"An evil spirit your beauty haunts me still.
Wherewith, alas! I have been long possessed."
Michael Drayton

Given the selkie-men's insatiable appetite for mortal women, children said to the result of a union between mortal and selkie were common in Orcadian folk-tales. The story of the Goodman o' Wastness and his seven selkie children is a typical example of this genre.

However, the phenomenon was not simply restricted to fireside yarns and, until fairly recently, some Orcadian families still claimed descent from the selkie-folk.

One allegedly true story, documented by the 19th century Orkney folklorist, Walter Traill Dennison, centres around one family from the North Isles of Orkney whose children were all born with "selkiepaws" — webbed feet and fingers.

At each birth, the midwife desperately clipped away these webs, but to no avail. The web always grew back: