As might be expected of a strain in whom the mystical preponderates, the Celt believed himself to be surrounded by numbers of viewless beings of varied type and character, some beneficent, others the reverse. His ideas concerning these naturally differed considerably throughout the centuries and according to local circumstances, but it has often been remarked that the Celtic attitude towards the phantom world is distinguished by a certain gruesome relish and appreciation seldom to be met with in other races. As a Scotsman I have frequently had occasion to note this extraordinary predilection for the gloomy and the weirdly repulsive. The primitive nature of many of our ghost-forms is self-evident. Our ballad literature is replete with instances in which the dividing line between dead and living is imperfectly conceived. In such cases the ghost is usually a body rather than a spirit, thus resembling the vampire of the Balkans and other areas. The lover returns to his mistress at midnight, in the same form as he assumed before death, yet bearing all the signs of mortality. To the Celts, as to many other primitive folk, the inhabitants of the supernatural world were regarded as one in essence, merely varying forms of spiritual life. They did not distinguish very clearly between spirits of men, animals or birds. To them, indeed, spirit appears to have been of human origin alone, and might for a season attach itself to a body and then leave it - to take up residence in a tree, a rock or a watercourse. As the centuries passed this crude original notion was greatly modified, but almost to the day before yesterday we find instances of its acceptance. The writer’s maternal grandmother, who would have been regarded in educated circles as a woman of culture, assured him on her death at the age of eighty that she would return in the shape of a bird and would peck at his window. Her mother was gifted with the second sight, and the occult experiences of both were of so continuous and complicated, a nature as to be accepted by the remainder of the family - hard-bitten shipbuilders, naval surgeons and the managers of large industrial concerns - as the common coinage of everyday occurrence. Nor are such cases rare in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, as thousands are aware. This sentiment of fellowship with the supernatural, the sense of living on the edge of it, or in constant communion with it, has naturally conferred upon the Celtic ghost qualities not usually discovered in the larvae of other races. He (or she) is horrible, frequently repulsive, yet it is understood that so he should be. If he were not it would indeed be quite out of keeping. It is expected of him that he should be as ghastly as possible, as if otherwise, his reputation would rapidly deteriorate. For something happens to the Celtic person after death; he assumes by enchantment a certain property of untouchableness, of separateness from the terrestrial sphere which renders it risky in the extreme to have dealings with him. This particular condition is expressly conveyed by many passages in the ancient Irish sagas. Even a journey to the home of the gods will bring about such a state of things in the case of a living man. We are told, for example, in The Book of Leinster, that when Loegaire, son of the King of Connaught, returned from the home of the gods, he was advised by his hosts that he and his comrades should not dismount from their horses when they reached earthly soil. [1] To do so would have brought about their instant transformation to dust. The dwarf ruler who entertained the British King Herla in the Otherworld issued a similar warning to his guest and his followers, but in some cases it went unheeded, so that the neglectful crumbled into dust when they dismounted in their own country. [2] This species of enchantment is alluded to by Malory in speaking of King Arthur. Some men, he remarks, aver that the king is not dead but still survives. “I will not say that it shall bee so,” adds Sir Thomas, “but rather I will say that heere in this world hee changed his life. [3] This belief undoubtedly arises from the primitive idea that death was an unnatural contingency, a calamity caused by the spells or malevolent magical devices of supernatural beings, ancestral spirits, or wizards. Once the Celt crosses the borderline which separates the living from the dead his general nature undergoes an entire alteration, he assumes the magical character and abilities of the inhabitants of the Land of the Dead. He is the creature of another element. He is surrounded by a set of taboos which bear no relationship to existence in the earth-life. All this differentiates the Celtic idea of death very markedly from that as understood by other races. When mortals of other than Celtic stock return from the Land of the Gods or the Land of the Dead they usually do so as heroes, bearing with them gifts of usefulness to humanity, framing new legal codes, bringing knowledge to men. But the Celtic visitor to the Land of the Dead lingers on earth miserably for a space, until, with the echoes of the divine place where he has sojourned ringing in his ears, he once more seeks its peace and is not again seen in the haunts of men. That the spirit of man could function as a “ghost” even while he was still alive appears to have been a doctrine acceptable to the Cells, and this associates it in a measure with the belief in the vampire. The Celtic belief in a species of “doppel-ganger”, or astral counterpart, is revealed in the writings of the mystical Robert Kirk, the minister of Aberfoyle, towards the end of the seventeenth century (a secret Rosicrucian, if I mistake not), for he speaks of a “Reflex man, a Co-walker, every way like the Man, as a Twin-brother and companion, haunting him as his shadow, as is oft seen and known among Men (resembling the Originall), both before and after the Originall is dead”. [4] This appears to be much the same is the Irish “fetch”, whose name seems to me to be a corruption of the Irish Gaelic taidhbhse (pron. “taish”), meaning “ghost”. Should one see the fetch of a person in the morning, the incident has no doomful significance. To see the double at night implies the death of the person seen. Mrs. B-, the wife of a doctor in an Irish town, beheld the fetch of her husband standing near the window while he slept by her side. Later, the doctor confessed that he himself had seen the apparition. On the following night Dr. B- rose from his sleep, calling for help, but shortly expired. [5] It is believed in Ireland and some parts of Scotland that when the spirit leaves the body “it will travel all the ground travelled over while alive, and during this time it is visible”. It is also held that “the spirit of the person who has been last interred must watch the churchyard until the next funeral takes place or for a year after interment”. “The belief that the soul takes the form of animals is almost universal, and there are many examples of it in the British Isles.” Seagulls are frequently regarded as the souls of the dead on the Scottish coasts. [6] The writer recalls a humorous incident of a fight arising between two fishermen at Granton, near Edinburgh, because one of them had alluded to his dead father as “a - seagull”. A ghost, an ancestral ghost, yet something more, the banshee has a name which may be translated “supernatural woman” and, perhaps in view of her especial characteristics, “dead woman”. Indeed, she has many of the attributes of mortality, for her nose is sunken, or not apparent, and her eye-sockets are large and hollow. Occasionally she is decked out in green silk and gold ornaments, and such cases may be associated with those tales as speak of her as the ancestress of a great family. In some parts of Scotland, particularly in Argyllshire, the contiguous islands and Skye, the banshee is known as the cointeach, or “keener”, from her habit of indulging in outbursts of dismal wailing. In these regions she is found attached to the families of the Macmillans, the Mathisons, Kellys, Mackays, Macfarlanes, Shaws and Curries. Sometimes she is described as having the appearance of a small child; at others as “a small or very little woman in a short green gown and petticoat, with a high-crowned white cap”. One local traditionalist speaks of the cointeach as “a little white thing, soft as wool”, and without flesh, blood or bones - clearly a popular rendering of a very primitive idea of the rather amorphous appearance and condition in which the soul was supposed to exist in