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Marine Melodies: Traditional Scottish And Irish Mermaid And Selkie Songs As Performed By Top Female Vocalists In Contemporary Celtic Music, Olivia H. Phillips
Marine Melodies: Traditional Scottish And Irish Mermaid And Selkie Songs As Performed By Top Female Vocalists In Contemporary Celtic Music, Olivia H. Phillips
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Mermaids and human-seal hybrids, called selkies, are a vibrant part of Celtic folklore, including ballad and song traditions. Though some of these songs have been studied in-depth, there is a lack of research comparing them to each other or to their contemporary renditions. This research compares traditional melodies and texts of the songs “The Mermaid,” “The Grey Selchie of Sule Skerry,” and “Hó i Hó i” to contemporary recordings by top female vocalists in Scottish and Irish music.
The texts and melodies I have identified as “source” material are those most thoroughly examined by early ballad and folklore scholars. The …