Archaeologist Tom talking to Mick Aston on the Time Team episode about Mine Howe:
- So what do the local people think of this area then, Tom?
- Well I think it’s always been considered as somewhere a bit special, a bit unusual.You’ve got [Mine Howe] here, this thing with this ditch around it which might pre-date it, you’ve got a medieval chapel over there, and you’ve got the burial ground as well and it’s still in use. But people used to say that there were always things here, you know there were always stories related to this mound.
- What do you mean, things here?
- Well, they, um... back in the old days people believed in trows, which is the Orkney word for fairies...
- Fairies! (snort)
- Yeah they used to have a few ale houses on the way over to Durness and people used to have to stop and get tanked up before they could go past this place at night...
- Yeah? (incredulously)
- ... because they thought there was trows around.
- Because there were spirits about.
- mm and then when they got to Dingieshowe in Durness they would have to have a few more to go past that as well, because it was also believed to be an abode of trows. And there was actually a story about a fiddler that went into the mound of Dingieshowe and played for a night for a trow, and when he came out he discovered he’d been away for fourteen years! Everything had changed – apart from him, he was exactly the same.
- Is it not more to do with the local whiskey than anything else?
- Erm a bit of that probably as well the home brew, it certainly heightened the attention/tension.