its separate state. In its more human shape it haunted the backs of houses, wailing and prophesying death. When a fatal event impended in the family of the clan Mackay, the cointeach, attired in a green shawl, was wont to warn them by squatting outside the sick man’s door, raising her mournful keening. I cannot hope to review the evidence relating to the banshee in Ireland in its entirety, but must follow its main directions only. “The popular belief in Clare,” wrote the late Mr. T. T. Westropp, a major authority, “is that each leading Irish race had a banshee, Eevul, the banshee of the royal O’Briens, ruling over twenty-five other banshees, always attendant upon her progresses”. [7] Elsewhere he says : “The banshee appears in Mayo as a dark-cloaked grey-haired woman sitting on a rock or fence moaning or crying, more frequently heard than seen. In Connemara she wears a red cloak, and sings before a death; her voice travels with the gust of wind.” [8] Another of these hags, he tells us, was Bronach, “the Sorrowful one of the Black Head”, who is described as crooked, thatched with elf-locks, foxy-grey and rough like heather, with wrinkled brow, bleared eyes and a flattened blue nose. When seen, she was usually engaged in washing blood-stained garments. [9] The Irish banshee uttered her warning only in the case of ancient and noble families. When she did so, according to Crofton Croker, she walked beside those who met ‘her on some lonely road, keening and clapping her hands, her long white hair falling about her shoulders, repeating the name of the person who was about to die. [10] Elsewhere he describes her as “a tall, thin woman, with uncovered head and long hair that floated round her shoulders attired in something that seemed either a loose white cloak or a sheet thrown hastily about her”. [11] In The Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill it is told how Brian, the King of Ireland, was warned of his coming death by the banshee Aibhill (pron. Eevul) of Crag Laith. In 1318 the Normans, under Richard de Clare, were marching to engage the O’Deas of Dysert, when they beheld a bag washing armour and clothes. She said to them: “I am the Water Doleful One. I lodge in the green mounds. Thither I invite you. Soon we shall be dwellers in one country.” [12] In ancient Ireland a series of war-goddesses, somewhat resembling the Norse Valkyries, seem to have been the objects of particular fear and reverence. These warlike goddesses were five in number, and they were presided over by the Morrigan, or “Great Queen”, whose favourite disguise was that of a carrion crow. All of these were collectively described by the name of badb (pron. bive, or bibe). After battle these furies revelled among the bodies of the slain, and their memory still survives in the superstitious aversion of the Celtic peasant for their folk-lore descendant, the “hoodie” crow. Everything points to the conclusion that the banshee was in one sense a modern expression of the badb or “royston” crow, which appears to have been associated with the goddess of battle in ancient Irish mythology, presiding over death and slaughter. J. G. Campbell gives it as his opinion that “baobh”, as used in Scotland, is a term which commonly expresses “an evil woman, hence is a common name applied to witches”, although in some cases it is employed as indicating that a woman “was not of mortal race”. [13] “The name badb,” says Wood-Martin, “meaning ‘rage, fury or violence’, came to be applied to a witch, fairy or goddess, represented by the scare-, scald-, or royston-crow. Her sisters were Neman, Machan and Morrigan. ‘Badb’ would seem to have been the generic title of beings ruling over battle or carnage. Neman brought madness, Morrigan incited to deeds of valour, Machan revelled among the bodies of the slain. All three are described as the wives of Neit, the god of battle.” [14] A raven flapped against the windows of the Ross Lewins of Clare as a symbol of approaching death, and this seems to indicate that it was the family banshee in badb or raven form. [15] Elsewhere we are told that crows or ravens were the birds announcing the presence of the Fomorians, the Irish gods of death and night. The wife of Tethra, chief of the Fomorians, was the female of the crow or raven, who flew over the battlefield in the hour of carnage. A late eleventh-century manuscript has preserved for us a quatrain written by a poet of the ninth century on this subject: The wife of Tethra’s longing is for the fire of combat:An old Irish grammarian who flourished about the end of the eleventh century, glossing the obscurities of this quatrain, explains “wife of Tethra”, or Teathur, as “crow” or “raven”. [16] Indeed, all the warrior-goddesses of Ireland appear to have been generally known as badb, or “crow”. It seems to me not improbable that the banshee may have been regarded anciently as a tutelary guardian of the royal house of Stuart. My reasons for entertaining this belief are that the coronation stone of Scone, now the basis of the royal throne of the British Empire, in Westminster Abbey (which must not be confused with the Lia Fail of Ireland), is said by at least one old English writer to have been the dwelling-place of a tutelary spirit. It seems not unlikely that it may have been partly for this reason that the highly romantic and superstitious King Edward I. had the stone removed to Westminster. In an English account of the assassination of King James I. of Scotland at Perth in 1437 entitled The Dethe and False Murdure of James Stewarde, Kyng of Scotys, written about 1440, by John Shirley of London, or rather translated by him from the Latin text of what was probably an official Scottish account of the affair, he tells us that as the King rode to Perth, to hold Christmastide there, and came to the Water of Leith, a woman of Ireland (that is, of the Highlands) who called herself a soothsayer rose in the midst of the way, and cried with a loud voice: “My lord Kyng, an ye passe this water, ye shall never return agane on lyve”. On being asked how she could so prophesy, she said that “Huthart told her so”. [17] The spirit Huthart may almost certainly be associated with the Scottish term “Huddy”, employed for the hooded crow, which is connected with the banshee in Ireland, “Huthart ” seems to be the same as that “Ethart” who is mentioned by the Rev. Robert Knox in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Wyllie (1677) as the familiar of a lady who dwelt. in “the West marches” of Scotland, who accompanied her on her journeys. [18] It is not impossible otherwise that the name Huthart may be a corruption of the Irish Gaelic Teathur, or Tethra, who, as we have seen, was associated with the scald or royston crow in Ireland in her form of the badb, the bird whose shape the banshee occasionally took. This Teathur, who, in human shape, was one of a trio of mythical kings of Ireland, was one of the mysterious Tuatha De Danann. The name seems comparable with that of Arthur, who according to English mediaeval superstition took the shape of a crow, a passage in Cervantes’ Don Quixote having it “that no Englishman would shoot a crow for Arthur’s sake”, a statement supported by Cornish tradition. [19] Morgan La Fee, Arthur’s sister, also took crow or raven shape on occasion, and she has been connected mythologically with the Irish Morngan, or crow-goddess of war. We have thus good reason to associate “the woman of Ireland”, who warned King James, with the banshee. That she made a further effort to interview the King at Perth on the eve of his murder, but without effect, is on record. [20] The whole passage, indeed, gives me to think that a legend existed which more or less definitely associated the Stuart line with a banshee, and that this spirit, in the contemporary accounts of James I.’s assassination, became “euhemerized”, or humanized, into a Gaelic soothsayer or wise woman, whereas the current popular version of this part of the affair might have been susceptible of a more mystical interpretation, associated with an ancestral familiar of the ancient Celtic line of Stuart. Welsh tradition preserves the belief in more than one spirit of the banshee type. The cyhiraeth comes in a dark mist to the window of a person about to die, flapping her wings against the glass, whilst repeating his or her name. In appearance she is even more repellent than the banshee herself. Her locks are tangled and knotted, her teeth are long and black, she displays shrivelled arms. Sir John Rhys believed her to be an ancestral spirit. [21] Like