Tag: scottish monsters

55 Scottish Mythical Creatures

The selkie’s grave at St Trothan’s in Castletown has a hollow at its base that never dries out. Local children believed that if you put your foot in the water and whispered a wish, it would come true. I never did it. I was too feart of what might answer.

Scottish mythical creatures were never far away in a Caithness childhood. Scotland’s folklore is crowded with water horses, seal people, giants, fairies and loch monsters, and the most famous Scottish monster of all is the Loch Ness Monster, followed by the kelpie, the selkie and the unicorn, Scotland’s national animal. Below are the 55 Scottish folklore creatures from my book Scottish Legends: 55 Mythical Monsters, sorted by where you’d meet them, with a table that tells you where in Scotland each one lives.

What are Scottish mythical creatures?

Scottish mythical creatures are the monsters, spirits and shapeshifters of Scotland’s Gaelic, Scots and Norse folklore. The biggest group lives in water: 23 of the 55 below haunt lochs, rivers or the seas around Orkney and Shetland. The best known are the Loch Ness Monster, the kelpie, the selkie and the unicorn, Scotland’s national animal.

Most of them began as explanations. A storm that sank a boat in the Minch needed a cause, so the cause had blue skin and a taste for rhyme. A child who stopped walking needed a reason, so the fairies had swapped him.

I studied this for a living. My PhD looked at how perception shapes what we feel and do next, and folklore is that idea at full volume. Two people can stand on the shore of Loch Ness, watch the same wake roll in, and walk away with different stories. One saw a boat. The other saw Nessie, and told everyone in the pub.

The Vikings left their stories here along with their place names (Wick comes from the Norse ‘vik’, a bay). That’s why Orkney and Shetland have trows that look a lot like trolls, and why the Stoor Worm reads like a cousin of the Norse world serpent.

Quick reference: where each Scottish folklore creature and mythical monster lives

#	Creature	Type	Where in Scotland	Helpful or harmful
	Unicorn	National animal	Royal arms and mercat crosses nationwide	Helpful
1	Bauchan	Hobgoblin	Highlands	Both
2	Bodach	Hobgoblin	Highlands	Harmful
3	Brownie	Household spirit	Farms and houses nationwide	Helpful
4	Dunnie	Brownie-like trickster	Anglo-Scottish border, the Cheviots	Prankster
5	Maggy Moulach	Brownie	Tullochgorm, Strathspey	Helpful, until crossed
6	Redcap	Goblin	Border castles	Harmful
7	Wirry-cow	Bugbear, omen	Lowland Scotland	Harmful
8	Am Fear Liath Mòr	Mountain presence	Ben Macdui, Cairngorms	Harmful
9	Bertram de Shotts	Giant	Shotts, on the Edinburgh to Glasgow road	Harmful
10	Biasd Bheulach	Shapeshifter	Odal Pass, Isle of Skye	Harmful
11	Fachan	One-eyed giant	Highlands	Harmful
12	Baobhan sìth	Vampire	Highlands	Harmful
13	Caoineag	Banshee	Highland clan lands	Omen
14	Bogle	Trickster ghost	Lowlands and the Borders	Prankster
15	Glaistig	Goat-legged ghost	Highlands, near water	Both
16	Silkie	Silk-gowned ghost	Anglo-Scottish border	Harmless
17	Ghillie Dhu	Woodland fairy	Gairloch, Wester Ross	Helpful
18	Beast of Buchan	Big cat	Buchan, Aberdeenshire	Harmful (to sheep)
19	Beithir	Lightning serpent	Highland corries	Harmful
20	Black dog	Spectral hound	Nationwide	Omen
21	Cat-sìth	Fairy cat	Highlands	Harmful
22	Cù-sìth	Fairy hound	Highlands	Omen
23	Galloway Puma	Big cat	Dumfries and Galloway	Harmful (to sheep)
24	Pictish Beast	Carved creature	Pictish stones, north and east	Unknown
25	Gigelorum	Tiny beast	Highlands	Harmless
26	Wulver	Wolf-man	Shetland	Helpful
27	Changeling	Fairy substitute	Nationwide (and Ireland)	Harmful
28	Nicnevin	Fairy queen	Lowlands and the Borders	Harmful
29	Pech	Gnome-like race	Lowlands	Both
30	Seelie and Unseelie courts	Fairy courts	Nationwide	Both
31	Sluagh	Host of the dead	Highlands and Hebrides	Harmful
32	Trow	Dark fairy	Orkney and Shetland	Harmful
33	Bean-nighe	Washer at the ford	Highland streams	Omen
34	Blue Men of the Minch	Storm spirits	The Minch, by the Shiant Isles	Harmful
35	Boobrie	Shapeshifting bird	West-coast lochs, Argyll	Harmful
36	Ceasg	Mermaid	Highland seas and rivers	Both
37	Cirein-cròin	Sea serpent	Highland seas	Harmful
38	Each-uisge	Water horse	Highland lochs and sea lochs	Deadly
39	Finfolk	Sea sorcerers	Orkney	Harmful
40	Fuath	Water spirit	Highland rivers and lochs	Harmful
41	Kelpie	Water horse	Rivers and lochs nationwide	Deadly
42	Lavellan	Poisonous water rodent	Caithness and Sutherland	Harmful
43	Loch Ness Monster	Loch monster	Loch Ness	Unknown
44	Morag	Loch monster	Loch Morar, Lochaber	Unknown
45	Muc-sheilch	Loch monster	Loch Maree, Wester Ross	Unknown
46	Nuckelavee	Sea demon	Orkney	Deadly
47	Nuggle	Water horse	Shetland	Prankster
48	Oilliphéist	Sea serpent	Ireland (included for comparison)	Harmful
49	Sea Mither	Summer sea spirit	Orkney	Helpful
50	Selkie	Seal person	Orkney, Shetland and Caithness	Both
51	Seonaidh	Sea god	Isle of Lewis	Helpful, if paid
52	Shellycoat	Water bogle	Border rivers	Prankster
53	Stoor Worm	Sea serpent	Orkney	Deadly
54	Tangie	Water horse	Orkney and Shetland	Harmful
55	Water bull	Water spirit	Highland moorland lochs	Both

