Trow (folklore)

A trow [trʌu][lower-alpha 1](also trowe or drow or dtrow), is a malignant or mischievous fairy or spirit in the folkloric traditions of the Orkney and Shetland islands. Trows are generally inclined to be short of stature, ugly, and shy in nature.

Not to be confused with Drow.

Trows are nocturnal creatures, like the troll of Scandinavian legend with which the trow shares many similarities. They venture out of their 'trowie knowes' (earthen mound dwellings) solely in the evening, and often enter households as the inhabitants sleep. Trows traditionally have a fondness for music, and folktales tell of their habit of kidnapping musicians or luring them to their dens.

Terminology

The trow [trʌu], in the Scots dialect, is defined as a ‘sprite or fairy’ of mischievous nature in dictionaries of Scots English and of Orkney and Shetland dialects.[2][3] The word is borrowed from ‘troll’ (Norwegian and Old Norse: troll) of Scandinavian mythology.[2] The word also occurs as a variant drow, as commented on by Walter Scott;[lower-alpha 2][5] although drow could also be used in the sense of ‘the devil’ in Orkney.[7]

The word drow also occurs in the Shetland Norn language, meaning ‘huldrefolk’ ("the hidden people", fairies), ‘troll-folk’,[6] or ‘ghost’.[8] As drow is obviously not a Norse language spelling, linguist Jakob Jakobsen proposed it was taken from the common (Scots) term "trow",[9] which was assimilated with Old Norse draugr or Norwegian draug.[6] The reconstructed Shetland word would be *drog if it did descend from Old Norse draugr, but this is unattested, nor was it adopted into the Nynorsk vocabulary to supersede the known form.[8][11]

General remarks

The trows were one of the matters on which a taboo was imposed on speaking about them.[lower-alpha 3] It was also considered unlucky to catch sight of a trow, though auspicious to hear one speaking[13] (cf. §Trowie tunes below).

Sea trow
See also: tangie

The sea trow (Latin: Troicis recté Trowis)[lower-alpha 4] of Stronsay, as described by Jo. Ben's[lower-alpha 5] Description of the Orkney Islands (1529), was a maritime monster resembling a colt whose entire body was cloaked in seaweed, with a coiled or matted coat of hair, sexual organs like a horse's, and known to copulate[lower-alpha 6] with the women of the island.[16][20]

Joseph Ben,[19] or perhaps rather John Ben, was said to be a non-local itinerant, a Scottish ecclesiastic making a tour of Orkney.[18]

According to Samuel Hibbert the sea trow was a local version of the neckar, and he specified that it was reputed to be decked with various stuff from out of the sea, especially fuci (Fucus spp. of seaweed), whose larger forms near shore are known as "tang" in the Shetlands.[21] And though Hibbert does not make the connection, other sources have equated the sea trow with the tangie.[22]

Origins and parallels

Ben's sea trow (trowis) bore resemblance to the anciently known incubus, as it "seems to have occupied the visions of the female sex", as noted by John Graham Dalyell (1835).[14]

Book author Joan Dey (1991) speculates that the tradition, and perhaps that of the selkie, may be based in part on the Norse invasions of the Northern Isles. She states that the conquest by the Vikings sent the indigenous, dark-haired Picts into hiding and that "many stories exist in Shetland of these strange people, smaller and darker than the tall, blond Vikings who, having been driven off their land into sea caves, emerged at night to steal from the new land owners".[23] However, most Roman sources describe the Picts as tall, long-limbed and red or fair haired.

Landmarks

Most mounds in Orkney are associated with "mound-dweller[s]" (hogboon; Old Norse: haugbúi''nn''; Norwegian: haugbonde) living inside them,[25] and though local lore does always specify, the dweller is commonly the trow.[26]

A reputedly trow-haunted mound may not in fact be a burial mound. The Long Howe in Tankerness, a glacial mound, was believed to contain trows, and thus avoided after dark.[27] A group of mounds around Trowie Glen in Hoy are also geological formations, but feared for its trows throughout the valley,[28] and also unapproached after dark.[29]

The stone circle on Fetlar has been dubbed the Haltadans (meaning ‘Limping Dance’) since according to legend, they represent a group of petrified music-loving trows who were so engrossed by dancing to the trowie fiddler's tunes that they failed to hide before dawn's break.[30]

On the mainland in Canisbay, Caithness is a "Mire of Trowskerry" associated with trows.[1]

