ones are She just leaves and and everybody said you know forever and so so to answer them the other side of that question like what’s the original from what I can tell, it goes back to early kind of cultural see the white word for it. And I’m not an anthropologist, though.
00:24:05:08 – 00:24:20:08
Speaker 2
I was, you know, there’s there’s a lot of what ifs and I wish I had kind of things when it goes back to my education, film was a lot of fun. But, you know, there’s a lot of a lot of things that I just wish I had more of a wealth of knowledge of like some of your other guests.
00:24:20:08 – 00:24:50:28
Speaker 2
But from what I understand, you know, when a culture is trying to understand the world around them, especially, you know, early, ancient pre literate cultures, prehistoric cultures, they would create their versions of these stories to explain why it rains and why, you know, why there’s lightning and why the crops don’t grow or something like that in this case, because of the abundance of seals.
00:24:50:28 – 00:25:32:00
Speaker 2
I guess at a certain point it seems that that there was that sort of explanatory, you know, for for it to explain like where things came from or why the the whole, you know, the first seal was the morning star that, you know, Satan or was a fallen angel was. And then the child, the children or I’m sorry, the other angels that that followed followed that character to, you know, to to their.
00:25:33:22 – 00:25:34:03
Speaker 1
World.
00:25:34:27 – 00:26:02:07
Speaker 2
Yeah, exactly. Like they were essentially the seals or fallen angels or remnants of them or ancestors or something. So that there was that kind of stuff back there. But on the more explanatory front, it seems that some cultures, the Ireland, Irish and Scottish, especially often talk about self use in in the same breath, in scope of people lost at sea.
00:26:02:23 – 00:26:22:28
Speaker 2
You hear a lot that, you know, like what the sea will take, the sea will have or that the sea must have. I’ve heard that quote a few times, and that has to do, I think, with people explaining either, you know, to their children or mourning widows about why daddy didn’t come home from his fishing voyage. Use of self.
00:26:22:28 – 00:26:33:26
Speaker 2
You went back to his people or something like that. You know, maybe maybe mom died in childbirth. She just went back to her people. And that’s another you know, they call them the people. So and.
00:26:34:04 – 00:26:40:01
Speaker 1
The viewpoint of the fallen angels, are they considered evil or.
00:26:41:13 – 00:27:01:10
Speaker 2
And, you know, it’s a lot of these stories, a lot of these stories, especially the ones that I’m referring to currently and again, this is why I had these I never thought I’d be wanting to go, especially after my my, my graduate experience, which wasn’t wasn’t as much fun as my undergraduate. I didn’t think I’d want to go back to academia.
00:27:01:10 – 00:27:36:28
Speaker 2
But a lot of this stuff, these kind of questions are the ones that I really think that that’s the kind of thing that I could really uncover more because the the stories that I’m thinking of, especially in David Thomson’s People of the Sea Book, where he went around so many different places, a lot of times they were just little snippets and he would be talking to somebody at a dinner table or a pub or something and they would just mention this kind of thing offhand, but they wouldn’t tell a full fledged, you know, three act story that with a resolution and they knew more and everything, they they would just say, Oh, they are their
00:27:36:28 – 00:27:59:21
Speaker 2
fallen angels, you know, leave it at that. So so I but at the same time, in a lot of these stories, the especially the ones from Scotland, this is a big theme. And you can hear more about it in my podcast because I summarized all the stories in the podcast for me right now, because you had asked earlier about like what led to that.
00:27:59:21 – 00:28:23:26
Speaker 2
I got to this point where I had been collecting so much stuff and I was I had written the story. My brother is was kind of an off and on Illustrator and we had talked about maybe making a graphic novel together and he offered me the opportunity to write it for him. And I had stays gestating for a while.
00:28:23:26 – 00:28:48:26
Speaker 2
But a couple of well, about a little bit more than a decade now. I lived on Maui for a couple of years. So in my life I grew up pretty landlocked. I grew up in Buffalo, Columbus, Ohio, Baltimore, Maryland, and Virginia. I was pretty, pretty landlocked. I didn’t have much of a relationship with the ocean or bodies of water, really.
00:28:48:26 – 00:29:15:24
Speaker 2
In general, I was much more of a city guy, and I liked the the buzz and the the frenetic ness, the kinetic nature of of urban environments. And then I had the opportunity to go live on Maui with a friend. And it just kind of changed my whole perspective and it changed everything, especially my relationship with with the world.
00:29:16:11 – 00:29:35:08
Speaker 2
And because I never felt so connected with the natural world before. And the ocean, of course, was a huge part of that. But I also, you know, I was just, you know, personally in a hobby way, like just really interested in Psaltis and I. It was always this thing that was there, you know, I dabble with it in college.
00:29:35:08 – 00:29:58:15
Speaker 2
I’ve been collecting work and just making mental notes, but I didn’t have, like an outlet for it, you know, I didn’t have any end goal in mind. And then so I left Maui and I was pretty distraught over that for a while. And especially being so far away from the ocean while I was there, I had a couple chance encounters with Hawaiian Monk SEALs which see this book.
00:29:59:02 – 00:30:28:12
Speaker 2
So Hawaiian monk seals are very they’re there. This is my only book in this collection that’s not selfie related. It’s just seal related. But the thing about it about these guys that I found so fascinating is that they are indigenous to the islands and they’re one of the only species that is specific to one, like they’re used and there’s a mediterranean and a Caribbean one.
00:30:28:12 – 00:30:39:08
Speaker 2
So one of them is it’s like I think it’s the Caribbean that are but there’s still like all over that region. Whereas the Lyman seal is only found in Hawaii and nowhere else.
00:30:39:13 – 00:30:39:27
Speaker 1
Interesting.
