Bluiríní Béaloidis is a podcast from the National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin. It explores the rich landscape of Irish and European folk traditions. Each episode journeys through diverse cultural narratives, revealing how understanding our traditional heritage can illuminate our present and guide our future. By uncovering the stories, beliefs, and practices embedded in folklore, the podcast invites listeners to discover the depth and complexity of our shared cultural inheritance.

Séala
This episode of Blúiríní Béaloidis explores how seals have inspired a rich tradition of Irish coastal folklore that blurs boundaries between natural and supernatural realms. Tracing diverse beliefs about these creatures—variously seen as enchanted beings, fallen angels, or reincarnated fishermen—host Jonny Dillon and guest Ailbe van der Heide reveal how these traditions functioned as sophisticated frameworks for understanding the relationship between human communities and their natural environment.

The association of specific Irish families (Coneelys, O'Kanes, Dowds, O'Sheas, Gallaghers) with seal ancestry through mythological marriages between mortals and seal-people demonstrates how folklore connected human lineages to the natural world. These narratives of interspecies relationships reflect a worldview that understood humans as participants in, rather than separate from, natural systems. The recurring motif of mortal men discovering and marrying seal-women, only to lose them when they reclaim their magical cloaks, reflects universal patterns of temporary transcendence and inevitable separation found in folklore worldwide.

Seals' liminal characteristics—their ability to inhabit both land and sea, their seemingly human-like expressions, their haunting vocalisations—made them ideal vehicles for exploring the boundaries between known and unknown realms. As creatures existing at the interface between worlds, they provided coastal communities with frameworks for conceptualising their own relationship to the mysterious and sometimes dangerous marine environment upon which their livelihoods depended.

The podcast's journey around Ireland's coasts and islands to explore these stories demonstrates how geographical features themselves became repositories of cultural memory through associated narratives. By examining traditions that "blur the boundaries between nature and culture, appearance and reality," this episode illuminates how folkloric traditions provided coastal communities with sophisticated ecological knowledge embedded within mythological frameworks. These traditions represent not primitive misunderstandings but complex cultural adaptations that helped human communities navigate their relationship with a challenging and mysterious natural environment.