Trowie tunes

Some Shetland fiddle tunes are said to have come to human fiddlers when they heard the trows playing, and are known as "Trowie Tunes".[30][31][32] A selection is offered in the anthology Da Mirrie Dancers (1985).[33]

"Da Trøila Knowe" ('The Knoll of the Trolls') is one example.[34] "Da Trowie Burn" is also an alleged trowie tune, though its composition is attributed to Friedemann Stickle.[35] This apparent contradiction is resolved in the case of "Da Trow's Reel", which was allegedly a tune that another man reputedly obtained from a trow, and he had whistled the tune over to Stickle on a different boat for him to set down the score.[34] "Da Peerie Hoose in under da Hill" ('The Little House under the Hill') is yet another trowie tune as well.[30]

Another trowie tune "Winyadepla", performed by Tom Anderson on his album with Aly Bain, The Silver Bow.[lower-alpha 7][32]

Kunal trows

A Kunal-Trow (or King-Trow) is a type of trow in the lore of Unst, Shetland. The Kunal-Trow is alleged to be a race without females, and said to wander after dark and sometimes found weeping due to the lack of companionship. But they do take human wife, once in their lives, and she invariably dies after giving birth to a son. The Kunal-Trow would subsequently require the service of a human wet-nurse, and may abduct a midwife for this purpose.[36][37]

They are said to consume earth formed into shapes of fish and fowl, even babies, which taste and smell like the real thing.[36]

One (a King-Trow) famously haunted a broch ruin. Another married a witch who extracted all the trow's secrets, and gave birth to Ganfer (astral body) and Finis (an apparition who appears in the guise of someone whose death is imminent), yet she has cheated death with her arts.[36]

See also

Explanatory notes
  1. Rhyming with "how".[1]
  2. Scott (1835) Demonology, p. 122: "Possession of supernatural wisdom is still imputed by the natives of Orkney and Zetland Islands, to the people called Drows, who may, in most other respects, be identified with the Caledonian fairies".[4]
  3. Briggs's entry on "trows" explains that a special exemption to the taboo was extended to Shetlander Jessie M. E. Saxby who was the ninth child of a ninth child, and she was able to learn the lore.[12]
  4. Ben's "trowis" is mentioned by Dalyell in 1835,[14] but read as "Troicis" and recognized as "trow" by Samuel Hibbert (1822).[15] The word was later also misread or misprinted as Troicis in MacFarlane & Mitchell edd. (1908),[16] though emended back to Trowis against three manuscripts in Calder & MacDonald (1936).[17]
  5. Jo. being an abbreviation for "John"[18] or "Joseph".[19]
  6. concubuit, coeunt "copulate"
  7. "... a troop of peerie folk came in. A woman took off the nappie from her baby and hung it on Gibbie's leg, near the fire, to dry. Then one of the trows said, "What'll we do ta da sleeper?" "Lat him aleen," replied the woman, "he's no a ill body. Tell Shanko ti gie him a ton." Said Shanko, "A ton he sall hae, an we'll drink his blaand." After drinking, they trooped out of the mill, and danced on the green nearby ...".

