Scottish Folklore: A Field Guide to the Country's Strange Creatures

For a small country, Scotland carries an unusually full population of supernatural beings. Geography explains much of it: a long coastline, a great many lochs, islands from which the sea is always audible. History explains the rest. The Gaelic oral tradition was still vigorous when nineteenth-century collectors arrived with notebooks, and they took down stories that had been told for generations.

What follows is arranged the way the stories themselves are — by the element the creature belongs to.

Creatures of the water

The kelpie

A kelpie is a water spirit in the shape of a horse, usually an attractive one, standing at the edge of a loch or a river. It invites a rider, or simply lets a child climb up, then bolts into the water. Once you are on its back your hands stick to its hide. Escape means cutting off your own fingers, or being pulled out by someone else.

Not all kelpies are cruel. Some help a miller by turning his mill wheel; some are tamed by a woman who gets the magic bridle off them. The story works as a warning about how inviting the water looks and how little you can trust a horse you do not know. The thirty-metre steel sculptures at Falkirk, known simply as The Kelpies, are now the most photographed version of the creature anywhere.

The selkie

Selkies are seals that can step out of their skins and become human. The commonest tale is the seal wife: a man finds a sealskin on the shore, hides it, and the woman is stuck on land until she recovers it. She marries him and raises children and is a good wife, but she is forever glancing at the sea.

When she finds the skin she goes back to the water, and sometimes looks back at her children from the waves. In Orkney and Shetland the telling is full of tenderness; the selkie is a person pulled between two worlds rather than a monster. Male selkies turn up too, often as lovers visiting women ashore. Writers and filmmakers have borrowed the story repeatedly, but the oldest versions are short and hard-edged.

The Blue Men of the Minch

In the strait between the Outer Hebrides and the mainland, sailors spoke of the Blue Men: storm kelpies who swim beside a boat and challenge the captain to a rhyming contest. Win, and the boat goes through. Lose, or fail to answer, and they take it down.

What makes the story unusual is that the danger is verbal. It belongs to a world where a captain had to be quick with words as well as with sails, and where the sea might be bargained with. The name most likely comes from the blue paint or tattoos described in older accounts.

The loch

The Loch Ness Monster

Loch Ness holds more fresh water than any other lake in Britain, and a monster has been attached to it since the sixth century, when Adomnán's Life of Columba has the saint drive a water beast out of the River Ness. The modern story starts in 1933, when a new road along the shore opened and sightings began to be reported.

The best-known picture, the "surgeon's photograph" of 1934, was admitted to be a hoax decades later. Sonar sweeps, expeditions and hundreds of photographs have settled nothing. What is left is a cultural fact: the monster is worth more than a real animal ever could be. The Loch Ness Centre at Drumnadrochit tells the whole story, and the loch is worth the trip on its own.

Creatures of land and weather

The Cailleach

The Cailleach is the winter hag, a giantess who makes the landscape. She carries a hammer and raises mountains, lets rocks fall from her creel to become islands, and washes her plaid in the sea. In Gaelic tradition she belongs to the first of February, when she goes out for firewood for the rest of the winter — and if the day is fine, she will stretch the winter out.

She is not a straightforward villain. Old, powerful and necessary, she is sometimes called the guardian of the wild. She is among the oldest figures in Scottish and Irish tradition, and she survives in place names throughout the Highlands and islands.

The one you can actually visit

The Fairy Flag of Dunvegan

Dunvegan Castle on Skye keeps a piece of silk called the Fairy Flag, said to have come from a fairy woman to the MacLeods. Tradition holds that it can be unfurled three times in battle to bring victory. It has been used twice. One use is left.

The flag exists: a fragment of Middle Eastern silk, probably eleventh or twelfth century, and textile historians have examined it. The legend may be a way of accounting for an exotic object that arrived through trade or crusade. It is displayed at Dunvegan, which makes it one of the very few magical objects in Europe that you can still stand in front of.

Finding them on the ground

Start at The Kelpies beside the Forth and Clyde Canal at Falkirk, where the thirty-metre heads rise out of the ground. Head north for Loch Ness, combining Urquhart Castle with the Loch Ness Centre at Drumnadrochit. Cross to Skye for Dunvegan Castle and the flag itself. For selkies, take a coastal walk in Orkney or Shetland and watch for local storytelling nights. The Minch ferry to the Outer Hebrides puts you in Blue Men territory, and the Highlands and islands generally are where the Cailleach lingers — in place names, standing stones and the look of the land in winter.

Questions people ask

How is a kelpie different from a selkie?

A kelpie is a water spirit in horse form and is usually dangerous. A selkie is a seal that can take off its skin and become human; selkie stories tend to be about loss and longing rather than drowning.

Does the Loch Ness Monster exist?

There is no scientific evidence for it. Literary sightings go back to the sixth century, the modern craze began in 1933, and the most famous photograph was a hoax. It makes most sense as a modern legend built on older tales of water beasts.

What is the Cailleach?

A winter hag or giantess in Gaelic tradition, linked to the making of mountains and to the first of February. She is one of the oldest supernatural figures in Scotland and Ireland.

Can I see the Fairy Flag?

Yes. It is kept at Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye, seat of the MacLeod clan, and shown to visitors. The castle opens seasonally.

More from the Mythical Mondays series

• Irish folklore: banshees, selkies and the Tuatha Dé Danann
• Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore
• German folklore: myths, legends and folktales
• All Mythical Mondays posts

If this edition of Mythical Mondays entertained you, pass it on to a friend who likes stories, and tell me which country you would like next.