The unicorn: Scotland’s national animal

The unicorn is Scotland’s national animal, and it’s been on the royal arms for centuries. Unicorns supported the Scottish royal shield from at least the 1500s, and tradition dates the link to William I in the 1100s. When James VI took the English throne in 1603, one unicorn gave way to the English lion, and the pair still face each other on the royal arms today.

The Scottish unicorn always wears a gold chain. You can see it on mercat crosses on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile and in Falcon Square, Inverness, and Scotland marks National Unicorn Day on 9 April. The unicorn isn’t one of the 55 in my book, which is why it sits here, above the count, with its chain on.

Scottish goblins and tricksters

Scottish goblins worked the farms and haunted the castles. Some played foul pranks on lazy servants. Others crept down chimneys at night to steal children.

If you try to meet one, make it the brownie. It’s the only creature in this section that does your washing up.

1. Bauchan

A bauchan is a Scottish hobgoblin that can’t make up its mind. At times it’s kind and helpful; at others it’s a rogue that does real harm, and the people who lived alongside one never knew which they’d get.

2. Bodach

A bodach takes its name from the Scottish Gaelic word for ‘old man’. In Highland tales it’s a hobgoblin tied to bad luck, and the nastier stories have it slipping down chimneys after children.

3. Brownie

A brownie (broonie in Scots, brùnaidh in Gaelic) is a small, shaggy household spirit that does the chores at night while the family sleeps. In return, you leave a bowl of milk or cream by the fire. A brownie that’s insulted or taken for granted can turn into something much worse, which is a fair warning for anyone with a flatmate.

4. Dunnie

A dunnie is a small brownie-like trickster from the Anglo-Scottish border, best known as the Hazlerigg Dunnie of Northumberland. It liked to turn itself into a horse, let a rider climb on, then vanish and leave them in the muddiest part of the road. On dark nights it wandered the Cheviots singing about the treasure it had lost.