the banshee, she gives forth a dreadful noise in the night before a death or burial. “Its first cry is strong, its second lower, its third still lower and soft. If one bears the cyhiraeth and then proceeds to the death-bed be will hear the dying man’s moans precisely like those he heard from the cyhiraeth.” This spirit especially infested the twelve parishes in the hundred of Inis Cenin, which lies on the south-east side of the River Towy on the sea-coast of Glamorganshire. Her moaning, accompanied by lights, precedes a wreck. Occasionally she passes through a village by night, groaning and rattling the window-shutters. She invariably appears before the visitation of an epidemic. [22] Another Welsh spirit of the banshee kind is the gwrach y rhibyn, or “hag of the dribble”. Her appearance is almost similar to that of the cyhiraeth, and like her she utters a dreadful keening. Occasionally she appears in the mist of a mountainside, or at cross-roads, or near a sheet of water, which she splashes with her hands. Sometimes this spirit appears as a male. A man who had seen it at Llandaff told Mr. Wirt Sikes, the United States Consul at Cardiff in 1878, that it looked like a horrible old woman, with long red hair, a face like chalk and great tusk-like teeth. He said: “It’s not these new families that the gwrach y rhibyn ever troubles, sir, it’s the old stock.” [23] The “hag” is said to be the wife of the mythical power Avagddu, a word which implies lordship over death, and so she may justly be equated with the badb wife of Teathur, the Irish death-god. She has also been described as rising out of swamps aid creeks, and haunting ruined castles, as “a banshee, an ancestral spectre”. That birds are also associated with “warnings” in Wales, as is the crow or raven in Scotland and Ireland, is revealed by the tradition concerning the aderyn y corph, which chirps at the doors of persons fated to die. Equally revolting to modern susceptibilities, but revealing much of that gruesome quality which seems inherent in the mentality of the race to which the writer is privileged to belong, is the notion of the glaistig, a female Scottish ghost who is described as “a woman of human race, who has been put under enchantments”, and to whom a supernatural character has thus been given. She was usually regarded as “a woman of honourable position; a former mistress of the house, the interests of the tenants of which she now attended to”. [24] Like the banshee, she has a peculiarly dolorous tone of voice, and her dreadful keening can at times be heard along the whole black length of a nightbound glen. Her most intimate task appears to lie in the entertainment of visitors, upon whom, however, she occasionally plays ghostly pranks. Some glaistigs, like that of the Macleans of Breachacha Castle, in the Island of Coll, made life rather difficult for occasional guests, while others, such as that of the MacDougalls of Dunoffie, acted as amateur laundresses, washing the family linen. But other glaistigs are more fiendishly inspired and plague the hunter or crofter. Some spirits of this species insist upon a cogue of milk being set out for them at nights, and if this offering be neglected the cattle are almost certain to suffer. If one could capture a glaistig he might exact from her the gift of particular skill in handicraft for his descendants. One could keep a glaistig at ann’s length with a drawn dirk, but if permitted to come to close quarters she might assume the attributes of the vampire and suck his veins dry. The glaistig occasionally took the form of a man’s sweetheart, and in this form might absorb his heart’s blood. That she was substantially an ancestral spirit is dear enough. Libations of milk were made to her in a hollow stone, and at one farm, Sron-charmaig, on the side of Loch Fascan, in Lorn, this custom was upheld so lately as the nineties of tat century. [25] The bean-nighe is “the washing-woman”, whose legend has been immortalized by Fiona MacLeod, that occasionally brilliant if somewhat theatrical master of the pseudo-Celtic, in his gruesome tale The Washer at the Ford. She is common to both Scotland and Ireland. Tradition avers that she is to be seen after nightfall in desolate places near a water’s edge, or at a ford, washing the shrouds of those who are about to die. In the main, she is confined to the larger islands of Scotland - Lewis, Harris, Uist and Coil - where her appearance is regarded as a warning of death. But her presence is not unrecorded elsewhere, although her name varies with the region. Thus in Islay the coin-teach and the bean-nighe seem to be one and the same. The cointeach of Islay is said to be particularly vindictive to those who disturb her at her dreadful business, and she punishes them by striking them on the legs with the shroud she is washing - a blow which may possibly amputate these members. In the Hebrides the bean-nighe is not attached to particular families. She is said to resemble a woman of small size, and some emphasis is laid on the fact that her feet are red and webbed like a duck’s. Like the banshee, she sometimes sports green attire. The usual seasons for her appearance are after dark and in the early morning. The noise she makes at her work is described as like “the clapping of hands” and the splashing of water. Though evil follows upon the sight of her, that, we are told, is no fault of hers. If one can get between her and the water she is bound to grant any request or boon he may ask. In Perthshire the washing-woman is described as small of stature and rotund, and clad in a muslin-like green garment. In Skye she is squat and resembles a shrunken, rather miserable-looking child. If caught while at her labours she is bound to reveal the circumstances of her captor’s fate, so long as he truthfully responds to her questions in turn. [26] In Ross-shire and Sutherlandshire the bean-nighe is locally known as the vow. Her favourite locality is the River Carron. Those who-seek to cross the waters which she haunts do so at the risk of their lives. She washes clothes in the same manner as the bean-nighe, and is sometimes identified with the kelpie. But, as the vow, she is not a Lowland equivalent of the bean-nighe, as has been stated. “In Carradale, in Kintyre, is a point called Sroin na h-Eannachair, the haunt of a supernatural being who makes an outcry on the death of any of the clan MacMillan. Cannachan is the local name for the cointeach of the MacMillans. The word seems to be associated with ponds or water.” Such a creature haunted a loch in the Alvie district of Inverness-shire, but could be seen only by those about to die. The local belief concerning her was that she represented the phantom of a mother who had died in childbed, and whose garments had not been washed at the time of her burial. Accordingly she seems to have been doomed to wash the shifts of all those about to die, or to be slain in battle between the date of her actual death and that on which she would naturally have died, death at childbirth being deemed unnatural. It is dangerous to the traveller by night if the bean-nighe observes him before he has set eyes on her. If he espies her first she cannot stir until she is caught and spoken to. A Lewis legend recounts that a certain John Smith of South Shawbost saw her washing at Lochandubh-na-beinne. He enquired what she was about and she replied that she was washing the clothes of those who were to be drowned that year in the loch, adding, “But as I have been caught, I shall not be seen any more here. Let me go, and I shall give you any of. three gifts you may choose.” The interloper asked for wealth and received the boon, but was informed that he would have no sons. [27] The bean-nighe, or washer, is even more commonly to be met with in Ireland than in Scotland. In the events which preceded the death of the great Irish hero Cuchullin, the Druid Cathbad points out such a washer to the hero. She is the daughter of the badb. She is slender and white of body and yellow of hair. On the ford’s bank she washed and wrung crimson and bloody spoils. [28] Oscar, grandson of Fionn, and son of Ossian, on his way to the battle of Gavra encountered such a supernatural woman, and thus addressed her: Weird woman that washest the garments,In the long ago, we read, Ireland was better adapted to the chase than Albainn, or Scotland. and many Scots. went there for that purpose. When the Feinne, the band of Finn MacCoul, went to hunt in Ireland they appear to have encountered several bean-nighean. One of these prophesied that Finn