Here’s a truly fabulous song choice from urban fantasy author Nicole Peeler, whose debut novel Tempest Rising is a witty and sensual thriller about a selkie in New England. Nicole is a Professor in her spare time (!), but wears her learning lightly. I love selkies, and have spent a lot of time in Scotland where they mostly live. And I always thought that selkies would kick the asses of vampires and werewolves; and so it proves.
Nicole Peeler writes:
Hello! Nicole Peeler, here. For those (ten) of you who know me, you know that I write for Orbit books, much like Philip. Only I write the dreaded . . . urban fantasy! Now, I am well aware that there is an element of more hard core sci-fi/fantasy readers who think urban fantasy consists of a bunch of women dressed like leather daddies running around with swords, alternately decapitating monsters and bonking vampires.
And, admittedly, this description is often accurate.
That said, I write a slightly different kind of urban fantasy. I write UF that’s based on my love of mythology, and one of my all-time favorite myths is that of the selkie. The very first time I read a selkie myth–I think I was twelve–I was transfixed. And not only with the beautiful selkie maiden, but especially with the idea of the half human children she inevitably leaves behind after finding her seal skin and returning to the sea.
Ultimately, these selkie legends are very much ones of victimization. The selkie maid is victimized when her skin is stolen; the human husband is victimized when his wife leaves him (and sometimes, if rarely, he doesn’t understand why because he never understood the import of the skin he’d found); and the children are victimized by losing their mother.
Which leads me to Feist, and her song, “Sea Lion Woman.” In many ways, this song is the delicious, grrrrl power, feminist answer to the selkie myth. For unlike her selkie cousin, the seal woman, Feist’s “Sea Lion Woman” is anything but a victim. Just drinking a cup of tea, she makes a rooster crow!
And you know what else they call a rooster. . .
I imagine Feist’s sea lion woman as the Black Widow version of my beloved selkie myth. The seal woman takes off her skin, and some man comes and steals it. The sea lion woman, however, takes off her skin, dons some pretty dresses and she does the calling, hoping the men who answer know what to do. And the ones who don’t? They get a knife in the back.
Those sea lion women are fierce, yo.
Sea lion woman
She drink coffee
Sea lion woman
She drink tea
And a rooster crows
Sea lion woman
She drink coffee
She drink tea
And a rooster crows
Sea lion woman
Dressed in red
Smile at the man
When you wake up in his bed
Sea lion woman
Dressed in black
Wink at the man
Then stab him in his back
Sea lion woman
She drink coffee
She drink tea
And a rooster crows
Sea lion woman
Dressed in white
Marry the man
And you’ll spend a long sweet life
Sea lion woman
Dressed in green
Silver lining and golden seams
Sea lion woman
Dressed in blue
Call on the man
And hope he knows what he can do
Sea lion…
Sea lion woman
She drink coffee
She drink tea
And a rooster crows
Sea lion woman
She drink coffee
She drink tea
And a rooster crows
Sea lion woman
Dressed in the blue
Call on the man
And hope he knows what he can do
Sea lion woman
Dressed in red
Smile at the man
When you wake up in his bed
Sea lion woman….
Keyword-Matched Posts:
Haven't found any related posts just yet... still searching...
Fantastic blog and song to wake up to. I am going to be humming that song and thinking about selkies (and thinking that it’s time I brushed up on my genre – love the sound of your work but must say I also liked the sound of plain old urban fantasy! sounds cool to me but then I have a terrible soft spot for Suzie Quatro and Joan Jet and from your description they probably live in urban fantasy land don’t they??!) all morning. I may also now have to buy one of those pedals that she has – that captures her vocals and puts it into loops – LOVING that. Oooh the possibilities…