The Merrow & Selkies Poster Print

A beautiful selection of poster prints.

A digital print on poster paper, a gorgeous gift idea. 

Complete your print with a frame.

Print of the hand drawn artwork by Jerusha Marley.

Details & Inspiration:

The Selkie Wife
Along the far western coast, where the land ends in stone and the sea is never silent, there lived beings who belonged to both worlds. They were called selkies.
In the ocean, selkies lived as seals, sleek and watchful beneath the waves. But on certain nights, when the moon was full and the tide lay low against the shore, they came onto land. There, they shed their seal coats and walked as human men and women until dawn returned them to the sea.
One night, a fisherman walking alone along the shore saw strange figures dancing upon the rocks. He hid among the stones and watched as seals slipped from their skins and became people, laughing and moving lightly under the moon.
As the night faded and the selkies hurried back to the water, the fisherman noticed one seal coat left behind, folded carefully near the rocks. Without fully understanding why, he took it and hid it away.
The next evening, he returned to the shore. A woman stood there alone, searching desperately among the stones. When she saw him, she knew at once what had been taken. Without her seal coat, she could not return to the sea.
The fisherman offered her shelter and food. With nowhere else to go, she followed him.
In time, she became his wife.
She was kind and gentle, and she cared well for their home and their children. Yet there was always sadness in her eyes. Often she would walk to the edge of the shore and stare across the water, listening to the waves as though they were calling her name. On stormy nights, she sang songs no human had ever heard before—songs filled with longing and grief.
Years passed, and the fisherman grew used to his life. But the selkie woman never forgot who she truly was.
One day, their youngest child was playing in the shed when he discovered a bundle hidden high upon a beam. He brought it to his mother. The moment she saw it, her hands began to tremble.
It was her seal coat.
Tears filled her eyes as she held it close, for she knew at last she could return home. She kissed her children and held them tightly, then went to the shore without looking back.
When she slipped the seal coat over her shoulders, her body changed, and once more she became a seal. Before entering the sea, she turned and looked at the land she had lived upon, at the life she had been forced to leave behind.
Then she disappeared beneath the waves.
The fisherman would sometimes see a seal watching him from the water, close to shore. It never returned to land, but it lingered near his boat, as though remembering.
And so it is said that selkies still swim the cold seas, guarding their seal coats carefully—for though a selkie may be held for a time, it can never truly belong to the land.