should be slain in battle, and this duly came to pass. In his Folk-lore de France M. Paul Sebillot remarks that the idea of the washer of the night is familiar to Brittany. There she is known as Eurcunnerez-noz (the plural form). She appears on the banks of streams, and calls to passers-by to aid her to wash the linen of the dead. If any refuse, he is dragged into the water and has his arms broken. The legend of the supernatural washerwoman is also widespread in the Slovene districts of Jugo-Slavia. [30] The fairies bulk so largely in Celtic tradition and Magic that the problems associated with them cannot be ignored in such a work as this. In Wales they are known as the Tylwyth Teg, or “the fair family”, and are ruled by Gwyn ap Nud, formerly a British god, who is also regarded as lord of the dead. In Ireland they are the remains of the Tuatha Dé Danann, once the gods of Ireland before the invasion of the Milesian race. The Tuatha De Danann, or gods, were thought of as being reincarnated in the kings and chiefs of Ireland, as all authorities agree, and this has a direct bearing upon the fairy problem, as we shall see. [31] In Scotland there is no evidence that they were derived from these gods. Three main theories seek to account for the origin of fairies. These have been set forth by Professor Krappe as follows: “According to one (school) they are the dead; according to another they are elementary spirits; and according to the third they are due to reminiscences of former inhabitants, crowded out by the newcomers and compelled to retire to the mountains or near the sea-shore. Let us say at once that a good many story-types are in accord with the first theory - in fact, probably a majority - that certain features are, better explained by the second, and that there is no solid basis of fact behind the third.” [32] Most students of tradition would, I think, agree with Professor Krappe’s statement of the problem, which be proceeds to elaborate in brief compass. He shows that both Teutonic dwarfs and Celtic fairies possess characteristics which appear to identify them with the dead, dwelling as they do underground, and luring the living to their subterranean abodes. Moreover, they appear in the guise of ancestral spirits possessing superhuman wisdom and are associated with certain localities and families. Also they receive gifts or oblations of food, and thus seem to be the governing spirits of a definite cultus, as ancestral forms are everywhere. They preside over the growth of the crops, as do the dead ancestors, and they haunt barrows and stone circles known to be places of ancient sepulture. But Professor Krappe warns us that we must not draw any hard and fast line between the ancestral cult and the worship of elementary or nature-spirits. In saying as much, he is at one with the leading exponents of modern folk-lore. As the late Mr. Sidney Hartland laid it down in his Science of Fairy Tales, no very clear division can be made between the fairy and the ghost, in the folk-lore sense. They have the same traits, the same taboos are exercised against both, the same stock legends and stories are common to both. As to the third theory to which Professor Krappe alludes, that which embraces the idea that Faerie may be due to reminiscences of the former inhabitants of a country, and especially to small and undersized races, it is evident that he denies this in toto. I believe that the main element in the tradition is that which regards the fairy belief as associated with the spirits of the dead. As regards the actual proof of the theory that fairies are no other than the dead in the belief of primitive man, past and present, that is of a nature so extensive that I despair of being able to place it adequately before the reader in the compass of a few paragraphs. Here I can deal only with its main outlines and superscriptions, but I can assure my ,readers that it has received the overwhelming acceptance of many folk-lorists of standing. Primitive man did not and does not believe, as we do, that death is a thing inevitable. He regarded it, and regards it, as brought about by magical means of some kind, and out of this idea has arisen that description of story which tells how people might be rescued and regained from the Land of the Dead. Let us glance at some of the instances of that body of proof which serves to maintain the theory that the fairies were in the main the spirits of the departed. In Wales, for example, as Wirt Sikes tells us in his interesting study, British Goblins, “the popular theory of the fairies is that they are the souls of dead mortals, not bad enough for hell, nor good enough for heaven”. “We are confronted,” writes Mr. L. C. Wimberley, in his Folk-lore of the English and Scottish Ballads, “with striking resemblances between the ballad ghost and the ballad fairy”, and he proceeds to illustrate the theory by a wealth of instances culled from British popular lays. [33] “When analysed,” says Wentz, “our evidence (culled from Celtic lands) shows that in the majority of cases witnesses have regarded fairies either as non-human nature-spirits, or else as spirits of the dead . . . the striking likenesses constantly, appearing in our evidence between the ordinary apparitional fairies and the ghosts of the dead show that there is often no essential or sometimes no distinguishable difference between these two orders of beings, nor between the world of the dead and fairyland. . . . The old people in County Armagh seriously believe that the fairies are the spirits of the dead, and they say that if you have many friends deceased you may have many friendly fairies.” Steven Ruan, a piper of Galway, told Wentz that “there is one class of fairies who are nobody else than the spirits of men and women who once lived on earth”. The Scottish evidence for this widespread belief is equally definite. Dalyell tells us that a witch of Orkney beheld the fairies “rise out of the kirkyard of Hildiswick”, and in the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries numerous Scottish witches bore witness that they encountered dead friends and relations in Fairyland, whither they themselves had been spirited away. Canon MacCulloch, in the article on “Fairies” in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, remarks that “fairies have many things in common with ghosts and are repulsed by the same taboos”. They have in some cases succeeded ghostly tenants of tumuli or barrows, or have become merged with them. Bessie Dunlop, of Dairy, in Ayrshire, an associate of the witches, at some time about 1573 encountered “a fairy man”, one Thome Reid, who had been slain at the battle of Pinkie in 1547. At her trial she actually claimed to have seen this person walking in the High Street in Edinburgh, but, as fairies must not be addressed in public, she refrained from recognizing him. Says Andrew Lang, “there are excellent proofs that Fairyland was a kind of Hades, or home of the dead”. To Robert Kirk, the good pastor of Aberfoyle, the fairies were “an abstruse people”, the human doubles or astral bodies of the living. At the death of the man they represent, these “co-walkers” return “to their own herd”, that is to a separate existence in some appropriate limbo. He tells us that the folk on the Highland line in his day (circa 1660 - 90) believed that the souls of their predecessors dwelt in the fairy hills. “And for that end, say they, a Mote or Mount was dedicate beside every Churchyard, to receive the souls till their adjacent bodies arise, so became as a fairy hill.” [34] That is, there was a separate sepulchre or dwelling for the “fairy”, or human, soul. Reading this, we may understand how the orkney witch came to behold the fairies “rise from the kirkyard of Hildiswick”: Kirk, who, I have always believed, was a Rosicrucian, perhaps imposed upon his own local folk-lore something of the doctrine of spirits as he found it in Paracelsus and in the writings of Fludd and Vaughan. In the Western Isles of Scotland the Sluagh, or fairy host, was regarded as composed of the souls of the dead flying through the air, and the feast of the dead at Halloween was likewise the festival of the fairies. The testimony of Lady Gregory and the late Mr. W. B. Yeats, as great a mystic as he was a poet, who jointly collected much Irish folk-lore, reveals that the majority of the people whom they examined believed that Fairyland was a region to which the souls of living folk might be spirited away while their bodies remained upon earth. “The dead,” wrote the great Jacob Grimm, “were