2.
The Water-horse
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
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| 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.
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| 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.”
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| 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.
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| 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
Nico
