The Water Horse of Raasay

Here’s the monster for June: The Water Horse, or Each Uisge. The story relating to the Smith of Raasay and his encounter with the creature is the most vivid I could find, and so I padded out the original tale to run to over 4000 words. Here is the opening paragraphs of my tale, The Smith and the Water Horse, which is in the first volume of the Blue Men, Green Women series.

The Smith and the Water Horse (extract)

(c) 2007 Stephen J. McKenzie, not for copying

One November day on the Isle of Raasay, a smith called John Cullen went to see the local minister. He said he was having trouble with a water horse, or some other creature of the sea that was taking his sheep at night, and he wanted some advice.

‘Well,’ said the minister, ‘perhaps it is one of the neighbours, whose season with the lambs was not as good as your own.’ They spoke in the front room of his neat white house at Inverarish. Cullen had walked all morning to get there and then sat patiently while the priest ate his oatcakes and drank his tea, before finally beginning to answer his concerns. ‘Or perhaps it was a dog let loose in a fit of jealousy?’ he said. ‘Much as we would wish it otherwise, evil often lies closest to the human heart.’ He wiped away a crumb from his mouth with a handkerchief.

‘No, I am certain it is one of the sea creatures’, said Cullen in reply. ‘Which of my neighbours would put a dog among my sheep? And if there were a poacher by Loch Arnish, I am sure I would know something of it.’ Cullen was a widower, his wife lost to the sea seven years before, and on Raasay he was more of a subject of pity than envy; there were none on the island that would begrudge him any success, and if there was anything that he needed to know, it was sure that someone would have taken time to tell him.

‘These things may be so, but you’ve still no proof it was a monster’, said the minister. ‘Tell me, have you laid eyes on the beast yourself?’ The Church on Raasay was strict and pure at that time, and the minister wished to discourage his flock from the old ways, which might lead them to damnation in one form or another.

‘No, but I have heard him,’ said Cullen. ‘The night before last, when it was clear and the stars were bright, I set up watch behind some rocks. In the dead of night I heard something splashing about in the still water near the shore, and a bellowing, snorting noise, as well.’

‘And…?’ asked the old priest, as though this were not enough. But as soon as Cullen began again, he interrupted. ‘Could not that have been the bellow of an otter, or a seal, made to seem strange by the movement of the sound across the waves?’

‘Well, it would be more normal for an otter to make such noises in the springtime, rather than November, Father’, said the smith with care, for he was a reserved man, and tried always to be a well-mannered one. But in truth, he knew full well the sound of a male otter in the mating season, and thought the minister’s question a foolish one. He was about to proceed, but once again the minister spoke over the top of him.

‘Well, let us not quibble over this and that. There is still nothing in what you have told me to make me think it was a monster, as you say.’ And he made to get up from the armchair, as though this were the end of the conversation.

‘There is more, father. All the sheep ran away from the sound at once, except one ewe, and she moved into the water, towards where the noise was coming from. In the cold of November! Why would she do such a thing?’

‘Good heavens, why does a ewe do any of the things she does?’ said the minister. ‘God did not make her to be understood. And you are her shepherd, are you not? Did you rescue her?’

‘No, Father’, said Cullen, a hint of shame creeping into his voice. ‘I ran forward, but a wave came over her, and when it withdrew the wind came and blew the water to slivers of light, so I could not make her out. But I am sure the creature took her.’

‘Nonsense!’ said the old priest. ‘All I have heard is excuses, and all I see is a man who should pay less mind to old stories and more to looking after his flock. Now, that is enough.’ And this time, he rose and bade the smith good day.

So Cullen went home without telling the priest one final thing. He told himself that this was in deference to the other man; but in truth, he was reluctant to put the thing into words, lest telling someone else would make it seem more real to himself. As the ewe had entered the water and he had ran forward to save it, Cullen had heard a whinnying laugh from the thing in the bay, a noise that could only have come from a thinking creature. It was a low, uncanny sound, which stayed with him in his dreams that night, and for several after.

The Sources

The original source for the tale is a single paragraph, which can be found repeated all over the internet, from Mysterious Britain, Encyclopedia of the Celts and other common sources. It reads:

One such tale {of the Each Uisge] is recorded in ‘More West Highland Tales’ by McKay: A blacksmith from Raasay lost his daughter to the Each Uisge. In revenge the blacksmith and his son made a set of large hooks, in a forge they set up by the loch side. They then roasted a sheep and heated the hooks until they were red hot. At last a great mist appeared from the water and the Each Uisge rose from the depths and seized the sheep. The blacksmith and his son rammed the red-hot hooks into its flesh and after a short struggle dispatched it. In the morning there was nothing left of the creature apart from a jelly like substance.