known to the Norsemen as elves.” The resemblance of the subterranean fairy world to the pre-Christian Hades helps to make plain the likeness of the whole fairy economy and background to those of the dead. Pluto and Proserpine, the Classical monarchs of the departed, were in early mediaeval times identified with the King and Queen of Faerie. In the early English poem of “Orfeo and Heurodys”, which localizes the story of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in England, Hades is called “Faerie”. But we must not confuse this idea with that of the Celtic insular otherworld, which was at first assuredly a Land of the Gods, and which later became confused with the conception of Fairyland. In the ancient ScotsEnglish romance of “Thomas of Erceldoune” (Thomas the Rhymer) the background is that of the mediaeval Hades, fused with that of the Celtic paradise, the apples on its fruit trees must not be eaten, and “the fiend of hell” comes once in seven years to claim a victim from among its inhabitants. The germ of the primitive and prehistoric view of Faerie was indeed the idea of that subterranean mode of existence or “dead-aliveness” which early man conceived as going on in the mounds and tumuli in which he buried his dead. By poets and scholars it was confused with the Classical Hades, and later, by the churchmen who copied the old Irish sagas, with that of Purgatory. And if I find difficulty in appropriately presenting in brief compass the evidence that the fairies are one and the same with the dead, what shall I say of that even greater body of proof which reveals their association with ancient places of sepulture, barrows, tumuli and stone circles? This part of the evidence has been almost entirely neglected in our country, although the pioneer labours of Mr. L. V. Grinsell in his Ancient Burial Mounds of England, and elsewhere, has done much to redeem the reproach. In France the work of MM. Saintyves, Le Rouzic and Professor Salomon Reinach has proved beyond question that standing stones in Brittany and other parts of that country are associated with fairies, who are thought of as inhabiting or “ensouling” them. That these fays represent the spirits of dead chieftains once worshipped ancestrally admits of no doubt. But we must regard the fairies as the dead in an especial sense, for they were the spirits of the departed who awaited rebirth or reincarnation. Good evidence exists, and is multiplying, that savage people in a low condition of culture in Australia, Borneo and elsewhere believed that the spirits of the dead gather in communities in wild and deserted places, in hills, forests and lakes, and that when the period for their reincarnation comes round they take up a position of vantage in some isolated rock, tree or pond, from which it is thought they spring out upon a passing woman and enter the body of her yet unborn infant. Such spirits possess fairy-like traits an. habits and are regarded by savages precisely as the ancient peoples of Europe regarded fairies. [35] In Scotland, Ireland and Wales, numerous woods and copses, stones and rocks, lakes and lochs were formerly regarded either as the dwelling-places of the fairies or of the dead, and this reveals that such a belief as presently obtains among peoples of low culture today formerly flourished in Britain. Moreover, the idea associated with fairy changelings was certainly associated with that of reincarnation - the changeling, when unmasked, being invariably the spirit of an ancient man, or ancestor. This theory not only accounts for the origin of fairy spirits, but it also explains and absorbs the remaining theories that fairies are either elementary spirits of nature or that they are a memory of vanished aboriginal races. Their residence in trees, stones and watercourses while awaiting reincarnation may make them appear as nature-spirits, but per se they are nothing of the kind. As Ridgeway says, all nature-spirits are regarded as having once been human beings. In early times the human dead were thought of as seeking an abode in desert places far from the dwellings of men. The theory that they were exclusively vanished races naturally also falls to the ground when we come to regard them as the ghosts of aboriginal folk of the Stone and Bronze Ages, which, in the first instance, they most certainly were, a tradition which appears to have survived throughout the ages. There are several instances on record of what would appear to be a relationship between Druidism and the fairy folk, although, to judge from at least one passage in Irish myth, no love seems to have been lost between the disciples of the two cults - if as separate cults they may be described. That a secret fairy cultus did actually exist until late times, having its own priesthood and initiates, I hope to be able to prove, but whether it was associated with Druidism or not it would be difficult, if indeed at all possible, to ascertain. We read in Welsh folk-lore that fairies are the souls of good Druids who died before the introduction of Christianity, and who were “not good enough for heaven and not bad enough for hell”. [36] It was also conjectured by Maury that the functions of prophetic Gaulish Druidesses were confused with those of the fairies. [37] Wirt Sikes observes that some Welsh traditions exist which relate that the fairies were merely the Druids in hiding from their enemies. [38] This, of course, is to confound the priests or worshippers with that which was worshipped. The same belief exists in Cornwall, the fairies there being regarded as Druids who had shrunk in size “because they would not give up their idolatries” ! [39] The self-same notion, almost, was put forward by the Rev. P. Graham in his Sketches of Perthshire, in which he explained the superstition regarding fairy changelings as a species of kidnapping by which the Druids, harassed by the priesthood of the new Christian faith, “procured the necessary supply of members for their order”. [40] But a tradition actually appears to exist that the Druids had a close association with the fairy sphere. “The Druids,” says Joyce, “were the intermediaries with the fairies and with the invisible world in general for good or evil, and they could protect people from the malice of evil-disposed spirits of every kind.” [41] In Irish lore we are informed that the Druids reverenced the well of Slan and “offered gifts to it as if it were a god”. As Whitley Stokes indicates, this is the only passage connecting the Druids with well-worship, and Wentz remarks upon its importance, because it establishes the relation between the Druids and their control of spirits like fairies, who were thought of as haunting or inhabiting such wells. [42] In one passage in Irish tale we read of a “fairy Druid” (sighe-draoi), named Lassa Buaicht, which seems to infer a close connection between the fairy and Druid beliefs or cults. [43] Is it probable that the fairy faith constituted a cultus in any way associated with or descended from Druidism? The Scottish evidence at least appears to be in favour of such a theory. That many people, especially witches, entered fairy mounds for the purposes of initiation seems apparent. Indeed, I would differentiate between the terms “fairy” and “fairy folk”, the last so commonly encountered in the accounts of witch-trials in Scotland, as applying in the first case to the fairy spirits and in the latter as signifying the priests and worshippers of the fairy cult. Such places of initiation were, of course, frequently confounded with the Land of Faerie itself, which appears a not unnatural error in the circumstances. But that they were the seats of a faith associated with the belief in Faerie, a fairy cultus, seems obvious enough to me, and that the people who inhabited them were the initiates, hierophants, and mystae of that faith seems an equally reasonable surmise, judging from the numerous tales of the all-too-human character of these mound-dwellers. The hillock of Cnocnam Bocan, or the Knowe of the Goblins, in Menteith, is spoken of as formerly “the headquarters of the faries of the whole district of Menteith”, who were granted by the Earl of Menteith the Cui-n’an-Uriskin, or Cave of the Faries in Ben Venue, at which, says Dr. Graham in his Sketches of the Picturesque Scenery of Perthshire, “the solemn stated meetings of the order were regularly held”. Great nobles do not confer messuages either on hill or in dale upon airy spirits, nor do the “orders” of the same meet on earth. Indeed, the Earl in question was spoken of as “overlord of the