00:30:40:06 – 00:30:55:13
Speaker 2
So there was something really kind of special and mysterious about that. For me, they’re very elusive. You don’t see them very much. So the fact that I saw them a couple of times like when I was living there and not looking for them, you know, really just I don’t know, it kind of sparked a new.
00:30:55:29 – 00:30:56:14
Speaker 1
Interest.
00:30:56:14 – 00:31:19:12
Speaker 2
Branch for this stuff because I never I never had an experience with SEALs personally before. I’ve seen them in aquariums and things, but I never you know, come across one after coming in after a day of searching and thinking it was a big rock on the beach and there’s a there’s a lot of mosquitoes. Yeah. And it was it was you know, it was glorious.
00:31:19:12 – 00:31:40:04
Speaker 2
It was beautiful and it was majestic and and it was so silly. It just like lying on its back, basking in the sun. It was so cute and, you know, so so that eventually, especially when I left Maui and dealing with all the feelings about that, everything that was the spark for this story that I started to tell with my brother.
00:31:40:04 – 00:32:05:03
Speaker 2
We were going to make a graphic novel. The problem was that it became so massive and and, you know, big and scale that we both of us just kind of realized that we weren’t going to be able to actually, like, create anything substantial in any reasonable amount of time. And, you know, we had I was having a started a family and he was changing careers, so we decided to put it on hold.
00:32:05:03 – 00:32:39:14
Speaker 2
But the story, the characters and the meaning behind all of it for me has always been there. And that’s when I realized, too, that the the fascination that I’ve had was not not just something specifically, but the different versions and the culture, like The View, the lens into the culture that that creates for me where, you know, I had never really just had any reason to be specifically interested in like, I like Icelandic culture.
00:32:39:21 – 00:33:15:14
Speaker 2
But as soon as I hear, you know, just because it’s not in the forefront of of my attention, but then I hear that that they have their own, you know, specific brand of selfies, then that’s just like a window, a vessel into you know, learning more and want to it’s a motivating factor. And, you know, so the Hawaiian thing, because I found out that they had this what’s the word, the I can’t remember if it’s critically or severely there.
00:33:15:19 – 00:33:51:03
Speaker 2
There’s a specific scientific word, but there are almost extinct. There’s less than 5000 or a thousand like my stats at this point. Yeah, they’re just there. There’s a lot of different living factors, you know, But all with all that and just knowing, understanding that they were like this, you know, very unique and isolated thing that gave me a little bit more of like purpose behind the stories that I wanted to tell.
00:33:51:03 – 00:34:08:21
Speaker 2
But then also connecting that with the fact that like when I originally try to tell a selfie story back in college from when I was doing my film stuff was more of just emulating or adapting what had already been there because I didn’t really have a story to tell as much as I was just interested in the lore, in the characters.
00:34:09:05 – 00:34:23:06
Speaker 2
But this was the first like really personal, you know, substantial, emotionally resounding thing that, you know, kind of all came together for me. Yeah, that’s really what the notes are. There weren’t any.
00:34:23:25 – 00:34:27:12
Speaker 1
Lore related to the SEALs in Hawaii that you heard of.
00:34:28:12 – 00:34:57:22
Speaker 2
Not I’m still looking into that. So I am still so like in the avalanche of the Celtic side of things that I’ve only been able to scratch the surface and you know, I really wish that I had while I was there, that I had thought to mine the knowledge of, you know, of of the people that I was more like the people that were more available to me.
00:34:57:22 – 00:35:20:03
Speaker 2
You know, immediately people, the elders and teachers, professors, a lot of a lot of connections that I could have had or made I didn’t think to at the time, But I learned about the menehune, which are their sort of version of. Depends on who you ask, of course. But they’re sort of like the little people in a way.
00:35:20:03 – 00:35:44:12
Speaker 2
They’re the supernatural. Okay, you don’t see, But they’re always there behind the scenes. But. But they could also. There’s. There’s different interpretations of that, you know, and different. You know, even Hawaii has its own branches of culture, right? There’s even been a small place. But yeah, so it was like, oh, wow, you know, I’ve been really interested in this, this Celtic folklore that comes more from my ancestry and everything.
00:35:44:26 – 00:36:11:20
Speaker 2
But I had such a profound connection with a place and a culture that really, you know, I had no background or even necessarily like right to appropriate. And that’s not what I was trying to do, but I just felt organically like. So for the first time as an adult like this, this is kind of where I belong and this is the kind of little culture that really speaks to me.
00:36:12:22 – 00:36:48:27
Speaker 2
And I feel so at home with it that it felt like the right way to kind of tell my own story using this stuff as a jumping off entry point. Yeah, to but but to take it, you know, I use the word evolution a lot, but that’s really how I see a lot of this. I see folklore and storytelling is it’s all it’s all of the things that have come before and then it’s and then it’s you and the way that you interpret it.
00:36:48:27 – 00:36:52:16
Speaker 2
And then it branches in another direction from there.
00:36:53:22 – 00:37:00:00
Speaker 1
Folktales to her for storyteller. And then it continues to change through the oral traditions. Yeah.
00:37:01:04 – 00:37:17:11
Speaker 2
And like you get, you know, you’ve heard all these different tales of there’s, there’s like a traveling storyteller or just somebody traveling through. They hear a story in one place, they go back to where they’re originally from, which is a completely different part. And they they bring that story and then it takes on a life of its own.
00:37:18:08 – 00:37:48:10
Speaker 2
And I just think that kind of stuff is absolutely fascinating, but also critical to, you know, the the essence of like what story, why we tell stories and what folklore really is. And then also like, you know, to not to not to be more to find connections between things that that are seemingly, you know, either like desperate or at odds like, like different cultures.
