Blue Men and Mirrie Dancers
“The fallen angels were driven out of Paradise in three divisions, one became the Fairies on the land, one the Blue Men in the sea, and one the Nimble Men... i.e. the Northern Streamers, or Merry Dancers, in the sky.” These are the words of the Reverend John Gregorson Campbell, from Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in 1900. Campbell was a Free Kirk minister in the isles of Coll and Tiree from 1861 to his death in 1891 – Superstitions is a posthumous p
Winter and Summer "Goddesses"
A look at the relationship between Bride and an Cailleach Bheur, and the origins of their seasonal roles in Scottish myth. Picture credit: John Duncan, "The Coming of Bride". We've already looked at the role of an Cailleach Bheur as a creatrix in modern myth, shaping the mountains with her hammer of frost and dropping the islands from her creel: but we barely touched on her other major role, that of winter goddess. So let's delve into that. As inventive as Donald Alexander
Creation and the Cailleach
How old exactly is the Scottish creation myth? The monkish chroniclers who first recorded so much of the mythology of the Gaelic peoples back in Early Medieval Ireland had nothing to say about the very beginning. That may not seem like a surprise: obviously they believed in the Christian creation myth, and that shaped their writing: but they were happy enough to write about a world in which the old gods were real, and explicitly called gods. And if you compare their work to
Who were the parents of King Galdus?
We’ve examined the legend of King Galdus before, more than once , but far from exhaustively. Today, however, I want to look at his...
Hamlet's voyage
Content note: familial murder and attempted murder; bigamy. "Thus set it down," decrees Claudius of his wayward nephew in Hamlet: "he...
Some Scottish Red Weddings
The theme of sacrosanct hospitality being murderously abused looms large in Scottish history and legend. Content note: murder; spousal...
A series of improbable kings
We've looked at the legend of King Galdus, and how it relates to the fragmentary older legends of Cairbre Riata and other supposed...
The many legendary founders of Scotland
One remarkable thing about Scottish legend is just how many beginnings the country's pseudo-history seems to have. In my article on the...
King Galdus
The fourth book of Hector Boece's History of the Scottish People tells the epic story of the hero-king Galdus. (A still more stirring...
Beregonium, Scotland's lost capital
There is a legend of a fallen city, once the glorious capital of the ancient Scots, before it was destroyed in fire. But where did the...
