THE GREAT WATERHORSE DEBATE: Glen Vaudrey

The Each Uisge (the Highland waterhorse)

Having read Dale Drinnon's rather impressive checklist of cryptozoological creatures I was rather taken by surprise to read that the Scottish water horse has its roots in the elk. Fair play if that is what he thinks but I have a completely different understanding of the creature; to me it’s the Highland bogeyman. Don’t think for one minute that I disagree with Dale on crossing it off the list of animals to look for but my reasons are rather different.

The earlier reports of the each uisge are far from the horse-like animal you would expect a water horse to be, as the following short tales will demonstrate.

On the Isle of Lewis there is the tale from the area of Shawbost concerning the fate of two cousins, Fair Mary and Dark Mary. One evening while they were tending the cattle out on the hill an old woman appeared complaining of her tiredness and asking for shelter. They are kind folk out in the Hebrides so it was hardly a surprise that they invited the old crone into their hut for the night. Of course things didn’t turn out all that well. The little old lady killed and ate Fair Mary during the hours of darkness; the only clue to the real identity of the assailant came when Dark Mary noticed a horse trotting away into the distance. It was this horse that confirmed that Fair Mary had been the victim of the dreaded each uisge

On Speyside there is a white horse inhabiting the River Spey that demands a victim every stormy winter, or at least that is the explanation given to account for the fate of those that drowned in the river each year; no accidental drowning, just the evil machinations of the waterhorse.

While the Strichen Burn in Aberdeenshire played host to a water horse that had the guise of an old man darning his trousers who if struck would dive into the water as a horse.

In the Cairngorms the water horse of Loch Pityoulish appeared, according to tales, as a beautiful steed with a silver saddle, silver bridle and silver reins. A group of local boys couldn’t resist the temptation to ride the beast, only for them to become stuck on the animal as it dived under the waves, dragging all but one to their deaths; the one survivor who managed to escape had to cut his rein-fast fingers off.

There have even been attempts to capture a waterhorse with Loch nan Dubhrachan on the Isle of Skye being dredged in 1870. It ended with no horse in the nets; just a couple of pike. While an attempt on the mainland near Tomintoul resulted in the appearance of a terrifying little man with a flaming red bonnet at the water's edge scaring away the usually brave Scotsmen (sounds a little like Hazel Blears to be honest).

You see the waterhorse/ each uisge is many things: the old woman, the fantasy horse, the river spirit that demands sacrifices or even a little man with a red hat but at no point does it appear as flesh and blood. Maybe the water horse sits in the zooform camp or perhaps it is just the highland bogeyman used to warn children of the dangers of playing in lonely lochs, to teach girls to be wary of strangers, even to soften the news of the drowning of a loved one.

Perhaps it is telling that by the end of the nineteenth century tales of the water horse had started to disappear. Once every region in the Highlands had a tale of one but today the name and the dangers of the water horse are rarely heard for now it seems there are plenty of other modern bogeymen to scare children with.