Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997)
Selkies
Tagged: Theme.
Legendary seal-people of Scottish Folktale, also called silkies or the roane (Gaelic, "seal"). All large species of seal are supposedly selkies, capable of Shapeshifting to their true forms as Fairies or humans, often by casting off their seal-skins (see also Skinned); they may interbreed with humans, producing chimerical offspring with webbed hands and feet. Examples of such human/seal shapeshifters appear in Larry Niven's "The Lion in His Attic" (1982), whose "lion" is a sealion, Susan Cooper's Seaward (1983) and Gordon R Dickson's The Dragon Knight (1990). [DRL]