|
|
|
|
Fae
Scotland
Baobhan Sith
Malignant, blood-sucking spirits, who sometimes appeared as hoodie crows or ravens, but generally as beautiful girls, with long. trailing, green dresses hiding their deer's hooves.
Blue Men of the Minch
These men belong to the Minch, and particularly haunt the strait between Long Island and the Shiant Islands. They are a malignant kind of mermen, but they are blue all over. They come swimming out to seize and wreck ships that enter the strait; but a ready tongue, and particularly a facility in rhyming, will baffle them. They have no power over the captain who can answer them quickly and keep the last word. Beyond their activities as wreckers they conjure up storms by their restlessness. The weather is only fine when they are asleep. The islanders think they are fallen angels like the fairies and the Merry Dancers, as the Aurora Borealis is called there.
Bodach
The Scottish form of a Bugbear or Bug-a-boo. He comes down the chimney to fetch naughty children.
Bogle
The Scottish version of the Yorkshire boggart, though perhaps less exclusively domestic in his habits.
Bogy beast
A general name boggarts, brashes, grants, and mischievous spirits. Widely distributed.
Brollochan
Brollochan is Gaelic for a shapeless thing, and probably something like Reginald Scot's Boneless. There is a story of one, the child of a Fuath, told by Campbell. It is something the same plot as Ainsel.
Brownie
The best known of the industrious domestic hobgoblins. The brownie's land is over all the North of England and up into the highlands of Scotland. The brownie is small, ragged and shaggy. Some say he has a nose so small as to be hardly more than two nostrils. He is willing to do all odd jobs about a house, but sometimes he untidies what he has been left to tidy. There are several stories of brownies riding to fetch the nurse for their mistress. The brownie can accept no payment, and the surest way to drive him away is to leave him a suit of clothes. Bread and milk and other dainties can be left unobtrusively, but even they must not be openly offered. The Cornish Browney is of the same nature. His special office is to get the bees to settle. When the bees swarm the housewife beats a tin, and calls out: 'Browney! Browney!' until the brownie comes invisibly to take charge.
Nuckelavee
A horrible monster who came out of the sea, half-man and half-horse, with a breath like pestilence and no skin on its body. The only security from it was that it could not face running water.
People of Peace
This is the Highland name for the fairies, corresponding to the Lowland "Good Neighbours". They are much like them in character. Campbell's story of the Woman of Peace and the Kettle is characteristic.
Cailleach Bheur
A giant hag who seems to typify winter, for she goes about smiting the earth with her staff so that it grows hard. When spring comes and she is conquered, she flings her staff in disgust into a whin bush or under a holly tree, where grass never grows. She is the patroness of deer and wild boars. Many hills are associated with her, particularly Ben Nevis and Schiehallion. Her general appearance is terrible and hideous, but in some stories she changes at times into a beautiful maiden. There is a version of the Wife of Bath's Tale told of her, and she is also the villainess of a story rather like Nix Nought Nothing. At times she turns into a sea serpent. Particulars are given of her Mackenzie's Scottish Folk Lore and Folk Life and she is mentioned in Campbell's Tales of the Western Highlands.
Cauld Lad of Hilton
A brownie haunting Hilton Castle who is definitely described as a ghost, and yet was laid, as brownies are always laid, by the present of a cloak and hood.
Ca Sith
This is a great dog, as large as a bullock with a dark green coat. He is very like the English Black Dog.
Fuaths
The general name for a Nature spirit, often a water fairy and malignant. Urisks were sometimes called Fuaths. The Brollachan was the child of a Fuath.
Glaistig
The Glaistig is a female fairy, generally half-woman, half-goat, but sometimes described as a little, stout woman, clothed ion green. She is a spirit of mixed characteristics, and seems, indeed, to be all fairies in little. She is supposed to be fond of children and the guardian of domestic animals. Milk is poured out to her, and she does something of a brownie's work about the house. She is specially kind, too, to old people and the feeble-minded. On the other hand she has darker qualities; there are stories of her misleading and slaying travellers. If the traveller named the weapon he had against her she could make it powerless; but if he only described it he could overcome her. The Glaistig seems partly a water spirit. She might often be seen sitting by a stream, where she would beg to be carried across. She could be caught and set to work something like a kelpie.
Habitrot
The Spinning-Wheel Fairy. A shirt made by a Habitrot was considered effacious against illness. Habitrot, though very ugly, was friendly to mankind.
Kelpie
A malignant water spirit, which is generally seen in the form of a young horse, but sometimes appears like a handsome young man. A kelpie's great object is to induce mortals to mount on its back and plunge with them into deep water, where it devours them. A man who can throw a bridle over the kelpie's head, however, has it in his power, and can force it to work for him.
Roane
These mermen are distinguished from others by travelling through the sea in the form of seals. In the depths of the sea caves they come to air again, and there, and on land, they cast off the seal skins which are necessary to carry them through water. The roane are peculiarly mild un-revengeful fairies of deep domestic affections, as the stories of Fisherman and the Merman and the Seal Catcher's Adventure show. The Shetlanders call the roane sea trows, but their character is substantially the same.
Seely Court
Seely means blessed, and this name stands for the comparatively virtuous heroic fairies. The malignant fairies and demons were sometimes called the Unseely Court.
Urisk
A kind of rough brownie, half-human and half-goat, very lucky to have about the house, who herded cattle and worked on farms. He haunted lonely waterfalls, but would often crave human company, and follow terrified travellers at night, with out, however, doing them any harm. The Urisks lived solitary in recesses of the hills, but they would meet at stated times for solemn assemblies; a corrie near Loch Katrine was their favorite meeting place.
Whuppity Stoorie
The name is apparently taken from the circular scud of dust upon which fairies are supposed to ride. It was the name of a Scottish Tom Tit Tot fairy, and also of the fairy on one version of the Habitrot story.
Bogle
The Scottish version of the Yorkshire boggart, though perhaps less exclusively domestic in his habits.
Banshee
The banshee is known both in Ireland and Scotland. In Scotland she is sometimes called the Little Washer at the Ford, or the Little Washer of Sorrow. She can be heard wailing by the riverside as she washes the clothes of the man destined for death. If a mortal can seize and hold her, she must tell the name of the doomed man, and also grant three wishes. She is no beauty, for she has only one nostril, a large, starting out front tooth and web feet. The Irish banshee only wails for the members of the death of someone very great or holy. The banshee has long, streaming hair and a grey cloak over a green dress. Her eyes are fiery red from continually weeping. In the Highlands of Scotland the word Banshi means only a fairy Woman and is chiefly used for the fairies who marry mortals.
|
|
Copyright © 2000-2004
LV426, All Rights Reserved
Design by LV426
| |
