The tale was collected by J. J. Haldane Burgess and printed in 1903. A good many years before, a crofter in Dunrossness had a cow that suddenly turned ill and seemed about to die. He sent for the old woman who was known as a trowist, the animal doctor usually called in. She had the crofter hold a collie, a lamp, while she examined the cow.
At last she found a small dimple in the skin directly opposite its heart. She had everyone come and feel it, to be sure it was there, and then told the man that the trows had shot the cow. She asked for a Bible, slowly turned the leaves, and tore one out. She said she would take one verse from it, and no one but herself knew which, because it was a secret and those who wanted to do well should never meddle with what they did not know.
She rolled the scrap of paper into a pellet and pressed it into the dimple, left it a while, withdrew it, and took the pellet, the torn leaf and the mutilated Bible away with her. She went into the house for her usual gifts, and in a few days the cow was well.
Spence and Hibbert describe the same belief: that the trows shoot the best cows with elf-arrows, so that the animal pines though outwardly whole. Black and Thomas also note the Papa Stour cure of scratching the cow with a cat's claws.
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