Gaelic Folklore (2): The Water-Horse

2.
The Water-horse

A water horse also known as Each Uisge in Scottish Gaelic, is a mythological Scottish creature.

What follows are some descriptions and tales from old sources:

This, the Highland water-horse, is perhaps the fiercest and most dangerous of all the water-horses, although the Cabyll Ushtey runs it close. It differs from the kelpie in haunting the sea and lochs, while the Kelpie belongs to running water. It seems also to transform itself more readily. Its most usual form is that of a sleek and handsome horse, which almost offers itself to be ridden, but if anyone is so rash as to mount it, he is carried at headlong speed into the lake and devoured. Only his liver is rejected, and floats to shore. It is said that its skin is adhesive, and the rider cannot tear himself off it. It also appears sometimes as a gigantic bird and sometimes as a handsome young man.

A wide-spread tale which is possibly cautionary in origin is of several little girls being carried away by him. A good version is told of a small lochan near Aberfeldy. Seven little girls and a little boy were going for a walk on a Sunday afternoon when they saw a pretty little pony grazing beside the loch. One of the little girls mounted him, and then another and another until all seven were seated on his back. The little boy was more canny, and he noticed that the pony grew longer to accommodate each new rider. So he took refuge among the high rough rocks at the end of the loch. Suddenly the pony turned its head and noticed him. 'Come on little scabby-head,' it cried, 'get on my back!' The boy stayed in shelter and the pony rushed towards him, the little girls screaming, but unable to pull their hands from its back. To and fro they dodged among the rocks, but the pony could not reach the boy, and at length it tired of trying, and plunged into the loch with its sevenfold prey on its back. Next morning the livers of the seven children were washed up on the shore.

An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Katherine Briggs, 1977

Pict.1

There was a smith in Raasay. He had a herd of cattle and his own family herded it. One night his daughter did not return, and in the morning they found her heart and lungs on the loch side known to be haunted by the Each Uisge. The smith was heartbroken, and determined to destroy the monster. He set up a forge by the loch and he and his boy forged great iron hooks and made them red-hot in the fire. They roasted a sheep on the fire and the scent of it went out over the water. A steaming mist arose, and the water-horse, like an ugly, shaggy yearling, rose out of the loch. It seized the sheep and they grappled it with the hooks and killed it there. But in the morning there were no bones nor hide, only a heap of what looked like star-shine. (Star-shine is a jelly-like substance found on the shore, probably the remnants of stranded jellyfish, but supposed by the Highlanders to be all that is left of a fallen star.) And that was the end of the Water-Horse of Raasay.

More West Highland Tales, vol. II, J.G. McKay, 1960

A Highlander of the name of MacGrigor resolved to throw himself in the way of the water-horse in the hope of getting the better of him. The meeting took place in the solitary pass of Slochd-Muichd, between Strathspey and Inverness. The water-horse looked as innocent as usual, and was considerably startled when MacGrigor, sword in hand, struck him a blow on the nose. 

Pict.2

The weapon cut through the bridle, and the bit, falling to the ground, was instantly picked up by MacGrigor. This was the turning point of the encounter. The water-horse was powerless without his bit, and requested to have it restored. Though a horse, the water-horse had the power of human speech, and conversed, doubtless in excellent Gaelic, with his victor, using various arguments to bring about the restoration of his lost property. Finding that these were unavailing, he prophesied that MacGrigor would never enter his house with the bit in his possession, and when they arrived at the door he planted himself in front of it to block the entrance. The Highlander, however, outwitted the water-horse, for, going round to the back of his house, he called his wife and flung the bit to her through a window. Returning to the water-horse, he told him where the bit was, and assured him that he would never get it back again. As there was a rowan cross above the door the demon-steed could not enter the house, and presently departed uttering certain exclamations not intended for benedictions. Those who doubt the truthfulness of the narrative may have their doubts lessened when they learn that this was not the only case of a water-horse’s bit becoming the property of a human being. The Rev. Dr. Stewart narrates an anecdote bearing on this. A drover, whose home was in Nether Lochaber, was returning from a market at Pitlochry by way of the Moor of Rannoch. Night came on; but, as the moon was bright, he continued his journey without difficulty. On reaching Lochanna Cuile, he sat down to refresh himself with bread, cheese, and milk. While partaking of this temperate repast he caught sight of something glittering on the ground, and, picking it up, he found it to be a horse’s bridle. Next morning he was astonished to find that the bit and buckles were of pure silver and the reins of soft and beautifully speckled leather. He was still more surprised to find that the bit when touched was unbearably hot. A wise woman from a neighbouring glen was called in to solve the mystery. She at once recognised the article to be a water-horse’s bridle, and accounted for the high temperature of the bit on the ground that the silver still retained the heat that it possessed when in a molten state below ground. The reins, she said, were made of the skin of a certain poisonous serpent that inhabited pools frequented by water-horses. According to her directions, the bridle was hung on a cromag or crook of rowan wood. Its presence brought a blessing to the house, and the drover prospered in all his undertakings. When he died, having no children of his own, he bequeathed the magical bridle to his grandnephew, who prospered in his turn.