00:37:49:11 – 00:38:15:03
Speaker 2
There’s there’s always thing because, you know, we were in you talked about this on other episodes your podcast where dragons and mermaids and all that kind of stuff. Those ideas are found all over the world, you know. And were they inspired, influenced by each other or not? Or was it just because humans have similar ways of perceiving things and, you know, and extrapolating it?
00:38:15:03 – 00:38:39:14
Speaker 2
And I think it’s all of that stuff is true. And I think that just kind of shows like how no matter why, who we are, where we are and what time period it is, where we there’s more that connects us than than divides us. And I think that’s just one great example of that. And then we just we have more to learn from each other than we do to take from each other.
00:38:39:15 – 00:38:42:20
Speaker 2
Right. Or, you know, however you want to look at it.
00:38:42:27 – 00:38:52:21
Speaker 1
So can you give us some different varieties of the sucky stories that you heard from your girls? Is your research that research?
00:38:54:09 – 00:38:55:26
Speaker 2
I think you can. Our research.
00:38:56:07 – 00:38:56:18
Speaker 1
Yes.
00:38:58:07 – 00:39:25:23
Speaker 2
Because I do. I’m doing research with with the Celtic side of things, and eventually I’m going to get to do it a lot more hardcore researches with the Hawaiian side of things and Polynesian, you know, and that’s really so I feel like that’s kind of an innovative you say kuleana this responsibility like it’s that’s, that’s your kuleana to you know you’ve been you’ve even dealt this card now now what are you going to do with it?
00:39:26:01 – 00:39:48:26
Speaker 2
I feel like because I’ve had the experiences that I’ve had and the interests and passions that I’ve had is not not just being interested in movies or living in Maui or being a filmmaker, but all those things together or a storyteller. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t really call myself a filmmaker, honestly. I was more interested in film as a medium for stories, not as a technical.
00:39:49:04 – 00:40:28:10
Speaker 2
I love film, I love the technical side of it, but that’s not really where my interests really are. It’s more in the the blueprint of what makes a a good movie, a good movie, which isn’t to me. It’s not how it looks, it’s what it’s about, who it’s about and how the story is told. So, you know, it’s it’s all my kuleana that kind of feels now that I’ve had these experiences and I’ve had these these skills and I’ve been exploring these things is to find a way they’re going to bridge all these things and, you know, kind of make my own branch off of that that hopefully, you know, will just become part of
00:40:28:26 – 00:41:14:07
Speaker 2
the Mobius of folklore and Selby lore and storytelling. So it doesn’t stagnate because to answer your question, so some of the examples of the very the variants, the stories that I’ve heard, one thing I would really like to bring, if you know, if anything that I do ever make it kind of catches on, makes any kind of traction is exposing people not not just to this specific kind of war, because it tends to get overshadowed by mermaids and sirens and and CDs and stuff like that, even though it is becoming does seem to become a little bit more I don’t know about mainstream, but there’s a lot of that are coming out.
00:41:14:07 – 00:41:37:24
Speaker 2
My wife has found a couple recently like this one I didn’t even know because I have been doing a lot of different researching over the years. Part of it is just Googling or looking on Amazon and some of the stuff is pretty new and there’s still some kid books around, some children’s books that all share the same name, like the selfie or the selfie girl.
00:41:38:03 – 00:41:56:23
Speaker 2
And you know, five, ten years ago when I when I looked up the selfie girl, there was like one or two books and five, you know, So. So it’s definitely catching on. Yeah. Oh, and there’s also like a whole branch of romance novels that I have barely I think that’s a huge thing.
00:41:56:25 – 00:42:01:01
Speaker 1
Incorporated in that. Outlander I think they might have been mentioned in Outlander. Do you it.
00:42:01:01 – 00:42:01:19
Speaker 2
Really?
00:42:01:19 – 00:42:12:27
Speaker 1
I think so, because it’s in Scotland and I well, I read the book several years ago and I feel like I remember it being mentioned, but maybe one of the listeners can can verify this.
00:42:13:11 – 00:42:35:23
Speaker 2
Oh, I would I would love to know because like, I’m in this I’m in this journey right now to collect every mention, every thing I can find, just just to have a marker for it to say like, okay, it’s here, here and here. But it’s funny that you mention that though, because I recently watched the Northman by the filmmaker’s name.
00:42:36:02 – 00:43:06:17
Speaker 2
I’ll shoot the guy, the guy that did the Witch and the Lighthouse, and then he did that with Skarsgard Oh, gosh. Alexander Skarsgard Right now, one of them, one of the stars of the big the big beefy one. Okay, It was the Norse revenge tale, essentially. But it was very, very strange, very offbeat, because he’s is a, you know, very avant garde kind of director.
00:43:06:25 – 00:43:29:06
Speaker 2
But there was a line in there. They mentioned the the foxes. They were talking about the light, the animals on this particular island they were on, which was in Iceland. And they meant they, they mentioned like, oh they must be out there with the foxes and the wolves and the salt guys. Excuse me, it was like blink and you miss it.
00:43:29:06 – 00:43:58:24
Speaker 2
But I thought it was very interesting because. Sorry, excuse me, the bar, a lot of times in the books, the oral tradition books especially, I was I was going back through, you know, for my podcast. It was sometimes it was hard to tell if somebody said the words salty, if they just meant seal sometimes or did they did they equate a seal with a shapeshifting supernatural being?
00:43:59:12 – 00:44:26:28
Speaker 2
It seems like it’s kind of especially for some of the older generations that the book that I’m referring to right now was published in 1954. So it’s the the generations that he was talking to, you know, were some of them could have been from, you know, the 1880s, the 1900s. And they they would just say, you know, they would talk about the culture’s or the self is that like eight fish in their net.
00:44:27:12 – 00:44:42:03
Speaker 2
And it was unclear usually if they really meant a seal or like you know, so so I wonder too like in Outlander if they were just referring to seals, but that was the vernacular, I would say the culture.
00:44:42:03 – 00:44:46:13
Speaker 1
And there were some supernatural elements too. I mean, time traveling. So.
00:44:46:23 – 00:44:47:04
Speaker 2
Right.
00:44:47:12 – 00:44:47:24
Speaker 1
So there.
00:44:47:24 – 00:45:18:11
Speaker 2
Was. Yeah. And that’s I think that’s really cool. It’s really mysterious, you know, when you don’t really even know what the intentions are. And I love that ambiguity too. And a lot of times folklore is a great balance of it tells you things as if it’s real and it happened and it’s up to you to decide. There’s not there’s not a lot of or explaining or, you know, necessarily like too much exposition for exposition sake.
00:45:18:27 – 00:45:57:21
Speaker 2
The a lot of times for these tales, you kind of expect that they understand certain aspects of it that don’t need to be beaten over the head with it, you know, And Right. I appreciate that. But anyway, so we were talking about the the different the different variants of the story so that that that’s that’s one good example too, is, you know, if if you’re telling the story about about soapies, but you’re just talking about seals which did come up and in some of the research that I did, but also so the most common one was the one that we went over about, you know, the somebody’s feelings, the skin and eventually being discovered and
00:45:57:21 – 00:46:32:01
Speaker 2
going back to see. But in the Tales of the SEAL People by Duncan Williamson that are specifically about Scottish sorry, sometimes my my brain just was faster than my mouth when I’m especially been being on camera. I am a content creator and I make I make podcasts and YouTube videos and stuff. But I one reason that I was a writer in school and not an actor was because I’m not very comfortable just.
00:46:32:06 – 00:46:32:21
Speaker 1
In front of.
00:46:32:21 – 00:46:57:28
Speaker 2
My nature, in front of the camera, behind the camera. So it’s a good it’s a good yeah, it’s a good it’s a good, you know, challenge for me. But the the a la a big theme, a through line through a lot of the stories. And you had also asked about, you know, if if they’re fallen angels are they evil again it wasn’t it was never explained explicitly.
00:46:57:28 – 00:47:21:17
Speaker 2
And in the stories that I’ve read so far. But I think there’s a lot of things you can insert because especially like in the in the Scottish versions, a lot of times there are and these are like very, very dissimilar and not at all, you know, like just somebody stealing a skin and either tricking or trying to espouse somebody.
00:47:21:17 – 00:47:48:16
Speaker 2
But otherwise they are just like a mysterious people that, you know, are known by locals maybe, or, or there’s there is chatter about it, but no one’s ever seen them. They’re elusive, you know, like, like seals can be. And then but then, you know, there’s will be somebody that comes on, has an encounter, you know, that proves these people to be real.
00:47:48:22 – 00:48:16:27
Speaker 2
So, for instance, one of the stories that comes to mind is a guy that is a cattle farmer, you know, on on some Scottish island, probably the or views of the Shetlands and something like that gets commissioned by this mysterious man. It’s always a mysterious, tall, dark person in a long black or brown cloak with like deep black and brown eyes, you know, pale skin.
00:48:17:08 – 00:48:39:22
Speaker 2
They all sound, you know, like vampiric sick or something. Either they describe them, they just similar to and like your guest mentioned in that first episode, a lot of times, most of the time, from what we hear, they’re referred to as the most beautiful, you know, like inhumanly beautiful. Yeah. And alluring and seductive, you know, kind of people.
00:48:39:22 – 00:48:54:17
Speaker 2
But that’s not always true. And if you go back to the old traditions, a lot of times they’re almost like sallow and scary and creepy and off putting. Yeah. Else and this particular story.
00:48:56:00 – 00:48:59:05
Speaker 1
I’m sorry, even the females.
00:48:59:05 – 00:49:26:00
Speaker 2
Yes. So and I mean and there’s so many different variations but well like in one story that the author had heard of the The People of the Sun, the two titles are so similar, I often get them confused with the tales of the No, I’m sorry this when the people of the Sea, the one that was more of a chronicle of different cultures, had a story of the.
00:49:26:03 – 00:49:45:24
Speaker 2
So the other reason they also wrote it was because he grew up in Scotland and some of the other places that he heard a lot of the stuff as a kid and he had some encounters and also he wanted to go back and do some adult collecting of these things before they were out of out of favor and out of out of the old oral tradition.
00:49:45:24 – 00:50:17:08
Speaker 2
But he tells a story about a woman in town that allegedly walked around on flippers or it looked like she did because her feet were turned out to the side. But she was big and rotund and very friendly and she didn’t have arms and and she always had black or brown eyes, though, you know, the eyes are very Italian, but they look like they’re always wearing some kind of long, silky dress or cloak or a coat or something like that.
00:50:17:12 – 00:50:37:12
Speaker 2
You know, they usually don’t refer to it as a skin, though, which is interesting because, you know, in the stories that we hear more commonly, the skin is discarded. So they have to step out of their skin and put it to the side. But in these other versions of the stories that that I’ve been looking into, they keep it on them the whole time.
00:50:37:16 – 00:51:01:03
Speaker 2
And they’re very protective of it. So anyway, so so this one and there’s another one too. That’s an interesting bearing on this, but it’s a it’s a different tone. This one, the guy that the mysterious man that commissions the cattle farmer leads him to take cow out to this island that is that is known to be uninhabited and barren.
00:51:01:12 – 00:51:27:04
Speaker 2
There’s nothing there. So, you know, he’s he’s suspicious. Why are you asking me to take a cow out to this place? You know, very arduously to because he has to swim behind the boat while he’s dysentery. And it sounds pretty awful, actually, a lot of these practices. But, you know, it’s different, different time. The the cows is is taken out there.
