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Overview

Alice L. Dundas’s A Legend of Boray Island imagines people drowned while following Odin as condemned to wander as sea-beasts until Judgment Day. On Midsummer Eve they return to Boray, leave their seal skins on the shore and recover their former human forms for a night of revelry. Eric, a fisherman driven ashore by a storm, hides one of the skins. At midnight the others depart, but its owner cannot find her covering. He offers his mantle, promises baptism and marriage, and takes her home. She receives the name Margaret, with the poem comparing her to a pearl brought from the sea.

After three years of happy marriage, Margaret grows weak and asks to be taken back to Boray on Midsummer Eve. Her concern is whether baptism has freed her from the fate assigned to Odin’s drowned followers. Eric leaves her holding a cross while he waits in prayer elsewhere on the island. The returning company tries to draw her back with both affection and threats. After the midnight bells, he finds her dead with the cross clasped in her hands. The poem presents her death as a successful passage to blessedness. It does not end with the recovered skin and departure to a seal husband familiar from other seal-person stories. Its Christian redemption and judgement framework belongs to this named author’s verse, rather than a universal explanation of selkies.

Removable seal skinThree-year human marriageMidsummer returnChristian redemption ending
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Origins & earliest records

The Orkney Book: Readings for Young Orcadians, edited by John Gunn (Thomas Nelson & Sons; preface Edinburgh, 1909), pp. 403–407. Contributor distinguished from anthology editor.

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Records & interpretation

The selected complete contribution supplies the narrative and ending. It is a historical literary or collected account, not independent confirmation of the supernatural event.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

  1. 01

    The Orkney Book, A Legend of Boray Island

    Alice L. Dundas, identified as the Honourable Mrs. John Dundas; anthology edited by John Gunn · 1909 selected anthology

    pp. 403–407; complete contribution. Earlier separate publication not independently collated.

Family & connections

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References

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  1. Primary textThe Orkney Book, A Legend of Boray IslandResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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