5. Maggy Moulach

Maggy Moulach, or Hairy Meg, is the most famous brownie in the Highlands. She stood about two feet tall, with a great head of hair (or, in other tellings, hairy hands), and served the Grants of Tullochgorm in Strathspey. Her son, Brownie-Clod, was a dobie: a well-meaning brownie with very little in the way of brains.

6. Redcap

A redcap is an evil goblin that makes its home in the ruined castles along the border between Scotland and England. Of all the Border spirits, it’s the one you least want to find already living in your ruin.

7. Wirry-cow

A wirry-cow is less a creature than a fright. It’s an old Scots word for a bugbear, a goblin or an omen of evil: the thing you worried about in the dark, whatever shape it took.

Scottish giants and mountain monsters

Scotland’s giants mostly worked the roads. Some wanted gold or revenge. One just wanted to follow you down a mountain in the mist.

If you read about one, make it Am Fear Liath Mòr. It’s the only monster here reported by a professor of chemistry.

8. Am Fear Liath Mòr (the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui)

Am Fear Liath Mòr is the Gaelic name for the Big Grey Man, a presence said to stalk Ben Macdui, the highest mountain in the Cairngorms and the second highest in Britain. In 1891, the mountaineer and chemist Professor Norman Collie was coming down from the summit cairn in mist when he heard footsteps behind his own, taking longer strides. He kept it to himself for 34 years, then told the Cairngorm Club in Aberdeen in 1925, and other climbers started admitting they’d heard them too.

One explanation is the Brocken spectre, where a walker’s own shadow is thrown huge onto mist. I’d add that a lone walker in fog, high up and tired, has a brain that fills the silence with whatever it fears most. Collie said he wouldn’t go back up there alone, and I don’t blame him.

9. Bertram de Shotts

Bertram de Shotts (sometimes Bartram) is a giant who attacked and robbed travellers on the road between Edinburgh and Glasgow, near Shotts in Lanarkshire. Every motorist on the M8 has met his descendants.

10. Biasd Bheulach

The Biasd Bheulach was a shapeshifter that haunted the Odal Pass on the Isle of Skye, near Kylerhea. It’s one of the few Scottish monsters with a single, named stretch of road to itself.

11. Fachan

The fachan is a Highland giant with one eye in the middle of its face, one leg, and one hand growing out of the centre of its chest. If the Cyclops had been drawn by a committee, this is what you’d get.

Scottish ghosts and ghouls

Scottish ghosts announce a death more often than they cause one. Banshees cry at waterfalls and bogles play tricks on the road. Up in the hills, a vampire in a green dress is waiting for a dance partner. (If Are You Afraid of the Dark? ever made a Highland episode, it would start here.) For the haunted castles and closes, see my 50 Scottish urban legends and ghost stories.

If you make friends with one, make it the baobhan sìth. It’s the one that turns up at a party.

12. Baobhan sìth

The baobhan sìth is a Highland vampire who appears as a beautiful woman, often to men out hunting, and dances with them before she turns and feeds. She’s the best argument in Scottish folklore for going home early.

13. Caoineag

The caoineag, the ‘wailing woman’, is a Highland banshee who foretells the death of a clan’s members by crying at night, usually beside a loch or a waterfall. Nobody ever sees her, which is worse.

14. Bogle

A bogle is a Scots and Border word for a ghost or goblin that would rather confuse and frighten you than serve you or kill you. The shellycoat (number 52) is a bogle, and a ‘tattie bogle’ is still a Scots word for a scarecrow.

15. Glaistig

The glaistig is a Scottish ghost who, like the baobhan sìth, appears as a beautiful woman in a green dress, with a grey face and long yellow hair. The dress hides her lower half, which is a goat’s.

16. Silkie

A silkie (no relation to the seal-folk selkie) is a female ghost of the Anglo-Scottish border who wore a rustling silk gown. She was quiet and solitary, and the only sound she made was the swish of silk as she worked.

17. Ghillie Dhu

The Ghillie Dhu is a shy, dark-haired male fairy who lives alone in the birch woods of Gairloch in Wester Ross. He’s one of the few creatures here with a reputation for kindness, especially to lost children.

Beasts, hounds and big cats

Scotland’s beasts include a wolf-man who leaves fish for the poor and a big cat that an MP took to the House of Commons. Their howls kept farmhouses awake, and the sheep they killed were found at first light.

