13th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research

Presentation Abstracts

McCALLUM, Robyn

Adapting the Selkie Story in Literature and Film

Folk narratives and motifs, such as the Selkie story and the feral child motif (the child raised by animals), provide a rich source for literary and film texts which in the process of adapting such stories also reshape and reinterpret their significance. Meanings are modified through the changing cultural and ideological context and as an effect of the technical constraints of literary and film media. This paper explores the interpretation and reinterpretation of diverse folk motifs in a novel and subsequent film adaptation. Rosalie Fry’s novel-length retelling of the Selkie story, Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry (1959), interweaves that story with other diverse folktale motifs, such as the feral child, the test (linked here with a rite of passage), the mysterious journey, the return home, alongside folktale characters, and folk beliefs, skills and traditions, so as to explore complex relationships between a sense of place and identity. A recent film adaptation of the novel, The Secret of Roan Inish, modifies the location of the story, setting it now in Ireland instead of Scotland, and also reshapes those traditional folk motifs through its utilisation of strategies specific to film media, as well as through its engagement with contemporary culture and ideology.