The People of the Sea

This is a record of a journey in search of the man-seal legends of the Celts. David Thomson's travels in the Gaelic world of the Hebrides and the West coast of Ireland brought him into contact with a people whose association wth the sea and its fertile lore runs deep. These simple people were gifted with the most ancient storytelling arts. They told of men rescued by seals in stormy seas, of babies suckled by seal-mothers, and of men who took seal-women for wives - stories centuries old, handed down to them by their forefathers. From an early age, David Thomson was fascinated by the mysterious interaction between man and the sea. In the Selkie legends, he found the perfect expression of the Celtic world where truth and fiction intertwine. In his journey through Scotland and Ireland, he found the world of man and the world of the seals to be inseparable. This book reconstructs an integrated vioew of man and nature as an interdependent whole. David Thomson won the McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year in the 1987 and the NCR Book Award for non-fiction in 1988.