Folklore & legend

Terwil's Ba and the Duel Ring of Papa Stour

Also known as: Tairville's Baa

Papa Stour

Undated; recorded 1774 and 1822

Rev. George Low, who toured Shetland in 1774, was shown on Papa Stour, on a small level green in the middle of the cultivated land, the marks of a circular enclosure. Tradition said a Lord Terwil fought a duel there with another gentleman over a dispute. Afterwards he went with his eleven sons to rob his neighbours, and he and all his family perished on a rock since called Terwil's Ba.

Hibbert, in a footnote, says a rock near Mavis Grind is named Tairville's Baa after an ancient Norwegian settler who killed a man of rank in a duel fought on Papa Stour, resisted every attempt to bring him to trial and lived by robbing the country. He is said to have died in a boat with many of his sons on the Baa that bears his name.

This is a place-name legend, with a violent man drowned with his sons as a judgement, and is not tied to any ghost report. Hibbert's Mavis Grind rock and Low's Papa Stour rock look like two versions of one story.

Evidence
Long-standing local tradition
Access
Open ground
Location
60.331, -1.703 (Parish-level only, treat as an area)

Sources: G. F. Black and N. W. Thomas, Examples of Printed Folk-Lore concerning the Orkney and Shetland Islands (Folk-Lore Society, 1903) [public-domain]; Samuel Hibbert, A Description of the Shetland Islands (1822) [public-domain]

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