The Shetlanders believe
in two kinds of trows, as they call the Scandinavian trolls, those of the
land and those of the sea. The former, whom, like the Scots, they also term
the guid folk and guid neighbours, they conceive to inhabit the interior of
green hills. Saining (blessing oneself) is the grand protection against them;
a Shetlander always sains himself when passing by their hills. They have all
the picking and stealing propensities of the Scandinavian trolls. Lying-in
women and "unchristened bairns" they regard as lawful prize. The former they
employ as wet nurses, the latter they of course rear up as their own. Nothing
will induce parents to show any attention to a child that they suspect of
being a changeling. But there are persons who undertake to enter the hills
and regain the lost child. A tailor, not long since, related the following
story. He was employed to work at a farm house where there was a child that
was an idiot, and who was supposed to have been left there by the trows instead
of some proper child, whom they had taken into the hills. One night, after
he had retired to his bed, leaving the idiot asleep by the fire, he was suddenly
waked out of his sleep by the sound of music, and on looking about him he
saw the whole room full of fairies, who were dancing away their rounds most
joyously. Suddenly the idiot jumped up and joined in the dance, and showed
such a degree of acquaintance with the various steps and movements as plainly
testified that it must have been a long time since he first went under the
hands of the dancing master. The tailor looked on for some time with admiration,
but at last he grew alarmed and sained himself. On hearing this, the trows
all fled in the utmost disorder, but one of them, a woman, was so incensed
at this interruption of their revels, that as she went out she touched the
big toe of the tailor, and he lost the power of ever after moving it.
Source : (Abridged) Thomas
Keightley, The Fairy Mythology (1850), pp. 164-166. Keightley's souce: Dr.
Hibbert, Description of the Shetland Islands (1822).