The book referred to is John G. MacKay’s More West Highland Tales (Oliver & Boyd Edinburgh 1940, recently republished by Birlinn). Unfortunately this resource is not online and I have only accessed it once, briefly, in an Australian library. While MacKay was Campbell’s translator, the story does not appear in Campbell’s similarly-titled Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1890). Consequently I cannot verify if the original version is longer, and has more detail.

Campbell’s own section on the Water Horse (in volume 4, from page 307) is very interesting, and makes clear that Water Bull was in fact an equally well-known creature, which for some reason has fallen into obscurity compared to the Water Horse, which is frequently referenced by Nessie Hunters as a historical antecedent and, of course, is now the subject of a major film, as well as several pieces of Scottish folk music. I may write on the Water Bull at some future time. The character of the priest in my story is modeled on the character of J. F. Campbell himself in the course of the Water Horse section, particularly in regards to the notion that the sound of the creature might be compared to a bull otter.

The story of the Smith of Raasay also makes an appearance in Boswell’s Journal of Johnson’s Tour to the Hebrides. I have this from a third source, the Survivals in Belief Among the Celts, by George Henderson, [1911]. Henderson writes:

“In Arisaig there is a loch, which, according to tradition, there lived at one time a sea-horse. Boswell, in his Journal of Johnson’s Tour to the Hebrides, informs us that an old man told the following fabulous story of one of the lochs of Raasay:

“There was once a wild beast in it, a sea-horse, which came and devoured a man’s daughter, upon which the man lighted a great fire and had a sow roasted in it, the smell of which attracted the monster. In the fire was put a spit. The man lay concealed behind a low wall of loose stones. The monster came, and the man with the red hot spit destroyed it.

This at least indicates that the story of The Smith and the Water-Horse was well known in Raasay for some time before MacKay knew of it. It seems intimately connected with Raasay and has no counterparts anywhere else in Scotland to my knowledge, so may have been brought about by areal event of some kind.

Finally, There another interesting passage on the Water Horse in J. A. MacCulloch’s Religions of the Ancient Celts (1911).

The Each Uisge, or “Water-horse,” a horse with staring eyes, webbed feet, and a slimy coat, is still dreaded. He assumes different forms and lures the unwary to destruction, or he makes love in human shape to women, some of whom discover his true nature by seeing a piece of water-weed in his hair, and only escape with difficulty. Such a water-horse was forced to drag the chariot of S. Fechin of Fore, and under his influence became “gentler than any other horse.”2

Many Highland lochs are still haunted by this dreaded being, and he is also known in Ireland and France, where, however, he has more of a tricky and less of a demoniac nature.3 His horse form is perhaps connected with the similar form ascribed to Celtic water-divinities. Manannan’s horses were the waves, and he was invariably associated with a horse. Epona, the horse-goddess, was perhaps originally goddess of a spring, and, like the Matres, she is sometimes connected with the waters.1 Horses were also sacrificed to river-divinities.2 But the beneficent water-divinities in their horse form have undergone a curious distortion, perhaps as the result of later Christian influences.

I did rather like the idea of the Water Horse as a debased deity and called the Smith Cullen (one name for the Smith God in Irish myth) to suggest that the battle being played out was mythological, as well as folkloric. As the setting is Raasay, birthplace of the Wee Frees, I also wanted to develop conflict between the old ways and the new religion. The notion that the water-horse is an alternate (and malicious) deity suited the theme very well. It is possible that, as MacCulloch suggests, the original benevolent water horse deity may have been demonised by Christian priests, hence the development of stories such as this one, showing their deceptive nature.

In regards to location, the sources I have do not say which loch on Raasay we are referring to, so I have chosen Arnish, a sea-loch, rather than an inland one, on the northern part of the island, making the smith’s house some way from the nearest town, to emphasis his separation from the community. An OS map is available here.

Thanks to the wonders of Geograph, I can now also link to an image of Loch Arnish, showing it stillness. This is of the cove at thesouthern end of the loch. Thanks to Geograph and photographer John Allan for this photo, which is originally found here.

Want to read the rest of the story? I’d love to see it in print, too. Leave me a message.

Leave me a message here.

S. J. McKenzie.