Once a farmer and his wife lived at Kirgood-a-Weisdale in Shetland and they had just had a pretty baby and in the days that followed they had many visitors. So it was on this particular afternoon that the wise woman and some others had come to see the new baby and keep the young mother company.
The farmer set about his afternoon chores but just as he was leaving the lamb-house at twilight he heard three most unearthly knocks. It seemed as if they came from under the ground. He didn’t know what this could be, and although he was very frightened, he went up to the corn yard and as he came in sight of the barn he heard voices, muttering and arguing. He wondered what was going on when a voice said loudly, ‘Mind the crooked finger!’
Remember the crooked finger? The farmer listened closely, since his wife had a crooked finger. Twice more he heard the voice, ‘Mind the crooked finger!’
The young farmer trembled all the more for he knew that something bad was going to happen. He knew that trolls were often on the lookout for any helpless baby, or new mother, or both. He had to protect his family. If there were trolls in the barn he knew just what to do.
He ran back into the house, lit a candle, and picked up the Bible and a knife.
Suddenly, as he opened the book, there came a roaring and unearthly stamping and rattling from the barn. It was so loud that it made the whole house shake and everybody quaked with fear.
The farmer asked the wise woman to stay with his wife and baby and he left for the barn. The rest of the visitors followed him, eyes wide with fear. He had the Bible in one hand, held the knife between his teeth, and the burning candle in his other hand. When he got to the barn door the noise was deafening but – throwing the Bible in before him – he stepped inside.
Instantly all was silence.
The others crowded in behind him and there they saw the strangest thing. It was an image, a model, an exact copy of his wife right down to her crooked finger!
The trolls had gone.
‘Well,’ said the farmer, ‘the trolls meant to put you into my house and steal away my real wife, but I will make use of you in a different way.’
He carried the trolls’ model into the house and they all saw it was indeed a very fine copy of his wife. He sat it on a stool and there it stayed for many a year. Why, little children used to climb up and sit happily in its lap!
And that’s as true as I’m writing this for you, and not a borrowed or handed-down story; for Bill Robertson of Lerwick said his mother told the story with her own lips, and she would not have told him a lie for she was there, in that house, that very night.