The 'each uisge'
Photo credit: onkel_wart
The water horse, or ‘each uisge’ in Gaelic, is thought to be the deadliest of all of Scotland's legendary water-dwelling creatures. They have dreadful staring eyes, webbed feet and a slimy coat, but most often they appear in the form of a handsome man. By quiet Highland lochs and rivers the each uisge tries to woo and trap young maidens.
Each uisge is pronounced 'ech-ooshkya'.
More than a hundred years ago a woman recounted a story of an encounter with the each uisge to the folklorist and writer Alexander Carmichael.
'A maiden, tending her father's flocks, met a 'lasgaire loinneil', handsome young man, on the lone hillside. The man pressed his suit upon the maiden; but though pleased with his appearance, and charmed with his manner, she kept shy of him, and tried to evade him.
He asked her to lift some of the sheep droppings rolling down towards them, and to satisfy him she did so, and lo! they became balls of glittering gold, shining and sparkling in the bright light of the sun, like the fireflies of night. The youth told the maiden that this was only a small part of what he could do for her; and, pressing his suit the harder, asked her to meet him again.
But through her long downcast eyelashes the girl thought that she could discern what seemed like hoofs instead of feet, with clay in their crevices and earth on their edges, and there appeared also to be fragments of 'rabhagach', water-reeds, in his moist hair, and she feared in her heart that he might be the 'each-uisge', water-horse, of which her mother had warned her. The maiden was sore afraid, and, fearing to say 'No', tremblingly promised to meet the man again.'
When the maiden got home she told her mother about the strange young man with water-reeds in his hair. The maiden’s mother told her father and her father told the priest. The priest decided that he would go with the maiden to meet the young man.
The priest took a Bible and made a sanctuary ‘in the name of the Sacred Three, and of the sanctified saints, and of the sinless angels’. Presently the young man arrived, clothed from head to heel in finest garb and gaudiest array, and right full of seductive smiles and enticing words. He tried to come near them, and went round and round three successive times, but could not come through the 'caim Chriosda chaoimh' - 'sanctuary of Christ the kindly'.
And again, and again, and yet again the prideful young man tried to come near, but again, and again, and yet again failed because of the blessed 'caim'. Then the big cock crowed, and the young man, defeated, fled with a roar, flames of forking fire more deadly than the fangs of the serpent issuing from his ears, eyes, nostrils, and heels, and showing his form anew.
The affrighted girl, trembling like the leaf of the aspen tree, looked in her hand, and lo! the erstwhile pellets of glittering gold were become filth, and in disgust she threw them away.'
'Ortha Nan Gaidheal, Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations' by Alexander Carmichael, 1900