People of the Sea: Journey in Search of the Seal Legend - Softcover

David Thomson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0586083413 ISBN 13: 9780586083413

Publisher: Paladin, 1980

Synopsis

David Thomson, raised among Scottish fishermen and storytellers, was obsessed from childhood by the Celtic seal legend - the body of tales and songs about the "selchie, " or gray Atlantic seal.
In the early 1950s he took a journey to seek the legend out, in the Hebrides, on the east coast of Scotland, on the west coast of Ireland, in the Shetlands and the Orkney Islands - places where magic co-exists with reality and where pe-Christian traditions and beliefs somehow endure.
He gives us here the fruit of his search as he found it - in the pub, on the beach, at a country dance - and he tells us something of the men, women, and children from whom he heard the stories. He also tells of his own encounters with seals, and of the dreamlike hold that these have had on him. The result is, in the words of his friend Seamus Heaney, a poetic achievement - a work of "intuitive understanding, perfect grace, and perfect pitch."

About this title

Review:

"Readers will be carried away on successive waves of pleasure . . . these stories have an irresistible holistic beauty" (Seamus Heaney)

"A splendid resurrection of a life that has almost vanished" (Daily Telegraph)

"I know of few books which so ably open a window on the Gaelic scene today or which so faithfully reflect the mind, vigour and courtesy of its people . . . Pounds on the imagination like surf on a reef" (The Observer)

Book Description:

With an introduction by Seamus Heaney

About this edition

• Publisher: Paladin
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0586083413
• ISBN 13: 9780586083413
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224