John Spence tells that the Wart of Cleat in Whalsay was inhabited by trows, and many fair girls were lured to this fairy dwelling, where they lived and bore children who became a sort of semi-spiritual being. Skilled women of the human kind were often needed there.
Once the trows sent a messenger to the mainland to fetch a howdie who lived on Lunna Ness. She delayed crossing the sound because of the raging sea. At last she agreed to go and set out with her guide, carrying two kits of faavers, dainty meats, for the patient. When they reached the east side of the Ness they were met by a second messenger from trowland, sent to hurry them. The woman saw the angry sea and hesitated again. The trows were so exasperated that they turned her and the two kits into stone. The three stones stand there to this day, Spence says, as a warning to others who might hesitate to obey the trows.
Spence adds, with a Fetlar tale of a midwife who went without a murmur, that the fear seems to have been needless. The pin is at Whalsay, with Lunna Ness just across the sound.
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