Seal Lullaby

“Seal Lullaby” introduces the tale “The White Seal,” one of the few Jungle Book stories set in a location other than India. An animal fable, “The White Seal” follows a young seal named Kotick who attempts to save the other seals from human predators who kill the young males in an annual hunt. The seal departs on a quest to find a remote island where humans never go and where seals can live in safety. But Kotick finds it difficult to persuade his fellow seals to change their habits, even in order to protect themselves.

Rudyard Kipling’s stories from the Jungle Book collections examine human traits and behavior through anthropomorphic narratives. In these stories, animal heroes, like Kotick, and animal villains represent virtues and shortfalls of character, but which sustain a sense of the value and divinity present in all forms of life. Kipling’s early life and lifelong connection to Indian culture would have made him familiar with Jataka fables, centuries-old stories in which the Buddha becomes incarnate in various human and animal forms.

“Seal Lullaby” appears at the beginning of the story, and the writer of the story does not attribute the poem to any seal in particular. Near the start of the story, Kotick’s mother Matkah sings him a different song, one with instructions not to swim before six weeks old in order to avoid “summer gales and killer whales” (“The White Seal”). Through Matkah, Kipling establishes song as a means of transmitting practical and cultural truths in the seal community, just as it serves human communities.

The lullaby sets the context for the seals’ world, one where the sea offers safety and solace. The song also refers to some of the seals’ greatest fears, though the lyrics leave out the biggest danger that appears to the seals in the story: the human hunters. This lullaby works for the seal mother the same way it would for a human mother: in the darkness of night, the words protect against child-sized fears.

A successful lullaby should enact a rocking motion; anapests in catalectic tetrameter provide a distinctive sway in “Seal Lullaby.” Internal rhyme as well as end rhyme solidifies the regular rhythm of the lines, which in turn mirrors the sea’s motion and the curling waves. The density of liquid “l” sounds and whispering “s” sounds also emphasize the steady cadence as they lull the child with muted and hushed sounds.

The lyrics begin with a gentle admonition to the young seal, a “hush” (Line 1), just as many human lullabies seek to prepare a child for sleep. Mothers and other caretakers sing these songs at a quiet time of day, when the child must stop speaking, or crying, in order to be lulled to sleep. The surroundings of a lullaby evoke safety and comfort, and, in this song, the waters turn from “green” (Line 2) to “black” (Line 2) in the night’s darkness. In the seal mother’s narrative, this change signals the time for sleep and rest, not any cause for fear or uncertainty, reminding the reader and the baby seal that seals find their comfort in places unsuitable for humans, resting in the rolling sea and sleeping under the night sky.

The moon takes on human characteristics, where it “looks downward to find” (Line 3) mother and child as a protective presence. The seals inhabit a natural terrain that human hunters might choose to avoid; they find protection as they “rest in the hollows” (Line 4) among the “combers” (Line 3), the curl-shaped waves that break around them but cause no harm. The tall “billow” (Line 5) waves meet one another and create the protective spaces that become the seals’ “pillow” (Line 5). The environment suits and nurtures the seals, providing safety from hunters and a sense of continuity.

While the sea poses no immediate threat to the seals, the mother’s song mentions real fears the baby seal might have. Instead of the nightmares a human child might face, the baby seal could be disturbed by a storm that could turn the friendly sea more adversarial. But the mother affectionately promises her “flipperling” (Line 6) protection from storms in line 7, as well as from sharks, the seals’ natural predators. Both the mother’s voice in the song, with its rhythm, alliterative patterns, and rhyme, and the motion of the sea itself, urge the seal child to a peaceful sleep.

Kipling portrays the seals as having a distinct culture and a kind of regional dialect. In “Seal Lullaby,” the diction reveals a Scottish dialect, especially in phrases like “weary wee flipperling” in line 6. The poem’s opening line echoes Scottish author Sir Walter Scott’s “Lullaby for an Infant Chief,” which begins “Hush thee my babie, thy sire was a knight…” Scott’s poem also assures the sleeping baby against the violence of opponents, hinting that such conflict will be faced later. “Flipperling” appears to be a word of Kipling’s own coinage, but it calls to mind Celtic selkie myths in which seals can adopt human form under certain conditions. This nuance within the poem connects the seal culture even more directly with humanity, a useful connotation as Kipling goes on to depict human conflict within community by using the seal characters of “The White Seal.” The story becomes an allegory with multiple potential interpretations, based on its historical context and on the author’s stated political and cultural beliefs.