F. Marian MacNeil describes the sark sleeve rite. A girl dipped her left shirt sleeve in a stream at the meeting of three lairds' lands, or at a ford where the dead and living cross, then dried it by the fire in her bedroom and stayed awake until midnight. The apparition of the future spouse would come in and turn the sleeve.
Ernest Marwick documented winnowing with an empty sieve and a knife in a dark barn, or spanning corn-ricks in the stackyard to embrace a future partner. In the tale told by John Firth, a servant who winnowed saw the master come in. The mistress, who had expected another man as husband, said "Be guid tae me bairns". The mistress died and the servant became stepmother to the children.
Orkney girls also pulled a kail-runt by going backwards into the kail-yard and pulling the first stalk their heel struck, and the look and the taste of the stalk told the character of the husband.
These are customs, with the story as one told example. They are recorded in a secondary article, quoting MacNeil, Marwick and Firth.
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