If you go hunting for one, make it the Beast of Buchan. It’s often in the newspapers, so could make you famous.

18. Beast of Buchan

The Beast of Buchan is a big black cat reported in the Buchan area of Aberdeenshire since the 1930s. It became famous when the local MP, Alex Salmond, blamed it for attacks on livestock in his constituency and raised it in the House of Commons. A cat seen for ninety years can’t be one cat, which is why it gets called a phantom.

Big cats in the Highlands aren’t pure invention. In 1980 a real puma, later named Felicity, was caught near Inverness after locals reported a big cat in the hills. And the Kellas cat, a wildcat and domestic cat hybrid first found at Kellas in Moray, may explain some of the black-cat sightings in the north-east.

19. Beithir

The beithir is a huge serpent that appears at night when lightning strikes. Its Scottish Gaelic name is given different meanings by different sources, including serpent, lightning and thunderbolt, and one is said to live in Loch a’ Mhuillidh.

20. Black dog

The black dog turns up in folklore all over Britain. In Scotland it’s usually a demon, ghost or shapeshifter that comes out at night, and it may be the Devil himself, or one of his staff.

21. Cat-sìth

The cat-sìth is a large, spectral black cat with a white spot on its chest that haunts the Scottish Highlands. Some tales make it a fairy; others say it’s a witch who can turn into a cat nine times, and not one more.

22. Cù-sìth

The cù-sìth (the ‘fairy dog’) is a spectral hound that roams the Highland hills. It’s the size of a small cow, with a shaggy coat that’s dark green, which makes it the only dog in Scotland you’d spot more easily in the snow than on a hillside.

23. Galloway Puma

The Galloway Puma is a phantom big cat said to stalk the forests of Dumfries and Galloway. It’s the south-west’s answer to the Beast of Buchan, and just as camera-shy.

24. Pictish Beast

The Pictish Beast is a carved animal that appears again and again on Pictish symbol stones, and nobody can say what it is. It has a long snout, a curling crest and scrolled feet, and it’s been staring out of standing stones for over a thousand years without explaining itself.

25. Gigelorum

The gigelorum is the smallest creature in Scottish folklore. It’s said to be so tiny that it makes its home in a mite’s ear.

26. Wulver

The wulver is a kind Shetland creature with a man’s body, short brown fur and the head of a wolf. It lived alone in a cave by the shore, fished from a rock known as the wulver’s stane, and left fresh fish on the windowsills of poor families. Of all the 55, it’s the one I’d most like as a neighbour.

Scottish fairies and the fairy courts

Scottish fairies are rarely the kind with wands. They steal children and fly with the restless dead. They also sort themselves into two courts, one that might help you and one that certainly won’t.

If you’re looking for evidence of one, make it the changeling. It’s the only entry in this list with a real court case behind it.

27. Changeling

A changeling is a fairy left in place of a human child that the fairies have stolen. Sometimes the fairies left one of their elderly so that humans would care for it in its old age. A changeling looks exactly like the child it replaced, but over time, the stories say, it gives itself away.

The belief had real victims, and the two best-recorded cases are Irish. In 1826, in County Kerry, four-year-old Michael Leahy could neither stand, walk nor speak, and he was thought to be fairy-struck. An old woman, Anne Roche, had him bathed in the River Flesk three mornings running, and on the third he drowned. She said she was putting the fairy out of him, and at her trial in Tralee she was found not guilty of murder. In 1895, at Ballyvadlea in County Tipperary, Michael Cleary burned his wife Bridget to death, insisting she was a changeling and that he’d get his real wife back from the fairies.

I read both cases the same way. The changeling story gave frightened people a reason for an illness, or a change in someone they loved, that nobody could explain or treat. For Michael Leahy and Bridget Cleary, that story was fatal.

28. Nicnevin

Nicnevin is a Queen of the Fairies in Scottish folklore. Her name may come from Gaelic forms meaning ‘daughter of the divine’ or ‘daughter of the little saint’.

29. Pech

The Pechs were a short, strong, gnome-like race who, according to Scottish rhymes, brewed heather ale and fought the Scots. The name is the Lowland Scots word for the Picts.

