This is one of the tales told in the 1903 collection under the heading Da Trow's Bundle, taken from Burgess. It was commonly believed that trows carried off men, women and children and left in their place an imbecile or deformed creature, or an effigy of the person taken. There were once people who did a good business selling charms against it and cures for it.
An old crofter in the parish of Walls was away on a winter night. Coming back over the hills in the dark, close to his hill-grind, the gate in the outer dyke, he met a gang of trows carrying a bundle between them. He felt a thrill of fear, but let them pass and hurried down to his house.
As soon as he was inside he saw his wife was gone, and an effigy in her usual chair. He seized it and threw it on the fire in the middle of the floor. It took fire at once and rose in the air, flaming, in a cloud of smoke, and vanished through the lum. As it vanished his wife walked in at the cottage door, safe and sound, and ever afterwards the trows took care to avoid the man and his family.
The parish is given but not the croft, so the pin is at Walls.
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