folklorist Otto Andersson, who also collected a traditional ballad tune for it. This version contains an exchange in which the seal-groom's marriage proposal is declined by the Norwegian nurse. The selkie makes the same fateful prediction as in the Shetland version, that the woman will marry a gunner, who will shoot both the selkie and their son. It further supplies the grim conclusion that the gunner brings back a gold chain which she recognizes as the one that was given to her son to wear. Lady Odivere A cognate to the "Grey Selkie of Suleskerry" includes "The Play of Lady Odivere" ("The Play of de Lathie Odivere"). This piece is a dramatic ballad in style, over 90 stanzas long. 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. 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. Ballad tunes The original tune was preserved by Andersson, who heard it sung by John Sinclair on the island of Flotta, Orkney. Andersson said, "I had no idea at the time that I was the first person to write down the tune. The pure pentatonic form of it and the beautiful melodic line showed me that it was a very ancient melody that I had set on paper". The best known tune today is non-traditional, having been written by Jim Waters in 1954. Child was interested only in the texts of the ballads he collected, and Jim explains that the tune was "just the best I could do as a way to get a fine ballad sung". 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). Jim Butler added the song to his repertoire, according to his notes, in October 1954, on a page labelled "MITOC Supp.", being the MIT Outing Club addition to his typewritten Child Ballads. Butler taught the song to several people, including Bonnie Dobson. This is the tune that Joan Baez popularized as "Silkie" in the early 1960s. Although Jean Redpath disparaged