30. The Seelie and Unseelie courts

Scottish folklore gave us the best-known way of sorting fairies: the Seelie Court and the Unseelie Court. The names come from the Scots word ‘seely’, meaning happy, lucky or blessed, and its opposite, ‘unseely’. Old Scots words make good monster names, as I found out the hard way when I tried writing Scots words for my own characters.

31. Sluagh

The sluagh, or sluagh na marbh (‘host of the dead’), is the flying host of the unforgiven dead in Scottish Gaelic folklore. It travels as a flying crowd, looking for souls to carry off.

32. Trow

A trow is a dark fairy of Orkney and Shetland: short, ugly and shy, but dangerous and full of mischief. Trows love music, and some Shetland fiddle tunes, the ‘trowie tunes’, are said to have been learned from them.

Scottish water monsters

Water monsters make up 23 of the 55. Some taught children to keep away from deep pools, and some warned young women about handsome strangers who smelled faintly of pondweed. The worst of them, the nuckelavee, has one weakness: it can’t cross fresh running water.

I bet of all the Scottish mythical creatures, you’ve heard of the Loch Ness Monster. It’s my favourite, and I’ve been looking for it on and off for most of my life.

33. Bean-nighe

The bean-nighe, the washerwoman, is a Highland banshee seen by lonely streams and pools, washing blood from the clothes of those about to die. In some tellings she’s the spirit of a woman who died in childbirth. If you see her at the ford, the shirt she’s scrubbing may be yours.

34. Blue Men of the Minch

The Blue Men of the Minch, also called storm kelpies, are blue-skinned sea spirits who live around the Shiant Isles, in the strait between Lewis and mainland Scotland. When a ship passed, their chief rose out of the waves and called out two lines of verse. If the captain answered in rhyme, the ship went through. If he couldn’t, the Blue Men raised a storm and sank it.

The folklorist Donald A. Mackenzie wrote the legend up in 1917 and wondered whether it began with North African captives held by Norse raiders in the Minch. Either way, it’s the only monster in Scotland you can beat with a good couplet, and I’d fancy my chances in Caithness Scots.

35. Boobrie

The boobrie is a shapeshifter that lives in the lochs of Scotland’s west coast, Argyll above all. It usually takes the form of a huge water bird, but it can turn into other monsters when a bird won’t do.

36. Ceasg

The ceasg is a Scottish mermaid with the upper body of a beautiful woman and the lower body of a grilse, a young salmon.

37. Cirein-cròin

The cirein-cròin is a sea serpent big enough to eat seven whales at a sitting, which is a lot to hide behind its party trick: disguising itself as a small silver fish.

38. Each-uisge

The each-uisge, the ‘water horse’, looks like a kelpie but is far more dangerous. It haunts sea lochs and lochs, appears as a fine horse or a handsome man, and drags anyone who mounts it into deep water. The folklorist Katharine Briggs counted it among the most dangerous water horses of all.

39. Finfolk

The Finfolk are a race of shapeshifting sorcerers who terrorise the shores of Orkney. They swim from their undersea home, Finfolkaheem, to hunt for human husbands and wives to carry off.

40. Fuath

A fuath (plural fuathan) is one of a family of malevolent Highland water spirits. The folklorist Donald A. Mackenzie placed them in Scotland’s seas, rivers and lochs.

41. Kelpie

The kelpie is a shapeshifting water horse that seems to live in every river and loch in Scotland. It appears as a horse by the water’s edge, and anyone who climbs on is carried under. Robert Burns named water-kelpies haunting the ford in his 1785 poem ‘Address to the Deil’, written here in Ayrshire, where I live now.

The kelpie is the second most famous Scottish monster after Nessie, and it has the biggest statues. Andy Scott’s two steel horse heads, The Kelpies, stand 30 metres (98 ft) high between Falkirk and Grangemouth, beside the Forth and Clyde Canal. They were completed in 2013, opened in April 2014, and modelled on two Clydesdales, Baron and Duke, as a tribute to the working horses of Scotland’s farms, canals and industry.

