The Water Bull
The water bull, also known as tarbh uisge in Scottish
Gaelic, is a mythological Scottish creature. Generally regarded as a nocturnal
resident of moorland lochs, it is usually more amiable than its equine
counterpart the water horse, but has similar amphibious and shapeshifting
abilities.
What follows are some descriptions and tales from old sources:
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| 1. Human-headed bull, Nineveh |
The WATER-BULL is like a common bull, though he is
amphibious and supernatural, and has the power of assuming other shapes. He may
have been a buffalo, or bison, or bos primogenious long ago; or even a walrus, though
mythology may have furnished his attributes. There were human-headed bulls at
Nineveh, and sacred bulls in Egypt, which had to do with inundations. Bulls are
sculptured on ancient Scotch stones; and there is a water-bull in nearly every
Scotch loch of any note. Loch Ness is full of them, but "they never go up
to the Fall of Foyers."
In one of the islands here (Islay), on the northern side,
there lived before now a great farmer, and he had a large stock of cattle. It
happened one day that a calf was born amongst them, and an old woman who lived
in the place, as soon as ever she saw it, ordered that it should be put in a
house by itself, and kept there for seven years, and fed on the milk of three
cows. And as everything which this old woman advised was always done in the
" bailie," this also was done. (It is to be remarked that the progeny
of the water-bull can be recognized by an expert by the shape of the ears.) A
long time after these things a servant girl went with the farmer's herd of
cattle to graze them at the side of a loch, and she sat herself down near the bank.
There, in a little while, what should she see walking towards her but a man (no
description of him given in this version), who asked her to fasg his hair. She said she was willing enough to do him that service, and so he
laid his head on her knee, and she began to arrange his locks, as Neapolitan
damsels also do by their swains. But soon she got a great fright, for, growing amongst
the man's hair, she found a great quantity of Liobhagach an locha, a certain slimy green weed that abounds in such lochs, fresh, salt, and
brackish. (In another version it was sand.) The girl knew that if she screamed
there was an end of her, so she kept her terror to herself, and worked away
till the man fell asleep, as he was with his head on her knee. Then she untied
her apron strings, and slid the apron quietly on to the ground with its burden
upon it, and then she took her feet home as fast as it was in her heart. Now
when she was getting near the houses she gave a glance behind her, and there
she saw her caraid (friend) coming after her in the likeness
of a horse. He had nearly reached her, when the old woman who saw what was
going on called out to open the door of the wild bull's house, and in a moment out sprang the bull. He gave an eye all
round about him, and then rushed off to meet the horse, and when they met they fought,
and they never stopped fighting till they drove each other out into the sea,
and no one could tell which of them was best. Next day the body of the bull was
found on the shore all torn and spoilt, but the horse was never more seen at all.
The bull was large and black, he was found groaning in a
peat hag, and was helped by the girl's lover, who brought him food, though he suspected
him to be the water-bull. The girl was dark-haired and brown-eyed, and the
farmer's daughter. Her lover was an active Highland lad, and a drover, who went
by the name of Eachan coir nan ord, " Gentle Hector of the
hammers," and he was fair-haired. There was a rejected rival suitor who
takes the place of the water-horse, who threw his plaid over the girl's head
when she is at a shealing, and carried her off, but the black water-bull rushed
in just at the nick of time, crushed the wicked wooer to the earth, invited the
lady to mount on his back, and carried her safely home, when he disappeared,
singing:
Aid came to me by a gentle youth.
And to a maiden I brought aid;
After three hundred years of my hard age,
Give me my freedom without delay.
Popular tales of the West Highlands, orally collected by J.
F. Campbell vol. IV, 1862.
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| 2. Water bull |
THE WATER-BULL (Tarbh Uirge).
This animal, unlike the Water-horse, was of harmless character,
and did no mischief to those who came near its haunts. It staid in little
lonely moorland lochs, whence it issued only at night. It was then heard lowing near the loch, and came among the farmers' cattle,
but was seldom seen. Calves having short ears, as if the upper part had been
cut off with a knife, or, as it is termed in Gaelic, Carc-chluasach {i.e.
knife-eared), were said to be its offspring. It had no ears itself and hence
its calves had only half ears. In the district of Lorn, a dairy-maid and herd, before leaving
in the evening the fold, in which the cows had been gathered to be milked and
left for the night, saw a small ugly very black animal, bull-shaped, soft and slippery,
coming among the herd. It had an unnatural bellow, something like the crowing
of a cock. The man and woman fled in terror, but, on coming back in the
morning, found the cattle lying in the fold as though nothing had occurred.
Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, Collected
entirely from Oral Sources, By John Gregorson Campbell, Minister of Tiree, 1900
So far we have been dealing with water-spirits more or less
human in form. Another class consists of those with the shape and attributes of
horses and bulls. The members of this class are connected specially with
Highland districts. Lonely lochs were their favorite haunts. In treeless
regions, a belief in such creatures would naturally arise. Any ordinary animal
in such an environment would appear of a larger size than usual, and the eye of
the beholder would transmit the error to his imagination, thereby still further
magnifying the creature’s bulk. In some instances, the notion might arise even
when there was no animal on the scene. A piece of rock, or some other physical
feature of the landscape would be enough to excite superstitious fancies. Mr.
Campbell remarks, “In Sutherland and elsewhere, many believe that they have
seen these fancied animals. I have been told of English sportsmen who went in
pursuit of them, so circumstantial were the accounts of those who believed they
had seen them. The witnesses are so numerous, and their testimony agrees so
well, that there must be some old deeply-rooted Celtic belief which clothes
every object with the dreaded form of the Each Uisge, i.e., Water-horse.” When
waves appeared on a lake, and there seemed no wind to account for them,
superstitious people readily grasped at the idea that the phenomenon was due to
the action of some mysterious water-spirit. As Dr. Tylor points out, there
seems to have been a confusion “between the ‘spiritual water-demon’ and the
‘material water-monster.’ Any creature found in or near the water would
naturally be reckoned its guardian spirit.
The Rev. Dr. Stewart gives the following particulars about
water-horses and water-bulls in his “’Twixt Ben Nevis and Glencoe.” They are
thought of “as, upon the whole, of the same shape and form as the more kindly
quadrupeds after whom they have been named, but larger, fiercer, and with an
amount of ‘devilment’ and cunning about them, of which the latter, fortunately,
manifest no trace. They are always fat and sleek, and so full of strength and
spirit and life that the neighing of the one and the bellowing of the other
frequently awake]the mountain echoes to their inmost recesses for miles and
miles around …. Calves and foals are the result of occasional intercourse between
these animals and their more civilised domestic congeners, such calves bearing
unmistakable proofs of their mixed descent in the unusual size and
pendulousness of their ears and the wide aquatic spread of their jet black
hoofs; the foals, in their clean limbs, large flashing eyes, red distended
nostrils, and fiery spirit. The initiated still pretend to point out cattle
with more or less of this questionable blood in them, in almost every drove of
pure Highland cows and heifers you like to bring under their notice.”
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| 3. Water-horse (Each uisge) |
The lochs
of Llundavrà and Achtriachtan, in Glencoe, were at one time famous for their
water-bulls; and Loch Treig for its water-horses, believed to be the fiercest
specimens of that breed in the world. If anyone suggested to a Lochaber or Rannoch
Highlander that the cleverest horse-tamer could “clap a saddle on one of the
demon-steeds of Loch Treig, as he issues in the grey dawn, snorting, from his
crystal-paved sub-lacustral stalls, he would answer, with a look of mingled
horror and awe, ‘Impossible!’ The water-horse would tear him into a thousand
pieces with his teeth and trample and pound him into pulp with his jet-black,
iron-hard, though unshod hoofs!”
MacCulloch, the author of “A Description of the Western
Islands of Scotland,” found the belief in the water-bull a living faith among
the people, notably among the dwellers beside Loch Rannoch and Loch Awe. He
tells of a farmer who employed his sons to search a certain stream for one of
these creatures, while the farmer himself carried a gun loaded with sixpences
to be discharged when the monster appeared, silver alone having any effect on
such beasts.
In the Isle of Man the water-bull was, and perhaps still is
believed in by the peasantry. It is called in Manx, tarroo-ushtey. There is
much force in Mr. Campbell’s conclusion that the old Celts reverenced a
destroying water-god, to whom the horse was sacred, or who assumed the form of
a horse. A similar notion may have originated the belief in the water-bull.
Folklore of Scottish lochs and springs, By James M. Mackinlay 1893
Source Pictures:
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