What if the seal looking back at you from the water isn't simply a seal?

In Episode 21 — The Selkie: Between the Land and the Sea, Jan travels north to Orkney and down to the shore for a traditional story that belongs to the sea.

A man discovers Selkie women dancing on a beach after shedding their seal skins. He steals one of the skins, leaving its owner unable to return to the water. She remains on land, becomes his wife and has children — but she never forgets the sea. Years later, when her hidden skin is discovered, she finally has a way home.

There isn't only one Selkie story. These tales have been told and retold in different places for generations, with versions of Selkie traditions found beyond Orkney, elsewhere in Scotland and in related stories in Ireland.

Living close to the shore in Orkney, Jan reflects on the landscape in which stories like these have travelled: seals watching from the water, creatures disappearing back beneath the waves and thick seaweed lying along the coastline. She doesn't claim this explains how the Selkie tradition began — we don't know — but it's easy to understand how landscape, animals and imagination might make somebody wonder: what if?

Jan also considers echoes she hears in other stories about land, sea and the human imagination, while being careful not to equate Selkies with The Little Mermaid or the Sirens of The Odyssey.

And underneath it all is a question she keeps returning to:

What did the Selkie want?

Different listeners may hear love, belonging, homesickness, possession or freedom. Others may simply hear a wonderful story about people who become seals.

Perhaps that's part of the reason these stories continue to travel.

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Scottish writer and storyteller Kenny Boyle is someone Jan thoroughly enjoys listening to. His YouTube channel offers another doorway into Scottish folklore and storytelling:

https://www.youtube.com/@KennyBoyleOfficial

Across Lake Rotorua came music.

Hinemoa lived at Ōwhata on the eastern shore. Across the water, on Mokoia Island, lived Tūtānekai. They loved one another, but Hinemoa's family did not consider Tūtānekai a suitable match.

They were so determined to prevent Hinemoa crossing the lake that they removed the hoe, the paddles, from the waka.

Hinemoa found another way.

In Episode 20 — Hinemoa and Tūtānekai: The Story That Crossed the Water, Jan tells the story of Hinemoa tying together six empty gourds to help keep herself afloat before swimming through the darkness towards Mokoia Island and the sound of Tūtānekai's music.

But the story doesn't end at the shores of Lake Rotorua.

Jan remembers how it travelled into her own family. Her brother Richard, a strong swimmer who knew what Hinemoa had done, decided as a teenager to swim Lake Rotorua himself. Years later, the family is still telling that story.

Then there's cousin Vinnie — talented musician, definitely not a gangster — who encountered the story during a family trip to Rotorua, found a nose flute and decided he was Tūtānekai.

Jan also carefully distinguishes that family memory from the tradition surrounding Tūtānekai. The instrument associated with him is a Māori flute, and one treasured kōauau connected with Tūtānekai is Te Murirangaranga. Accounts differ in some details about the flute and even who produced the music Hinemoa heard.

It's a story about Hinemoa and Tūtānekai — but also about what can happen when stories are told again and again, travelling through generations and sometimes becoming woven into our own family memories.

In the beginning, there was Te Kore — the void. Then Te Pō — the darkness. And from that darkness came Ranginui, Sky Father, and Papatūānuku, Mother Earth.

In Earth Mother and Sky Father: The World of Light — Papatūānuku and Ranginui: Te Ao Mārama, Jan tells a Māori creation story she has known for many years.

Ranginui and Papatūānuku are locked together in a close embrace, with their children living in darkness between them. After others try unsuccessfully to separate them, Tāne, god of the forests and trees, pushes Sky Father upwards from Mother Earth and creates the space for Te Ao Mārama — the world of light.

Jan reflects on what she hears in the story now: not only earth, sky and the forests of Aotearoa, but a family facing different opinions, a difficult decision and its consequences. The children gain light, space and a world in which to grow, while their parents lose one another.

She also remembers standing beneath Tāne Mahuta, the great kauri tree in Waipoua Forest, in the early 1980s — an experience whose majesty and silent power has stayed with her.

The episode considers the enormous question human beings across cultures have explored in different ways: how did all this begin? Jan also distinguishes these creation stories from the scientific account of the Big Bang while reflecting on the curiosity behind questions about beginnings.

And she returns to something very simple: the way an old story can make us look again at a tree, the earth beneath our feet and the sky above us.

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Te Ao Māori — New Zealand Ministry for the Environment
Explore one telling of the Māori creation story and discover more about Ranginui, Papatūānuku and their children:
https://environment.govt.nz/te-ao-maori/te-timatanga-o-te-ao-maori/

The OER Project — Origin Stories
Explore origin stories from different cultures around the world:
https://www.oerproject.com/topics/origin-stories?WT.mc_id=00_00_2026_CONV_CLM_TOP_ROWT2_CK-topics_AK-originstories_OER-SEM_&WT.tsrc=OERSEM&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23936471894&gbraid=0AAAAACd_5E3n0l1D5eMQafRoxtb_fmEEh&gclid=Cj0KCQjw4orUBhCjARIsAIbF3qzIExZY4BNBnBzHHfbr_n16jF7OiNrRIH_IpTC_ORCqx9tVXU28eJwaAtbAEALw_wcB