00:51:27:04 – 00:51:54:15
Speaker 2
The man in the boat says, okay, is when we get near the island, you have to close your eyes and you know, you’re not allowed to look. That’s that’s his condition to paying him for this service. And of course the man does look as he’s curious. And what he sees is a whole bunch of other mysterious clothes, tall, you know, kind of sinister and leads to him looking in folks that he’d never seen before that are all over this island.
00:51:54:15 – 00:52:16:26
Speaker 2
It’s supposed to be uninhabited and they slaughter this cow and they eat it. And, you know, he pretends that he wasn’t looking. But of course, the guy knows that he was looking. So when he gets back on shore, the man blows some kind of powder in his face and blinds him for his sand or his very. Yeah, yeah.
00:52:16:26 – 00:52:45:07
Speaker 2
And so, like that kind of stuff, too. We’re like listening to too, some of your other podcasts and hearing some versions of other stories. I’m like, That sounds a lot like this one, but it’s a different, different setting, different characters, different supernatural beings, but similar messages, you know, and things that come out of it. But then another version in that same book are a let’s see, because there’s some there’s so many of they get a little muddled in my head.
00:52:46:07 – 00:53:18:05
Speaker 2
Again, I have I have a lot more chronicled neatly on my podcast than a man essentially. Let’s see, he disappears. And that was a sibling. Look, there was a sibling one where these twins, the brother disappears, but the sister eventually finds him. But he’s gone to live with the people and he had to cut off his toe as a sign of good faith or commitment or something.
00:53:19:07 – 00:53:53:20
Speaker 2
So they So she doesn’t want to become a SEAL, so they just spend the rest of their years cavorting in a cave or something so she can see him. But the parents think that he’s dead and they won’t believe anything otherwise. Of course. And then when the sister eventually dies in old age, there is and this is one of those, you know, like folk legends where it becomes it’s told because there’s supposed evidence for it, where there’s like a hole, this footprint towards her grave in this in this town.
00:53:53:20 – 00:54:18:02
Speaker 2
Yeah. But the other one I was thinking that was really interesting because you’re asking about, you know, that are that are different than the other kind. There’s still there are old stories about love and, you know, people finding their mate and things like that. So there was one. Oh, that’s right. Okay. So there was a young man who was disliked in his town, his village.
00:54:18:21 – 00:54:49:00
Speaker 2
He just had a, you know, a sour personality or something. And the but he was a farmer, I believe. And he was there was another girl in town who was the most sought after body. Young last that, you know, ever could be that everybody was wanted to be a suitor. But he brought her eggs and it just so happened that her so her seal people a lot of times in this Scottish fruit especially, they didn’t refer to them as sulky.
00:54:49:00 – 00:55:16:08
Speaker 2
Sometimes they call them silk use, as I’ll say this and there’s a whole there’s a whole nother thing we can talk about there with the vernacular. But he, she was with her, her seal people, friends in the house, and he kind of, you know, was walked into something he wasn’t supposed to. So she gives him an ultimatum. You know, you can kind of join us or, I don’t know, something bad will happen or whatever, whatever it is.
00:55:16:08 – 00:55:26:15
Speaker 2
And so she but they he decides that he’s going to keep quiet and they give him his own cloak. So they in this story.
00:55:27:16 – 00:55:28:08
Speaker 1
Is this happening?
00:55:28:08 – 00:56:00:22
Speaker 2
Yeah. So yeah. And so that’s another interesting thing too, because most of the time, from what we hear about sources, they are always yearning for the sea. And that was one of the big things that caught my attention right away about my friend. Chris’s story back in the day was that this because his was a very, very symbolic of, you know, like the detachment from, you know, as you grow up to wanting to be your own person and get away from, you know, your parents reign and everything and stuff like that.
00:56:00:22 – 00:56:37:14
Speaker 2
So but I found that with his this mom that was trying to like kind of control and agonize the situation that her son could never you know, she doled out how much water he could have at any given time, use only to take baths or anything. So he didn’t indulge too much and, you know, become a seal or whatever it was and but his his like strong yearning, you know, to like be anywhere that he then where he was and to be doing anything else and to be free of this tyranny of this oppression, you know, was something that was just very relatable, especially as a teen.
00:56:38:01 – 00:57:09:24
Speaker 2
You know, you and yes, so I that kind of stuff. I think that thematic stuff is more of the through line, honestly, than the the surface facade of like, you know, are they are the actual SEAL shapeshifter or do they take off their skin? Do they just wear a cloak? And, you know, it’s that kind of stuff I think is a little bit less like important to like what it really all means.
00:57:09:25 – 00:57:10:20
Speaker 1
To the heart of.
00:57:11:16 – 00:57:36:27
Speaker 2
Yeah. Because like in this tale, you know the this couple now now that he was accepted like so it it also changes his you know once he gets his cloak of his own and becomes one of the people that changes his whole personality and way of interacting with the world. Now he’s like spy people, but he’s also now, you know, kind of isolated and exclusionary with these people.
00:57:37:07 – 00:57:56:21
Speaker 2
But this is another one of those, like, folk legends, you know, where people would say like, oh, this happened in this village. These were actual people that, you know, they were these stories were passed down more locally, but they were yeah, So they were on land. They every time that they would be seen was on land. But they always wear their cloaks.
00:57:57:07 – 00:58:13:23
Speaker 2
They even more than when they got married. And you know, they wore they wanted they made arrangements to have them on them when they were buried together. But they would also leave for long stretches of a time and nobody knew where they were. So, you know, you can infer that they were.
00:58:13:25 – 00:58:14:16
Speaker 1
In the ocean.
00:58:15:04 – 00:58:18:05
Speaker 2
Frolicking in the waves.
