h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A lonely man is fishing at night and spots a group of naked women dancing and laughing. Nearby is a pile of sealskins. The man creeps close and hides one of the skins.

One by one the women put on the sealskins and returned to the sea, except for one, who looked confused. The man steps forward and asks the woman to be his wife and promises to return the skin to her in seven years.

They had a boy child. The seal woman told him stories of the sea.

In time, the woman began to look ill and thin. Her skin dried and began to flake and her hair began to fall out. Her eyesight began to fail.

After seven summers the woman asked for the return of her skin, but the man refused, saying that she would leave him if he did.

The boy dreamed that he heard someone calling his name. He went to the shore and saw a bull seal. He found a bundle with his mother's smell. He took it to his mother and she unwrapped the sealskin and put it on. She breathed into the boy's mouth.

She swam away, taking the boy with her. She took the boy to her kinfolk and in a few days, her skin became soft, her eyesight was restored and her hair began to grow back. The took the child back to the land as it was not yet time for him to return to the sea.

The moral of the story is that the woman was naive and innocent and became imprisoned by the man who would not let her be herself and so she lives a restricted life. She longs to be free and becomes ill. The child she represents the spirit growing stronger and has the ability to move between the two worlds.

I suppose anyone who has been in a restrictive marriage can identify with this story.