The Celtic Spirit World
Filed by Aine MacDermot
The uilebheist is a sea-monster with several heads, frequently mentioned in Highland story. it is sometimes called the draygan, and this would seem to give it a community of origin with the Norse sea-serpent or “drake”. A gigantic waterbird known as the boobrie was supposed to haunt the fresh-water and sea-lochs of Argyllshire. His appetite matched his bulk, and he devoured sheep and even cows wholesale. One who ciftimed to have seen him described him as resembling the bird known as the great northern diver in form and colour, with the exception of white patches on the neck and breast. The neck was long and the beak hooked at the extremity like an eagle’s. The feet were webbed, with tremendous claws. The footprints of the boobrie covered a space equal to that contained within the span of a pair of large antlers, and its voice was “like the roar of an angry bull”. That this creature had at least an existence in the popular mind less than a century ago is proved by the number of local stories concerning it.
Many travellers in old Scotland allude to the barnacle goose, and even some of those who visited our Western coasts in the eighteenth century did not scruple to include it in their list of Caledonian marvels. Some believed it to grow upon trees, and to take final bird-shape on dropping from their branches into the water. But the most common tradition referred the origin of the cadhan, as it was called In the Hebrides, to the worm which attaches itself as a parasite to floating wood that has been some time in the water, often covering it so thickly as to conceal the surface of the log. The superstition is akin to that once current in the Highlands that eels grow from horsehairs. Those who partook of their flesh would, it was said, become violently insane. An associated idea was that porpoises were developed from dog-fish. But the barnacle goose was in no sense peculiar to Scotland, and was known in Wales and parts of Europe.
Reminiscent of the hound of the Baskervilles is the Cu sith, or fairy hound, which the Western islanders describe as being as large as a two-year-old cow, and of a dark green colour, with ears of still deeper green. Its long tail was rolled up in a coil on its back, but was sometimes “plaited like the straw rug of a pack-saddle”. It was usually kept in the fairy knowe or brugh as a watchdog by the elfin folk who dwelt there, but at times roamed about loose, making its lair in the clefts of the rocks. The tracks made by its feet were as large as the spread of the human hand, and the noise made by its passing was like that of a horse galloping. Thrice only does it bark or bay, in short, sharp growls, and at the third bark the terrified traveller is overtaken and pulled down.
The fairy cat is as large as a dog, and is pure black, save for a splash of white on the breast. There is a good deal of evidence either that the cat was formerly worshipped in certain parts of the Highlands, or that it possessed some totemic significance in these regions, if the number of clan- and place-names derived from it are any criterion.
Monsters of a nebulous character, difficult to describe because of the very obscure terms in which they are spoken of by old writers, abounded in various districts in Scotland. The Ettrick Shepherd writes of a creature called falm, which haunted a mountain at Glen Aven. “He appears,” writes Hogg, “to be no native of this world, but an occasional visitant, whose intentions are evil and dangerous. He is only seen about the break of day, and on the highest verge of the mountain. His head is twice as large as his body, and if any living creature cross the track over which he has passed before the sun shine on it, certain death is the consequence.”
The water-horse of the Western Highlands (each uisge) must be differentiated from the kelpie, to which, indeed, it has only a general resemblance. In shape and colour it resembled an ordinary horse, and, indeed, frequently mixed with horses when placed out to graze. But should anyone mount it, it galloped off with him to the nearest loch or inlet, and plunged into the depths, where it devoured its rider. It had the power of transforming its shape, and could appear as a young man or a boy, or even at times as an inanimate object.
Joy Sweeney wrote:
Dear Sir,
My grandmother, who was from Derry, Ireland saw the banshee just prior to her sister, Josephine’s, death many years ago. My grandmother lived in Florida and Josephine was living in Canada. My grandmother said she first heard the banshee wailing loudly and mournfully outside her door. Then she saw the old woman in white in a horse-driven carriage going by her house. She noted the date and time and later found out that her sister had died around the same time. My grandmother was a MacDonagh.
No one else in our family has seen the banshee.