faery folk”. The “folk” in question were probably initiates of the fairy cult, and thus real enough. Also it must be clear that the very large number of fairy knowes or hills in Scotland and elsewhere have some association with such a condition of things. The knowe at Aberfoyle, a very extensive one, to which the Rev. Robert Kirk was eventually spirited away as legend avers, the Eildon Hill, the Brogh of the Boyne in Ireland, the Calton Hill at Edinburgh - all such places seem to have been centres at which a process of initiation in the fairy cult could formerly be gone through. Such a spot was the knowe at Aberfoyle; the Maes-howe in Orkney; Coldach broch, Perthshire, and many others. Such places have usually a long passage leading to a chamber with cells on either side, such as are typical of ancient centres of initiation. Returning to the consideration of other classes of spirits, we find considerable dubiety existing concerning the precise nature of the gruagach, so frequently encountered in Irish and Scottish lore. The name means “the longhaired one”, and there is abundance of evidence that this spirit was until quite recent times placated in the Western Isles of Scotland by oblations of milk, which were poured into a hollow stone known as “the gruagach’s stone”. That he was a godling or spirit who acted as a guardian of the cattle is not in doubt. But in folk-tale he appears as a valiant warrior and sorcerer. J. F. Campbell was of opinion that he represented a folk-memory of members of the Druidic caste. The gruagach’s acts of sorcery in folk-tale are numerous, but I adhere to the view that he is a broken-down form of the sun-god, as his streaming hair, prowess in arms and generally gorgeous appearance in folk-tale, as well as his patronage of cattle, would seem to indicate. [44] The urisk is a shaggy, satyr-like spirit which appears to haunt lonely, desert places in the Highlands, and more particularly waterfalls. He closely resembles the Irish phooka, which has also a goat-like appearance, and the Manx phynoderee, who partakes of the same attributes. But he has also the traits of the brownie, as he assists the farmer in his agricultural tasks. Brownie so closely recalls the lar, or spirit of the dead ancestor, formerly worshipped in Rome, that I believe him to have had a common origin with that species of spirit at a remote time. He is the spirit-ancestor of the farmhouse, as is the banshee of the castle. A particularly militant spirit is the ly erg, which frequented Glen More. He appears, says Sibbald in his MS. collections, in the habit of a soldier with a red hand, challenging wayfarers, and should anyone engage him in combat he is certain to die soon thereafter. Certain Celtic spirits are of so fantastic and repellent a type as to inspire the feeling that they must have sprung from the imagination of an exceedingly primitive race which preceded the civilized Celts in Ireland and Scotland. Of the terrible fachan we read that he “had one hand out of his chest, one leg out of his haunch, and one eye in the front of his face. He wore a mantle of twisted feathers and his head was crowned by a tuft. Another and similar horror was the bocan, which leapt upon unwary travellers in the Isle of Skye and slew them, mutilating their bodies terribly.” [45] The fuath is a water-spirit resembling the bean-nighe, with webbed feet, yellow hair, a tail, a mane and no nose - yet she dresses in a green kirtle! But the name of such creatures is indeed legion. They have on the whole a close affinity with the water-kelpie. Perhaps no Scottish spirit has been so frequently described as the water-kelpie, a river goblin which usually appears in the form of a horse, but which on occasion takes the form of a handsome young man. The kelpie haunts fords and pools, and seeks to lure unwary travellers to their doom. The wayfarer may see a horse browsing by the waterside and seek to gain the opposite bank by mounting it. But once in the middle of the stream, the kelpie throws his rider, leaving him to perish in the flood. His general appearance was that of a black horse with wild and staring eyes. Countless tales are told of the demon-animal and nearly every stream of any size in Scotland at one time could boast of its kelpie. In his human form the kelpie might appear as a goodly youth and sometimes the maiden on whom he had set his affections became timeously aware of his supernatural character by observing a fragment of water-weed or rush in his hair. If caught in his equine form, he could be yoked to heavy work, the best means of capturing him being to cast over his head a bridle on which the sign of the cross had been made. But once in harness, he could be forced to carry stones to build a mill or steading, though in the end he usually contrived to make himself scarce. In the Island of Lewis a sacrifice to a sea-god known as Shoney, to secure good fishing and plenty of sea-ware, was celebrated at Hallow-tide or Halloween, and was discontinued only about the year 1660. At nightfall the fisher-folk went down to the sea, and having knelt and repeated the Paternoster at a spot some four miles distant from the chapel of St. Malvey, a representative of the community carrying a vessel brimming with ale, waded waist-high’ into the water, crying: “Shoney, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that you’ll be so kind as to send us plenty of sea-ware for enriching our ground the ensuing year.” He then poured the ale as a libation into the sea, after which the company repaired to the chapel for a space, whence, after a brief season of silence, they finally betook themselves to the fields, where they spent the rest of the night drinking and dancing. These folk, it may be remarked, were almost exclusively Protestants. [46] Shoney of the Lews is almost certainly the same as the “Davy Jones” of maritime proverb - that is “the old John”, or fiend, of the sea, in whose “locker” drowned seamen are retained - a memory of the belief that the drowned mariner was once regarded as a sacrifice to the demon or deity of the sea. The muireartach, or “hag of the sea”, whose legend has spread all over the Highlands from Caithness and Lewis to the Southern Hebrides, is bald and ruddy-haired, with a dark blue-grey face the colour of coal, and protruding jagged teeth. In her forehead gleams one goggle-eye. She is the Carlin of the storm which beats upon our western and northern coasts, the mother of the king of Lochlann, the under-water realm of Celtic myth. [47] “The Blue Men of the Minch”, who haunt the narrow channel between Lewis and the Shiant Islands, are described as blue in colour, with long grey faces, floating from the waist out of the water and following in the track of boats and ships to lure their occupants to destruction. One of these. Blue Men was captured by the crew of a ship and was bound hand and foot. But his companions followed and, hearing their voices, the captive, by a mighty effort, burst his bonds and regained his freedom. It is scarcely necessary to add that these “Blue Men” are merely personalizations of the waves. [48] As regards the spirit who presides over the Clyde, the late Professor Rhys was of opinion that she enjoyed a reputation rich in literary tradition. He equated the “Shalott” of late Arthurian romance with Dumbarton, and the famous Elaine of Astolat with the patron spirit of Clutha’s stream. “The original of the name (Dumbarton) which variously appears as Shalott, Escalot and other forms,” he wrote, “was probably Alclut, the old Welsh name of the rock of Dumbarton on the Clyde”, while Elaine was, like Undine, Fand or Vivien, “a woman of the lake-lady type”, and her magic mirror, which cracked when the famous Tennysonian curse came upon her, was a symbol of the water which surrounded her rock-built castle. This, of course, is mythological interpretation with a vengeance and very much according to the methods of the day-before-yesterday. Dumbarton is certainly one and the same with Alclut, a name which became Normanized into Shalott or Astolat, but I can find no sufficient reason for identifying Elaine, “the lily maid”, with a river deity, while the notion that her magic mirror typifies the Clyde seems unsound in view of what we know of scrying-glasses or other visionary, surf aces, rivers never being employed for the purposes of divination, so far as I am aware. “Elaine” is merely a form invented by Sir Thomas Malory from older Welsh myth, and her original is that “Eleu” who was the wife of Merlin, and a British goddess of the dawn. She it was