The selkie wife story is told on almost every island of Orkney, and each place has its own twist. In the Deerness version the hiding place is a sea kist, the seaman's chest, with the key kept out of the wife's reach.
Other versions are recorded from North Ronaldsay, and there is a tale of a fisherman Alick who gained a wife by stealing the skin of a selky, said to have been told by a Stromness skipper called John Heddle.
The details here come from a secondary summary rather than a primary text, so I have marked the record as a single report.
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