Folklore & legend

Da Park at Windhouse

Field near Windhouse, Yell

Undated; recorded about 1900

The story is told of a Yell man who had a field on high ground near Windhouse. The season was far on and the weather had turned cold and wet. He feared the wind and rain would lay his corn flat, and one night he said aloud that he wished the field were in the band, that is cut and bound, even if it cost him the best ox he owned.

Nobody saw or heard anything. In the morning the field was cut, and the ox was dead.

The version here was printed in 1903 by Black and Thomas, who took it from J. J. Haldane Burgess, and it sits among tales in which the trows stood in a special relation to a particular man. The moral is the usual one in trow stories: a wish spoken carelessly in the dark can be heard. The exact field is not named, so the pin is only at Windhouse.

Evidence
Long-standing local tradition
Access
Open ground
Location
60.608, -1.109 (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]

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