who built the glass castle which imprisoned him, and the cracking of her mirror is. an allegory of the breaking of the morning mists symbolized by the house of glass, at the approach of the rising sun. [49] Ireland knows of yet other spirits than the banshee and the bean-nighe. The cluricane or luricane, sometimes called the leprecaun, is a kind of supernatural cobbler of very diminutive proportions, who dwells in caves and nooks, where he makes tiny footgear. The name has a suspicious resemblance to the old English “lubberkin”, a word used of a goblin. The fir larrig (darrig), or “red man”, is a spirit garbed in a sugar-loaf hat, a scarlet coat, corduroy breeches and woollen stockings. He had a long, yellow face and streaming grey hair. He usually announced his presence to the families he was in the habit of visiting by thrusting his arm through the keyhole of the cabin door. If it were not opened to him, mischief would befall the cattle. [50] Wales has also her own complement of spirits other than the Tylwyth Teg, or fairies. The bwbach, or biobach, closely resembles the brownie, and undertakes domestic work in exchange for provender. Like him, too, it had a tricksy side and was fond of practical jokes and horseplay of the rougher sort, puffing stools from under folk and jangling the fire-irons on the hearth - a species of poltergeist, indeed. [51] Gwyn ap Nudd, the Lord of the Dead, and an ancient British god, remains in Welsh and English tradition as the Wild Huntsman who leads the Cwn Annwn, or the hounds of Hades, over the waste lands at night. They are thought of as bearing away the souls of the dying. In Devonshire, a predominantly Celtic province, they are known as “the Wisht Hounds”, who career through the midnight spaces of Dartmoor, and in Durham and Yorkshire, where a good deal of Celtic blood remains, they still flourish as “Gabriel Hounds”, a pack which foretells death Or disaster. The clamour they make is sometimes attributed to the “gaggles”, or flocks, of bean-geese, which fly southward from Scandinavia on the approach of winter. The superstition has many analogies in other countries, especially in Germany, where it is known as “the Hunt of Woden” or Odin. [52] From what has been said of British Celtic spirits as a whole it must be obvious that a large proportion of them, judging from their wild and frequently superhideous appearance and traits, must have been the imaginative generation of a fancy greatly more barbarous than any which might have issued from the comparatively civilized Celtic mentality. That they were the product of the imagination of peoples relatively aboriginal to the Celts is scarcely to be questioned. At the same time a few of them at least appear to be found among the Celtic gods in a decayed and “broken-down” stage, the memory of whom has remained among the Celtic peoples and whose traits have been exaggerated into modem and sometimes grotesque forms by the fears or the superstitions of a peasantry prone to the fantastic. A host of mythical or magical animals, birds and monsters were regarded as haunting the Celtic peoples. In England the memory of these has either perished or is remembered only in legends of local dragons or serpents. In Wales the chief representative of this class is the avanc, a monstrous creature which dwells at the bottom of a lake, and the capture of which appears to have been one of the outstanding duties or adventures of British deities and heroes. Nor can Ireland boast of many mythic beasts, save the phooka, which is as frequently a goat, or a horse, as one of the manifestations of a Puck-like spirit. Celtic Scotland, on the other hand, is a veritable mine of grisly monsters which possess a most complete occult zoology of their own, and until recently these bulked largely in the rural imagination. The lavellan, says Sibbald, is an animal peculiar to Caithness, living in the waters or marshes of this northern shire. It has the head of a rat or mouse, and is of the same colour as those rodents. It was believed to have the power of inflicting injuries upon cattle from a distance of more than a hundred feet. When in Ausdale, in Caithness, Pennant made inquiries about the lavellan, and suspected it to be the water shrew-mouse, or water-vole. The country people, he added, believed it to be noxious to cattle. They preserved the skin, and, as a cure for their sick beasts, gave them the water in which it had been dipped - an instance of the supposed curative power of sympathetic magic. it is mentioned by Robb Donn, the famous Sutherland bard, in a satirical song, in which he warns the subject of his scorn not to leave the clachan or go to moss or wood, “lest the lavellan come and smite him”. The uilebheist is a sea-monster with several heads, frequently mentioned in Highland story. it is sometimes called the draygan, and this would seem to give it a community of origin with the Norse sea-serpent or “drake”. A gigantic waterbird known as the boobrie was supposed to haunt the fresh-water and sea-lochs of Argyllshire. His appetite matched his bulk, and he devoured sheep and even cows wholesale. One who ciftimed to have seen him described him as resembling the bird known as the great northern diver in form and colour, with the exception of white patches on the neck and breast. The neck was long and the beak hooked at the extremity like an eagle’s. The feet were webbed, with tremendous claws. The footprints of the boobrie covered a space equal to that contained within the span of a pair of large antlers, and its voice was “like the roar of an angry bull”. That this creature had at least an existence in the popular mind less than a century ago is proved by the number of local stories concerning it. Many travellers in old Scotland allude to the barnacle goose, and even some of those who visited our Western coasts in the eighteenth century did not scruple to include it in their list of Caledonian marvels. Some believed it to grow upon trees, and to take final bird-shape on dropping from their branches into the water. But the most common tradition referred the origin of the cadhan, as it was called In the Hebrides, to the worm which attaches itself as a parasite to floating wood that has been some time in the water, often covering it so thickly as to conceal the surface of the log. The superstition is akin to that once current in the Highlands that eels grow from horsehairs. Those who partook of their flesh would, it was said, become violently insane. An associated idea was that porpoises were developed from dog-fish. But the barnacle goose was in no sense peculiar to Scotland, and was known in Wales and parts of Europe. Reminiscent of the hound of the Baskervilles is the Cu sith, or fairy hound, which the Western islanders describe as being as large as a two-year-old cow, and of a dark green colour, with ears of still deeper green. Its long tail was rolled up in a coil on its back, but was sometimes “plaited like the straw rug of a pack-saddle”. It was usually kept in the fairy knowe or brugh as a watchdog by the elfin folk who dwelt there, but at times roamed about loose, making its lair in the clefts of the rocks. The tracks made by its feet were as large as the spread of the human hand, and the noise made by its passing was like that of a horse galloping. Thrice only does it bark or bay, in short, sharp growls, and at the third bark the terrified traveller is overtaken and pulled down. The fairy cat is as large as a dog, and is pure black, save for a splash of white on the breast. There is a good deal of evidence either that the cat was formerly worshipped in certain parts of the Highlands, or that it possessed some totemic significance in these regions, if the number of clan- and place-names derived from it are any criterion. Monsters of a nebulous character, difficult to describe because of the very obscure terms in which they are spoken of by old writers, abounded in various districts in Scotland. The Ettrick Shepherd writes of a creature called falm, which haunted a mountain at Glen Aven. “He appears,” writes Hogg, “to be no native of this world, but an occasional visitant, whose intentions are evil and dangerous. He is only seen about the break of day, and on the highest verge of the mountain. His head is twice as large as his body, and if any living creature cross the track over which he has passed before the sun shine on it, certain death is the consequence.” The water-horse of the Western Highlands (each uisge) must be differentiated from the kelpie, to which, indeed, it has only a general