[4][5] As an alternate etymology, John Jamieson's Scottish dictionary conjectured that the word trow may be a corruption of Scandinavian draug.
[12][15] The word drow also occurs in the Shetland Norn language, where it means ‘huldrefolk’("the hidden people", fairies), ‘troll-folk’,[14] or ‘ghost’.
[14] The reconstructed Shetland word would be *drog if it did descend from Old Norse draugr, but this is unattested, nor was it adopted into the Nynorn vocabulary to supersede the known form.
[18] Their portrayed appearance can vary greatly: in some telling gigantic and even multi-headed, as are some giants in English lore;[19] else small or human-sized, like ordinary fairies, but dressed in grey.
Tales are also told of human fiddlers being abducted by trows to their mounds, and although released after what seems a brief stay, many long years have elapsed in the outside world, and the victim turns to dust,[24][25] or chooses to die.
[31][35] The sea-trow of Orkney is "the ugliest imaginable" according to W. Traill Dennison, who says that it has been represented as a scaly creature with matted hair,[36] having monkey-like face and sloping head.
[38] According to Samuel Hibbert the sea-trow was a local version of the neckar, and he specified that it was reputed to be decked with various stuff from out of the sea, especially fuci (Fucus spp.
[45] Most mounds in Orkney are associated with "mound-dweller[s]" (hogboon; Old Norse: haugbúinn; Norwegian: haugbonde) living inside them,[46] and though local lore does always specify, the dweller is commonly the trow.
[48] A group of mounds around Trowie Glen in Hoy are also geological formations, but feared for its trows throughout the valley,[49] and also unapproached after dark.
[57] Ben's sea-trow (trowis) bore resemblance to the anciently known incubus, as it "seems to have occupied the visions of the female sex", as noted by John Graham Dalyell (1835).
[24] Book author Joan Dey (1991) speculates that the tradition concerning the trows[k] may be based in part on the Norse invasions of the Northern Isles.
[62][l] Shetland folklore spoke of the presence of the Pechs (mythologized version of the Picts) inside the fairy knolls ("trowie knowe"), who could be heard clinking their tools on silver and gold.Saxby (1932), pp.