00:58:18:05 – 00:58:37:13
Speaker 1
Well, what leads to another question that my son wanted me to ask you, 6 to 7, seven. And when I read him the sulky story from the Hidden Folk, he really kept asking, how does this skin.
00:58:37:13 – 00:59:00:06
Speaker 2
Yes. And, you know, we had mentioned the romance side of this stuff. There was a couple of books by Melanie Jackson. I think these are some of the most popular when it comes to adult fiction. And they’re really not as smutty as a lot of romance novels, but, you know, they really are much more about the war and the fairy.
00:59:00:11 – 00:59:39:02
Speaker 2
There’s a lot of stuff going on in her books, but one is called the Sulky, and one is called the Sulky Bride. And in one of the in the sulky, her first Fay novel, the It’s a it’s actually and so this this is another iteration to that that is I heard a lot that I heard before like early on when I was getting into this stuff the idea the more ceremonial part of it where if a woman was she was in want or need of a mate, she wanted children, she wanted a family, but she didn’t have anybody available.
00:59:39:10 – 01:00:15:25
Speaker 2
She would go cry. Seven tears into the sea. And sometimes it had to be on a certain, you know, moon phase or ocean tide or something. Sometimes that was tied in with it, sometimes not. But this looked like Melanie Jackson. Looks like she’s read a lot of the same books because I’ve heard the story a lot. Also, I say this is like the maybe the second most common one after the stealing the skin thing is, you know, the woman would cry into the sea and then a male suitor would be obligated to come and meet with her so that that they could bear children.
01:00:15:25 – 01:00:37:21
Speaker 2
But there’s different versions of like, does she just get to keep the kids? Or he comes back to them and takes them back into the sea? Depends on the tone. Times of the stories are going for what is trying to with a moral is. But in Melanie Jackson’s book she because you know it’s a romance novel so it all has to work out perfectly.
01:00:39:05 – 01:01:09:28
Speaker 2
They there’s some struggle with an evil, thin skinned man and, you know, and some some sorcery and stuff going on. But at the end, not a spoilers, I guess, but she gets gifted a seal skin of somebody that was that had died either naturally or was was killed maybe by a fisherman or a boat propeller. This was her books are set during World War One or just after World War One.
01:01:09:28 – 01:01:30:17
Speaker 2
So they’re a little bit more modernized. And yeah, so so that I’ve seen that crop up to where it’s like, oh, you know, and you see that a lot in more modern as well. I mean, the Little Mermaid story, it’s like, I don’t want to be where I am. I want to be part of that world. This is this is how you do that in the selfie world.
01:01:30:17 – 01:01:43:13
Speaker 2
If somebody gives you a skin of the of the sulky that doesn’t need it anymore because they’re probably dead and they get there and then they get to take becoming a seal. So yeah.
01:01:43:15 – 01:01:56:21
Speaker 1
What do you feel like is the heart of these stories or I’m sure it’s different per region and per story, but do you feel like there’s a common thread or a heartbeat, if you.
01:01:56:21 – 01:02:26:14
Speaker 2
Will? I do. And that that was that was one that that I wanted. One reason I wanted to do the podcast was to revisit a lot of the stuff, but also have an excuse to buy more books and, and catalog it. And that’s, that’s, that’s my goal right now for the podcast is to go through the material that I have and anything else that comes like, like the Hidden Folk, you know, which I wasn’t aware of until yesterday when I listen to the podcast.
01:02:27:17 – 01:02:41:05
Speaker 2
So let’s see the yeah, the I’m sorry I lost my train of thought. The question was.
01:02:41:17 – 01:02:45:09
Speaker 1
Like a common thread or the heartbeat of a stories.
01:02:45:23 – 01:02:46:09
Speaker 2
Right?
01:02:48:18 – 01:03:15:10
Speaker 2
So it really, really depends on the, the culture. A lot of times if it’s more like I have a lot of these things, just like Bibles and anthologies like, like this one was one once I got in Ireland, the Irish Fairies Pocket Guide. It’s very matter of fact. It’s like this is what is obvious, you know, and, and it doesn’t really tell you a lot about just not like a lot of story there.
01:03:15:10 – 01:03:48:28
Speaker 2
But there’s still some things you can imply because you will also describe, you know, describes other kinds of creatures that are more like tricky or like sirens or changelings, you know, that have nefarious plans, self is never even in the anthology or just just like the the collected books about what I’m looking for more like the encyclopedia encyclopedia books where they’re just getting more information.
01:03:49:10 – 01:04:24:18
Speaker 2
The subtleties tend to they tend to be given an air of benign ness most of the time. You know, they’re still pretty reclusive, but they don’t mean any harm. They just want to do their thing to be left alone so that, you know, when compared to some other things like like Murrow’s Murrow’s or a similar, you know, kind of mermaid or person sulky siren offshoot, but they are usually evil or predatory.
01:04:24:27 – 01:05:20:19
Speaker 2
Yeah. Carnivorous or what have you. But when it comes to the more like folklore tales that that I’ve read and gone through, there’s like I touched on before a lot thematically, a lot of times dealing with loss and grief. And I think again, I think a lot of the stories are, we’re told to help process or alleviate some of that stuff, especially we know when it comes to that, that harsher lifestyle of like living in agriculturally or pre agriculturally on a coastal kind of lifestyle was was was very, you know, challenging and thematically too, I think there there’s a lot about loneliness and, you know, lost love or yearning for love or, you know, partnership,
01:05:20:19 – 01:05:54:27
Speaker 2
mating, a lot of stuff like that. You know, it tends to be very somber, which is ironic for me because I’d like to think I’m a pretty upbeat person. I tend to not like to wallow in the press and stuff, but there is something also very universal about it, something very compelling to me. I think in the end there is still and I would say on the thematic part, is there there’s still a lot of hope because.