References
Notes
    Citations
    1. Marwick, H. (1933). The Place-names of Canisbay, Caithness (PDF). Old-Lore Miscellany of Orkney, Shetland, Caithness and Sutherland. 9. Viking Club. p. 186.; Offprint (1931) p,. 12
    2. Scottish National Dictionary (1976) s.v. "trow"
    3. Edmondston, Thomas (1866), An Etymological Glossary of the Shetland & Orkney Dialect, Adam and Charles Black, pp. 131–2
    4. Scottish National Dictionary (1976) s.v. "drow"
    5. Scott, Walter, Sir (1884) [1830], Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, Edinburgh: Richard Griffin, p. 104
    6. Jakobsen, Jakob (1921), "drow", Etymologisk ordbog over det norrøne sprog på Shetland, Prior, p. 123, hdl:2027/wu.89099475378
    7. SND,[4] ad. Jakobsen, Jakob (1928). An Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland . I. David Nutt (A. G. Berry). p. 129  – via Wikisource. Cf. Jakobsen (1921) in orig. Danish.[6]
    8. Korobzow, Natalie (2016), "Nynorn: Die Rekonstruktion des Norn", Dialectologia et Geolinguistica, 24 (1), doi:10.1515/dialect-2016-0007
    9. "trow" is absent as heading in Jakobsen's Shetland Norn dictionary (1921, 1928).
    10. Probyn, Clive; Steele, Bruce, eds. (2000). Henry Handel Richardson: The Letters. 1. Carlton, Victoria: Miegunyah Press. ISBN 978-0-52284-797-0.. See her chronology of year 1896 on p. xv. On p. 27: reprint of her Letter (writing as Miss Robertson) to Athenaeum No. 3619, 7 March 1897, under "Siren Voices", p. 314). She gives herself credit, as translator of the Fisher Lass.
    11. Australian female writer Henry Handel Richardson (aka Ethel F. L. Robertson) in her uncredited 1896 translation of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's Fiskerjenten (tr. The Fisher Lass) rendered the Norwegian draug as "bogies", and defended this to her critical reviewer by noting ON draugr and Scots "drow" as the word's cognates.[10]
    12. Briggs (1977) Encyclopedia of Fairies, s.v. "Trows", pp. 413–415.
    13. Saxby (1932), p. 130 and Briggs.[12]
    14. Dalyell, John Graham, Sir (1835), Popular Tales of the West Highlands, orally collected (New edition), 1, Glasgow: Richard Griffin, p. 544
    15. Hibbert (1822), p. 569†; Hibbert (1891), p. 263†
    16. Ben, Jo. (1908). "Ben's Orkney". In MacFarlane, Walter; Mitchell, Arthur (eds.). Geographical Collections Relating to Scotland. 3. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society. pp. 303–4, 315. (in Latin and English)
    17. Calder, Charles S. T.; MacDonald, George (1936), "The Dwarfie Stane, Hoy, Orkney: its period and purpose. Note on 'Jo. Ben' and the Dwarfie Stane" (PDF), Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 70: 220
    18. Anonymous (1870). An Etymological Glossary of the Shetland & Orkney Dialect. Kirkwall: William Peace. p. 95.
    19. Bicket, Linden (2017). George Mackay Brown and the Scottish Catholic Imagination. 3. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474411677., "Chapter 3: Mary": n15
    20. Grydehøj (2009), p. 59.
    21. Hibbert (1822), pp. 524, 586
    22. Marwick, H. (1933), p. 32.
    23. Dey (1991), p. 12.
    24. Muir, Tom (2003). Downes, Jane; Ritchie, Anna (eds.). The Creatures in the Mound. Sea Change: Orkney and Northern Europe in the Later Iron Age AD 300-800. Balgabies: Pinkfoot Press. pp. 203–204.
    25. Marwick, E. (2000) [1975], pp. 39–40; Muir (2003), pp. 203–204[24] apud Lee (2015), pp. 139–140.
    26. Muir (1998) and Marwick, E. (2000) [1975], "Ch. 2: Folk of Hill and Mound", pp. 30– apud Lee (2015), pp. 139–140.
    27. Muir (2003), p. 203[24] apud Lee (2015), p. 139.
    28. Muir (1998) and Lee, D. (2010), Roeberry Barrow, Cantick, South Walls, Orkney, with Additional Survey in Hoy. Manuscript, Data Structure Report apud Lee (2015), pp. 139–140
    29. Johnston, Alfred W. (1896), "The' Dwarfie Stone' of Hoy, Orkney", The Reliquary and Illustrated Archæologist, new series, 2: 100
    30. Larrington, Carolyne (2017). "The Beast & the Human". The Land of the Green Man: A Journey through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 37–38, 106. ISBN 9780857727305.
    31. Stewart & Moar (1951) apud Shuldham-Shaw (1962), p. 143
    32. "The Fiddler's Companion". ibiblio.org. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
    33. Cooke, Peter R. (1986), "Chapter 3: The Fiddlerr's repertoire", The Fiddle Tradition of the Shetland Isles, Cambridge University Press, p. 50, ISBN 9780521268554
    34. Shuldham-Shaw (1962), p. 143.
    35. Shuldham-Shaw (1962), p. 141.
    36. Saxby (1932), p. 128, quoted by Briggs.[12]
    37. Marwick, E. (2000) [1975], "Ch. 2: Folk of Hill and Mound", pp. 34–35

    Bibliography

    • Stewart, John; Moar, Peter (1951), Tait, E. S. Reid (ed.), "When the Trows Danced", Shetland Folk Book, Shetland Folk Society, 2, pp. 17–25
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