A pool in the North Esk, in Forfarshire, called the Ponage or Pontage Pool, was at one time the home of a water-horse. This creature was captured by means of a magical bridle, and kept in captivity for some time. While a prisoner he was employed to carry stones to Morphie, where a castle was then being built. One day the bridle was incautiously removed, and the creature vanished, but not before he exclaimed:

“Sair back an’ sair banes,

Carryin’ the Laird o’ Morphie’s stanes;

The Laird o’ Morphie canna thrive

As lang’s the water-horse is alive.”

His attempted verse-making seems to have gratified the water-horse, for when he afterwards showed himself in the pool he was frequently heard repeating the rhyme. The fate of the castle was disastrous. At a later date it was entirely demolished, and its site now alone remains. 

Some six miles from the Kirkton of Glenelg, in Inverness-shire, is the small sheet of water known in the district as John MacInnes’ Loch. It was so called from a crofter of that name who was drowned there. The circumstances are thus narrated by Mr. J. Calder Ross in “Scottish Notes and Queries” for February, 1893: “John MacInnes found the labour of his farm sadly burdensome. In the midst of his sighing an unknown being appeared to him and promised a horse to him under certain conditions. These conditions John undertook to fulfil. One day, accordingly, he found a fine horse grazing in one of his fields. He happened to be ploughing at the time, and at once he yoked the animal to the plough along with another horse. The stranger worked splendidly, and he determined to keep it, though he well knew that it was far from canny. Every night when he stabled it he spread some earth from a mole’s hill over it as a charm; according to another version he merely blessed the animal. One night he forgot his usual precautions: perhaps he was beginning to feel safe. The horse noticed the omission, and seizing poor John in his teeth, galloped off with him. The two disappeared in the loch.”

Pict.3. Vayne Castle

Water-horses were not always malignant in disposition. On one occasion an Aberdeenshire farmer went with his own horse to a mill to fetch home some sacks of meal. He left the horse at the door of the mill and went in to bring out the sacks. The beast, finding itself free, started for home. When the farmer reappeared and found the creature gone he was much disconcerted, and uttered the wish that he might get any kind of horse to carry his sacks even though it were a water-water-horse. To his surprise, a water-horse immediately appeared! It quietly allowed itself to be loaded with the meal, and accompanied the farmer to his home. On reaching the house he tied the horse to an old harrow till he should get the sacks taken into the house. When he returned to stable the animal that had done him the good turn, horse and harrow were away, and he heard the beast plunging not far off in a deep pool in the Don. If anyone refuses to believe in the existence of water-horses, let him go to the parish of Fearn, in Forfarshire, and there, near the ruined castle of Vayne, he will see on a sandstone rock the print of a water-horse’s foot. Noran Water flows below the castle, and the mysterious creature had doubtless its home in one of its pools. 

In Shetland, such waterhorses were known as Nuggles, and showed themselves under the form of Shetland ponies.

Folklore of Scottish lochs and springs, by James M. Mackinlay, 1893

The WATER-HORSE is generally but a vicious, amphibious, supernatural horse; and there is a real sea-creature whose head may have suggested that there were real horses in the sea. But there were sacred horses every where in the East, so the attributes of water-horses are probably mythological. But the water-horse assumes many shapes; he often appears as a man, and sometimes as a large bird. In this last form he was "seen" by a certain man, who described him. The narrator waded up to his shoulders one cold day in February, in a certain muir loch, to get a shot at him; but when he got within " eighty-five yards " of him, the animal dived, and the sportsman, after waiting for "three quarters of an hour," returned to shore. 

Pict.4. Great Northen Diver

There he remained for more than "five hours and a half," but the creature never rose. In form and colour he was very like the Great Northern Diver, with the exception of the white on his neck and breast; the wings were of the same proportion, the neck was two feet eleven inches long, and twenty-three in circumference; about seventeen inches long, and hooked like an eagle's at the end; legs very short, black, and powerful; feet webbed till within five inches of the toes, with tremendous claws. Footprints, as measured in the mud at the north end of the lake, cover a space equal to that contained within the span of a pair of large antlers; voice like the roar of an angry bull; lives on calves, sheep, lambs, and otters," etc.

Popular tales of the West Highlands, orally collected by J. F.  Campbell vol. IV, 1862.

Source pictures:
1. https://www.deviantart.com/hjr-designs/art/Horses-2-321085368?purchase=print
2. https://www.kramer.co.uk/SALE/Sale-Horses/Sale-Bridles-Bits/Crank-Flash-Bridle-Anatomical-Elastic
3. https://www.flickr.com/photos/62445171@N00/5415696348
4. https://www.flickr.com/photos/sindri_skulason/9201164415

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