Posted on 15-Jun-05 at 2:36 pm | Permalink
ed malvey wrote:
i was wondering where you got the name chapel of st. malvey i can trace my family name back to 1734 in ireland county cork
Posted on 10-Aug-05 at 12:14 am | Permalink
Aine MacDermot wrote:
It’s not me that got that name, this article is The Celtic Spirit World
by Lewis Spence
from ‘The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain’
(chapter VII)
Posted on 10-Aug-05 at 12:18 am | Permalink
ed malvey wrote:
i dont want to be a pest but do you have any idea about the origin of the chapel of st malvey?
Posted on 10-Aug-05 at 1:26 am | Permalink
Aine MacDermot wrote:
You’re not being a pest. And, no, I don’t know the origin of the chapel of St. Malvey. Sounds like a good topic for you to research, though (considering your last name).
Posted on 10-Aug-05 at 1:40 am | Permalink
Mirela Sevenich-Walter wrote:
Dear Sir,
my grandparents lived in Croatia. They have been born in a little village by the name Seona.
It´s an unusually name for a croatic village.
I can remember that ma granny teach me then I was a child a lot of fairys.
She believed in them and the other older pupil in the village , too.
I have heard stories about fairies in this village.
My granny says they always lived there with the people helped them or punished them.
She tells me, if I don´t lost the faith in them, one day I would see the fairies, too.
In the wood of this village is a spring and there was an old man living. The people called him brother John.
He lives like an eremit allone and he was praying for the ill people. He was healing the humans.
My grandmother shaws me the place there the fairies were dancing in the ring.
She gives me so lot my granny and I beginn to understand now.
Three months ago I became the idea to search about the name Seona in Slavonia (Croatia).
This is a name from scotish gaellic and comes from the name Seonaid (God is great).
I´m sure that in Seona the celts build one of them first villages, then they come to Croatia.
All this I tell a Dr. of archeollogy in Zagreb and he writes me back, that he has found some celtic graves and this story from me can be a way to find something more about our history.
Today,if you ask me if I believe in fairiey, yes do.
Why?
So I am catholic, but my grandmother tells me that god is great, he lives everythere and I can talk with him also in the nature.
I grove up with the belive in god and the fairies.
I loved them and talked to them, too. I see them as my sisters in soul.
Sometimes I can here them singing in the wood or crying on places there bads thing happening.
They are real the fairies. My granny says if the humans lost the faith they can´T never see the fairies again.
One day I was so tired, I hear voices from the door like children laughing. I think my children are coming home with my husband, but it was a litle green ghost.
He was small ,like a child from 6 years.
I can´t see a face only circle on his head with symbols like celtic art. He talks somthing to me, but I don´t understand. It was a language warm and deep. The louds sounds like drrhh, krch, shhr, chaarhh,,, somthing like this.
On the top of the wall from my room something litle flyes. They looked like small white princes and they laughed all time. The voice of them sounds like children laughing.
I have open my ices and I was thinking I´m dreaming, but in the next second I feel how thr little green ghost take my plaid from the bed and takes it over me. I was falling in a deep sleep.
Then I awaked I have feel so good. I never sleeped better.
It was a good feeling. This I will never forgett.
Bye, from Germany, yours Mirela
Posted on 20-Sep-06 at 6:33 am | Permalink
ed makvey wrote:
It’s been quite a while but I found out some info about St. Malvey the real name of the church is St Moluag’s church (locally known by its gaidhlig name of Teampull Mholuaidh) is a 13th Century temple in the village of Eoropie in Ness in the Isle of Lewis
Posted on 18-Jan-08 at 8:50 pm | Permalink
Tom Malvey wrote:
I have documentation on the church from a journal written by Charles Dickens in 1887. He calls it the church of St Malvey. I traced him back to 590 AD. He and St Columba et al were called the disciples of Ireland. I think you might be Molly’s son, brother Jimmy now Father Seamus, and my cousin.
Posted on 29-Jan-08 at 11:01 am | Permalink