"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" is a short version from Shetland published in the 1850s and later listed as Child ballad number 113.

"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" was collected from a lady from Snarra Voe, Shetland, and 7 verses from its transcription were published by Capt.

[4] There are Orkney versions which place the heroine's setting in Scandinavia,[5] opening with the line: "In Norway land there lived a maid".

[6] The same 14-stanza version with some spelling differences, entitled "The Grey Selchie of Sule Skerry" was printed in the 11 January 1934 issue of The Orcadian newspaper.

[10] And it may be in large part a piece of contrived fiction by Walter Traill Dennison, mish-mashed into a kernel of a traditional ballad, in the estimation of modern folklorist Alan Bruford.

[11] Here, the Lady Odivere is in peril of being burnt at the stake for adultery by her husband, when she is rescued by San Imravoe, a selchie who is a jarl of high degree in his realm.

[citation needed] Over the next two years, he introduced the ballad to the Boston area at a time when "hootenannies" filled the Great Court of MIT on a weekly basis (before recorded folk songs were widely available).

"This has to be one of the most flattering things that has ever happened to me",[citation needed] added Waters, who eventually copyrighted his version and assigned it to Folk Legacy Records.

American folksinger Pete Seeger set the poem I Come and Stand at Every Door by Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet to Waters's tune for "The Great Silkie" in the early 1950s.