01:05:54:27 – 01:06:30:13
Speaker 2
You know, it’s not there’s even when somebody is abandoned, they usually it’s because they didn’t do the right thing. They traps. Somebody is sure that they shouldn’t have. It wasn’t the right thing to do, right. You know, And usually their comeuppance for that is what was where they started with just lonely, broken hearted. But there there may spouse lover or whatever is still out there you know still and like I said you know maybe it’s a lost parent or sibling or something instead of just them being gone and deceased.
01:06:30:13 – 01:06:58:06
Speaker 2
They’re still that chance, that hope that they’re out there somewhere. Right. You know, but they’re just in a different form now. So those kind of themes to have really help inform the kind of story that I am looking to tell. I just I’m waiting for the right time and the right medium. But also I feel like, too, I’ve written drafts of this thing, which again, more as a graphic novel.
01:06:58:18 – 01:07:17:18
Speaker 2
But I watch I would probably the most visual way to tell it. I don’t think a film would ever actually come to fruition. I am open to writing a novel, but I don’t. I don’t know if that’s if that’s really the way that I would prefer to tell it just because of my film background and my more visual signs.
01:07:17:18 – 01:07:56:00
Speaker 2
But one thing that your guests, you said that that first episode I thought was was really helpful for me when it came to storytelling in general is what did she say? She said that there is something lost with the value and relatable, the universal relatability of a folk tale or folklore when we tend to adapt it for film, television, graphic novels, something more visual, because you’re putting a face on characters that may or may not be culturally specific, but that doesn’t matter.
01:07:56:00 – 01:08:25:24
Speaker 2
If you’re telling it to somebody of a different culture, they can put their own visage on and relate to that person. I never thought about it like that, honestly. I was really kind of taken aback in a good way. Like, Wow, you know, I love film, but when you visualize this kind of stuff, it does make it a little bit more specific and there’s a whole nother there’s a whole podcast threatened to go off on.
01:08:25:24 – 01:08:41:28
Speaker 2
But I just I think that’s really that’s really interesting because, you know, humans have only been documenting stuff visually for the past 150 years or so before. Well, I’m sorry, in terms of modern technology, of course, they’ve been.
01:08:42:06 – 01:08:42:29
Speaker 1
Right on doing.
01:08:42:29 – 01:09:15:21
Speaker 2
It, you know? Yeah, but but even so, you know, in terms of I think, you know, going back to like early F largely speaking or the oral tradition sitting around a campfire in a hall or even a pub or something telling stories and even more than reading them, you’re getting so much from the storyteller, but also just the the the tone and the words coming at and you processing them.
01:09:16:02 – 01:09:39:16
Speaker 2
You know, you’re you have total control over how you interpret all of that as opposed to it being more spoon fed for you, which is a bad thing. I just I just think it’s interesting and helpful for me to to look at how I want to tell my own story. But anyway, we are also I think there’s another side of things versus the thematic stuff.
01:09:39:16 – 01:10:24:29
Speaker 2
And then when it comes to fairy tales, often there’s moral morality tales. And so in a lot of the stories were tales about like, like the one that I mentioned by the cattle. And just, just in general, there was lot about like I keep referring back to that first episode is still fresh in my mind. But, you know, she was talking a lot about trolls, but everything she was talking about could apply to any of this, the storytelling, because it was there was a lot of moral there is a lot of morality and pulpy stories of self details about, you know, being kind, being honest, being, having, you know, integrity and accountability, you know, not
01:10:25:03 – 01:10:49:20
Speaker 2
expecting other people to take on your kuleana, like I said before, you know, So there’s there’s a lot of stories about, you know, if you try to take the shortcut or if you try to to trick somebody or manipulate or connive some to get something, it’s going to go horribly for or you’re going to have to make up for that in another way.
01:10:50:00 – 01:11:23:01
Speaker 2
You see those kind of morality messages coming through really strongly, too. And that’s another reason, too, that I don’t find this stuff nihilistic or depressing, even though there is a lot of, you know, darkness as dark regimes and there’s a lot of somber ness to the content, is that it does tend to, you know, give you something productive or constructive to take away from it.
01:11:23:24 – 01:11:42:26
Speaker 2
It’s yeah, it’s not it’s not all just life sucks and then you die. You know, there’s there’s you could have made better choices and maybe if you’re you know, you can learn from the bad choices that these people made. And then again on the flip side there are so many stories, especially I think, when it comes to telling them the children.
01:11:43:09 – 01:12:10:16
Speaker 2
There’s this wonderful book, if I can grab it here, this one, this is called Sulky. This this is a I would even call it like a graphic novel or anything. It’s just art. There’s no words, there’s no text. But it’s a beautiful visual telling about just like a chance encounter of somebody falling off of a boat and being saved by a seal.
01:12:11:26 – 01:12:36:27
Speaker 2
But there’s there’s so much like expressive emotive moments in it and it flows well, interestingly. But there’s there’s kind of a sadness, a bittersweet. A lot of these stories are very bittersweet where, you know, you wish that they could reconcile or spend the rest of their time together. But because there are two different worlds, but at least they had that moment, they had that connection.
01:12:37:06 – 01:13:09:26
Speaker 2
There’s this other book, this one, there’s like I said, there’s a lot of sulky girls books called The Sulky Girl or Sulky Girl. But oh, yeah, this this one is wonderful, too. And for anybody that was looking to grow their face selection, this one has a I’m just the one. Sorry. Yes. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah. This is the one that came with a paper doll, cutouts and stuff.
01:13:09:26 – 01:13:37:23
Speaker 2
So, like, I have a little a little sulky doll and, you know, you can put, like, dresses on on the school girl and stuff, but it’s, it’s a wonderful little book, but it’s about a boy who’s kind of, like lonely and isolated in his little fishing village. And he it’s a fun little spin on adult version that that’s more sad and and and somber because, you know, he does take her skin, but he just wants to play with her.