resemblance. In shape and colour it resembled an ordinary horse, and, indeed, frequently mixed with horses when placed out to graze. But should anyone mount it, it galloped off with him to the nearest loch or inlet, and plunged into the depths, where it devoured its rider. It had the power of transforming its shape, and could appear as a young man or a boy, or even at times as an inanimate object. He who could place a cow-shackle about its neck or a cap on its head completely subdued it, and, so long as these were kept in place, it would do the work of an ordinary farm-horse. In Skye it is credited with a sharp bill or snout of a brown hue, but its body-colour was either grey, or black with a white blaze on the forehead. When taking man’s shape it could not divest itself of its hoofs, which usually betrayed it. Those farmers who were foolish enough to use it as a beast of burden were sooner or hater involved in ruinous loss. When killed, the water-horse proved to be “nothing but turf and a soft mass like jelly-fish”. It could. be shot only with a silver bullet, excellent proof of its supernatural character. The water-bull was supposed to dwell in lonely moorland lochs, whence it issued only at night. It frequently mated with ordinary cattle, and, as it had no ears, calves having short or rudimentary ears were thought to be its progeny. It had a strange, unnatural bellow, something like the crowing of a cock, and is described as being “a small, ugly, very black animal, bull-shaped, soft, and slippery”, its aqueous origin doubtless dictating the latter qualities. A much more formidable mythical beast was the biasd na srogaig, or “beast of the lowering horn”, which seems to have been peculiar to Skye. Indeed, from all ‘accounts it closely resembled a unicorn, with a single horn on its forehead, and dwelt in lochans and small sheets of water. It was a bulky, clumsy animal, with long, ungainly legs. More terrible still was “the big beast of Lochawe”, which had twelve legs, and could be heard in winter floundering among the ice. Accounts of its appearance varied, some giving it equine form, while others described it as resembling a large eel or serpent. Scottish folk-lore has many accounts of a strange white serpent which is certainly mythical, and whose flesh or skin possessed a valuable medicinal virtue. The legend of the Ramsays of Bamff recounts how an ancestor of the line gained fame and fortune as a physician by catching the snake and eating its flesh, which permitted him to cure the King of Scotland of a serious complaint by the simple expedient of looking through him, the reptile’s virtue of clairvoyance being passed on to the practitioner - surely the earliest example of X-rays! An insect with an amusing as well as a fabulous name and existence is the Gigelorum, or giol-daoram, said to be the most microscopic of all created things. It is supposed to make its nest in the mite’s ear, and thus can never have been seen by the naked eye. The burach-bhaoi, that is “the wizard’s shackle”, was a mythical creature of the eel or leech species which abounded at fords in the Western Highlands, and which twined itself like a band around the feet of passing horses, so that they fell into the water and were drowned, when it sucked their blood. It had nine eyes in its head and back, all of which squinted. In Skye it was believed that this animal was to be found in Badenoch, and it was thought to haunt especially the dark waters of Loch Tummel, in Perthshire, and certain streams in Argyll. There was formerly a popular saying in the Western Highlands that “seals and swans are kings’ children under enchantment” - a reminiscence probably of the well-known Celtic myth of the “Children of Lir”. They have been seen by men in lonely places to divest themselves of their covering of feathers or fur, and to take the shape of handsome princes and princesses. Myths and legends of such enchanted animals are legion. Seals, which abound in the Shetland Islands, were formerly believed to be Finn men and women in disguise who had swum to the islands in seal-shape. Could one seize them when they had cast off the skin which gave them animal form, he could retain them as prisoners at his pleasure, unless they succeeded in recovering the pelt, when they plunged into the sea and escaped. There was formerly a sept in North Uist known as “the MacCodrums of the Seals”, who, tradition avers, were descended from these enchanted animals. In many of the holy wells of Scotland a pair of mystical fishes were said to have their abode. In such a well near the Church of Kilmore, in Lorne, two black fishes were still to be seen in the seventeenth century, and were said to have existed there for generations. The natives called them easg saint, or “holy fishes”. The superstition surrounding such mysterious fishes can perhaps be attributed to a Druidical origin. The wells they inhabited were usually situated beneath a hazel tree, the sacred red nuts of which were supposed to fall into the well and afford them sustenance, as they seem to have done in the case of the “salmon of knowledge”, the red spots on whose skin were thought to be due to the same cause. The fishes in question were believed to be the presiding spirits of the well, and seem to have had a certain oracular character, gained from the magical nuts on which they fed. To kill or eat them was regarded as a crime certain to bring down celestial punishment upon the perpetrator. [1] D’Arbois de Jubainville, The Irish Mythological Cycle, pp.201 ff. [2] Walter Map, Dist. Chap. ii. [3] Sir Thomas Malory, Morte d’Arthur, III, p. 339. [4] R. Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth, p. 70. [5] R. Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 168 - 70. [6] E. Hull, Folklore of the British Isles, pp. 209 - 10. [7] T. T. Westropp, “A Folk-Lore Survey of County Clare”, in “Folk-Lore”, XXI, p. 191. [8] T. T. Westropp, “Folk-Lore”, XXIX, p. 309. [9] T. T. Westropp, “Folk-Lore”, XXI, p. 188. [10] T. Crofton Croker, Traditions of the South of Ireland, p. 102. [11] T. Crofton Croker, op. cit., p. 120. [12] T. T. .Westropp, in “Folk-Lore,” XXI, p. 188. [13] J. G. Campbell. The Fians, p. 45. [14] Wood-Martin, Pagan Ireland, p. 135. [15] T. T. Westropp, in “Folk-Lore”, XXI, p. 190. [16] D’Arbois de Jubainvilie, op. cit., p. 110. [17] The Dethe and False Murdure of James Stewards, Kyng of Scots. (Glasgow, 1818.) [18] R. Law, Memorialls, pp. 74 ff. [19] “Choice Notes”, from Notes and Queries, p. 69. [20] P. Fraser Tytler, History of Scotland, III, p. 417. [21] J. Rhys, Celtic Folk-Lore, II, p. 453. [22] Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, pp. 219 ff. [23] Wirt Sikes, op. cit., pp. 216 ff. [24] J. G. Campbell, Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, pp. 45, 191. [25] S. Grieve, The Book of Colonsay and Oronsay, pp. 176 - 9. For the glaistig, see J. G. Campbell, op. cit., Index; and A. A. MacGregor, The Peat Fire Flame, pp. 59 - 66. [26] A, A. MacGregor, op. cit., p. 298. [27] M. MacPhail, “Folk-Lore”, IX, p. 91. [28] E. Hull, The Cuchullin Saga, p. 247. [29] J. G. Campbell, The Fians, p. 33. [30] F. S. Copeland, “Folk-Lore”, XLII, pp. 405 ff. [31] E. Hull, quoted by Wentz in The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, p. 70. [32] A. H. Krappe, The Science of Folk-Lore, pp. 87 - 9. [33] L. C. Wimberley, Folk-lore of the English and Scottish Ballads, pp. 165, 22,5, 240 - 1, 280. [34] R. Kirk, op. cit., p. 79. [35] E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity, pp. 236 ff.; J. Frazer, The Belief in Immortality, I, pp.93 ff. [36] J. C. Daniels, “Notes on Welsh Folk-Lore”, “Folk-Lore”, XXX, p. 157. [37] L. F. A. Maury, Les Fées du Moyen Age, pp. 55, 62. [38] Wirt Sikes, op. cit., pp. 127 - 31. [39] R. Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, p. 81 [40] P. Graham, Sketches of Perthshire, p. 263. [41] J. W. Joyce, Social History of Ancient Ireland, I, p. 228. [42] W. Y. Evans Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, p. 432. [43] P. Kennedy, op. cit., p. 228. [44] J. F. Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, I, pp. 86 ff. [45] J. F. Campbell, op. cit., II, pp. 101 ff. [46] M. Martin, A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, pp. 28 - 9. [47] K. W. Grant, Myth, Tradition and Story from Western Argyll, p. 13. [48] J. G. Campbell, op. cit., pp. 199 ff. [49] J. Rhys, Arthurian Legend [50] T. Crofton Croker, op. cit., pp. 278 ff. [51] Wirt Sikes, op. cit., pp. 30 ff. [52] W. Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, p 129. |