42. Lavellan

The lavellan is Caithness’s own monster: a water creature bigger than a rat, living in deep pools, with breath poisonous enough to sicken cattle at a distance. The 17th-century geographer Robert Sibbald called it common in Caithness, with a head like a weasel’s. When the naturalist Thomas Pennant toured the county in 1769, locals told him they kept the creature’s skin and cured sick cattle with water it had been dipped in.

Pennant thought the lavellan was a water shrew, which, as it happens, is one of the few venomous mammals in the world. Nobody in Wick ever warned me about it, which feels like an oversight.

43. The Loch Ness Monster

The Loch Ness Monster, Nessie (Niseag in Gaelic), is said to live in Loch Ness, which runs for about 23 miles (37 km) down the Great Glen, starting about 6 miles south-west of Inverness. The oldest story comes from Adomnán’s 7th-century Life of St Columba, in which Columba drives off a water beast in the River Ness, below the loch. The modern legend began with a wave of sightings in 1933, and the most famous photograph, the ‘surgeon’s photograph’ of 1934, is now known to be a hoax.

I’ve taken a cruise down the loch and paddled at the water’s edge a few times, which is either brave or daft depending on what you believe. Most of my visits came on the drive north, calling in on family in Inverness before the long road home to Wick. I’ve never seen her. I’ve never stopped looking either.

44. Morag

Morag is the monster of Loch Morar in Lochaber, the only loch in Scotland deeper than Loch Ness. In Alien Animals, Janet and Colin Bord collect accounts that make her sound a lot like Nessie’s cousin.

45. Muc-sheilch

The muc-sheilch is the monster of Loch Maree in Wester Ross, with a look all its own, and it was said to travel to other lochs nearby.

46. Nuckelavee

The nuckelavee is a horse-like sea demon from Orkney, and Katharine Briggs called it ‘the nastiest’ of all the demons of Scotland’s Northern Isles. Its name comes from the Orcadian knoggelvi, which the Orkney folklorist Walter Traill Dennison translated as ‘Devil of the Sea’. On land it appears as a skinless horse with a man’s body growing from its back, and its breath was blamed for blighted crops and sick livestock.

In 1891 Dennison recorded the account of an islander called Tammas, who met the nuckelavee and escaped by crossing a stream running from a loch, because the demon can’t cross fresh running water. Only one spirit can control it: the Sea Mither (number 49), who keeps it locked away through the summer.

I wrote a nuckelavee into Call of the Nuckelavee, one of the stories in Mysteries and Misadventures: Tales from the Highlands. A woman walks the dunes of an Orkney beach, following the voice of her drowned father, until a dog she recognises beckons her into the sea. Some of the fear in it came from a cave outside Budapest: lights off, total silence, and the ringing in my ears.

47. Nuggle

The nuggle (also noggle or shoopiltee) is a Shetland water horse that haunts the lochs, streams and shores of the islands. Nuggles are always male, come out only at night, and play pranks on islanders and travellers.

48. Oilliphéist

The oilliphéist is an Irish sea serpent, included here because it’s so often compared to Nessie. Its name comes from the Irish oll (‘great’) and péist (‘worm, monster’). In one tale it carved out the River Shannon as it fled to the sea. In another it swallowed a drunken piper called O’Rourke, who kept playing in its stomach until it spat him out.

49. Sea Mither

The Sea Mither, or Mither o’ the Sea, is a powerful Orcadian summer spirit who fights an endless battle for the seas with her enemy Teran, the spirit of winter. She’s also the only one who can keep the nuckelavee locked up, which makes her the most useful creature in Orkney.

50. Selkie

A selkie is a seal that can shed its skin and walk ashore as a human. The best-known tale has a man steal a selkie woman’s skin so she has to marry him. She gives him children, but the day she finds the skin, she’s back in the sea.

The selkie I grew up with is buried at St Trothan’s, Castletown. A fisherman found a baby girl wrapped in sealskin and raised her. She grew up seeing the devil in the church rafters, was banned from the church, and died in childbirth. The hollow at the base of her grave never dries out. It’s the only grave I know with its own water supply, and the only wish I never made.