01:13:37:23 – 01:13:58:08
Speaker 2
He’s a kid, know, and he just wants a playmate. And she’s lonely, too, because she spends all of her time, mostly by herself or with her mother. So she gets the chance to come ashore and learn about the human ways he, learns about the ways, and they share like a week together. And then she graciously gives her back her saying and her her a sealskin.
01:13:58:08 – 01:14:20:06
Speaker 2
And, you know, but they still they still interact after that. So there’s a lot of positivity and fun and folly in these stories, too. A lot of a lot of variance is really what it is. There’s there’s no one sulky tale and that’s one thing that I find. Like I said, I don’t want to, like, criticize anybody. It just it is what it is.
01:14:20:06 – 01:14:48:10
Speaker 2
But there is a lot more to this than I think is often commonly known or expressed and that’s that’s true with I think, you know, most things, as you say, things will bubble to the surface and mainstream pop culture or or whatever it is or Disney makes a an adaptation of it and I think it’s a it’s a great entry point and gateway.
01:14:48:10 – 01:15:02:16
Speaker 2
But I always urge people to look deeper if they’re interested in any of these things, because there is there’s always so much more to glean from it and so much more to enjoy from it than just what’s been, you know, kind of packaged and sold.
01:15:02:26 – 01:15:13:04
Speaker 1
Exactly. Well, thanks so much. I think we’re going to have to wrap it up, but I really appreciate you coming on. Is there anything else you want to mention before we.
01:15:16:15 – 01:15:31:24
Speaker 2
Maybe I just really appreciate it. I’m I’m really curious. Are you ever going to do I haven’t gotten through all of your episodes yet, but I would love to know your story and what brought you here, because it sounds like we’re on a similar kind of path of just loving this.
01:15:32:18 – 01:15:33:00
Speaker 1
Yes.
01:15:33:07 – 01:15:38:17
Speaker 2
Part of of human and trying to understand it better. And so I’m.
01:15:38:17 – 01:16:05:25
Speaker 1
Pretty much I’m very similar to you. And then I am at the beginning of my journey. I kind of started this journey because I am I’m a writer and I enjoy writing little stories for my kids. And I decided that I wanted to write a folklore series that was for little children. And it’s exploring different cultures and different folklore and each place that they visit.
01:16:05:25 – 01:16:40:04
Speaker 1
So it’s kind of a traveling series for kids anyways. And so I wanted to start doing research into folklore, and I thought it would be a more awesome experience to start a podcast to really connect with the people who really understand folklore the best. And so that’s how I kind of got into this journey. So it’s a little hard to fully endorse.
01:16:41:05 – 01:17:09:22
Speaker 2
Yeah, I can totally relate. I agree. I think some sometimes it’s hard to see it in such an oversaturated market and place of content, you know, on the internet. It’s like every everybody has a podcast. But also, you know, as a teacher, I try to remind students to when they say, like, I don’t I don’t I don’t know how to be creative with this tool that you gave me.
01:17:09:22 – 01:17:45:09
Speaker 2
I’m a technology teacher and I just like, well, what’s what’s your story? What’s your perspective? We just had an author visit our school recently. Jason Reynolds is a young adult poet and an author. He did like a Miles Morales book for Marvel, but he’s done a lot of personal stuff. But that was his whole kind of thesis. And take away this great talk about his background and what got him to be now an internationally recognized, national bestselling author was like, I just told my story, you know, and it’s mine.
01:17:45:17 – 01:18:18:09
Speaker 2
And maybe sounds similar to other people’s, you know, it may not be relatable, certain people, but it’s it’s my story and everybody has one. And the most important thing that you could ever offer is your story to other people. And I think that that’s like that’s a wonderful takeaway just from from storytelling in general. You seem frivolous sometimes with how many other things are going on in life and how much noise there is on the Internet.
01:18:18:09 – 01:18:30:18
Speaker 2
But like you said, connecting, connecting with people with similar interests and hobbies, but also just telling our own stories. I think it’s how we do that.
01:18:31:00 – 01:18:37:24
Speaker 1
Yeah, stories are how we connect to one another and how we connect to humanity, and I think it’s storytelling is so important.
01:18:39:25 – 01:18:40:09
Speaker 2
The grid.
01:18:41:12 – 01:18:45:03
Speaker 1
Well, awesome. Thanks so much for coming on, Dan and thank you.
01:18:45:03 – 01:18:45:19
Speaker 2
Thanks for having.
01:18:45:19 – 01:19:11:02
Speaker 1
Me. Nice for us on this breathing underwater selfie episode today. All links that we talked about today will be on our website. WW dot Fabric of folklore dot com and we definitely appreciate you being here and listening and make sure that you’re subscribing to either our YouTube channel or if you’re listening on a podcasting streaming streaming platform subscribe.
01:19:11:02 – 01:19:31:14
Speaker 1
They’re like, comment, We want to hear from you. We want to hear what you think. We have questions for Dan or for me. Let us know. We want to hear from you. We also have a Facebook page, a Facebook community page where you can ask those questions as well and we can start conversations there. So that’s that’s bear fruit for y’all.
01:19:31:14 – 01:20:07:22
Speaker 1
So we can really gauge where you’re wanting this podcast to because we want to make this podcast as interesting as possible for, for the listeners. And the best thing that you can do besides commenting and communicating via the different socials is sharing this with your friends. So if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure that you text the people that you share your world score with every single day and tell them about your awesome podcast that you’re listening to.
01:20:09:13 – 01:20:43:01
Speaker 1
And so thank you for joining us. Unraveling the Mysteries of Folklore. And until next time, keep the pulse on.