The Creveenach and other giant birds
In which I examine a curious creature from Highland folklore. Content note: child endangerment. Several of the Gaelic folk tales collected by John Francis Campbell and his informants in the west of Scotland in the 1850s and 60s feature a beast whose name Campbell rendered as Creveenach. (Elsewhere he, his scribes, and his later translator John G. McKay, recorded a bewildering variety of both Gaelic spellings and Anglicisations: Gire-mhìnich, cri-bhìnneach, Cro mhìnich, gìre-m
The Legend of Canonbie Dick
The Canonbie Dick story is one of Scotland's best known folk tales. In its usual form, it goes like this: a horse-trader, from Canonbie in Dumfriesshire, was travelling near the Eildon Hills when he was met by a mysterious old man who offered an extraordinarily high price for one or more of his horses. He was bidden to the hillock called the Lucken Hare to make the exchange (or, in other versions, followed the buyer there out of curiosity). There he was led into a spacious ca