51. Seonaidh

Seonaidh, or Shony, was a sea god of the Isle of Lewis. The writer Martin Martin recorded in 1703 that at Hallowtide (Halloween), each family gave malt for ale, and one man waded into the sea up to his waist with a cup of it. He asked Shony for plenty of seaweed to feed the fields, threw the ale into the waves, and the whole parish spent the rest of the night drinking and dancing in the fields. It’s the only Halloween tradition in this list that ends in a ceilidh.

52. Shellycoat

The shellycoat is a water bogle of Scotland’s Border rivers, named for its coat of shells, which rattles when it moves. In one tale, two men by the Ettrick heard a voice crying ‘Lost! Lost!’ from the water and followed it upstream all night, all the way to the river’s source. Then they heard the shellycoat laughing at them.

53. Stoor Worm

The Stoor Worm, or Mester Stoor Worm, is a gigantic sea serpent from Orkney whose breath poisoned crops, animals and people. It looks like a cousin of Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent of Norse mythology.

54. Tangie

A tangie is a shapeshifting water spirit of Orkney and Shetland that takes the form of a horse or a man, usually draped in seaweed.

55. Water bull

The water bull (tarbh-uisge in Gaelic) is a shapeshifter like the water horses, but it prefers the shape of a bull. It haunts moorland lochs and now and then takes human form.

Scottish cryptids: the folklore creatures people still report

Scottish cryptids are folklore creatures with modern sightings behind them: animals people still claim to see on Scotland’s lochs and hills. The best known are the Loch Ness Monster, Morag of Loch Morar, the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui and the Beast of Buchan. One big cat really was caught.

Cryptid	Where	Best-known evidence
Loch Ness Monster	Loch Ness, Highlands	A wave of sightings in 1933, and the 1934 ‘surgeon’s photograph’, later shown to be a hoax
Big Grey Man (Am Fear Liath Mòr)	Ben Macdui, Cairngorms	Professor Norman Collie’s account of footsteps in the mist, told to the Cairngorm Club in 1925
Beast of Buchan	Buchan, Aberdeenshire	22 sightings recorded between May 2000 and January 2002, and the local MP, Alex Salmond, raising it in the House of Commons
Felicity the puma	Near Inverness	A real puma, caught in 1980 after locals reported a big cat in the hills
Morag	Loch Morar, Lochaber	Accounts collected by Janet and Colin Bord in Alien Animals

Scottish folklore legends: beyond the monsters

Scottish legends include heroes and hauntings as well as mythical monsters. Robert the Bruce took heart from a spider that kept trying to climb its thread, Glamis Castle is famous for its ghosts, and Edinburgh’s Mary King’s Close has a claim to be the most haunted street in the capital. I’ve gathered those stories in 50 Scottish urban legends, myths and folklore tales. The human monsters, the ones who really existed, are in my Scottish true crime stories.

“This is the fourth book I have read from the same author. Again another interesting read. I always enjoy reading short stories, tales, legends about Scotland.”

Amazon Review ★★★★★

Scottish Mythical Creatures FAQ

Scottish mythical creatures in my life

I first heard Tam o’ Shanter at a primary school Burns Night in Wick. What stayed with me was the chase: Nannie the witch reaching for Tam’s grey mare, Maggie, and Tam galloping for the bridge over the Doon, because no witch can follow you across running water. Maggie made it, minus her tail.

Plenty of the Scottish mythical monsters in this list can be beaten with a trick that simple. Get to the stream before the nuckelavee does. Answer the Blue Men in rhyme. Leave the brownie its cream. And never climb on a horse you find standing by a loch.

And if you’re ever in Castletown, leave the selkie’s hollow alone. It never dries, and it doesn’t need your foot in it.

‘Mind an’ keep til eh runnin’ watter.’

Which Scottish mythical creatures did your granny use to keep you away from the water? Tell me in the comments, and if I’ve missed a monster from your corner of Scotland, give me its name and its story.

The full tales of all 55, and the people who swear they met these creatures and lived to tell the tale, are in my book Scottish Legends: 55 Mythical Monsters. It reached Amazon’s top 100 on the day it came out. Read Scottish Legends on Amazon.

Happy reading,

Aaron Mullins

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