Episode 35 - Boobrie

You were on the far west coast. Behind you, the long stretch of the highland hills. Ahead of you, the ocean waves smash against the rocky shoreline and further out, everything fades to the flat gray of fog. At the very edge of your vision, a pair of dark shadows low and long across the water reveal the presence of islands.

Through the fog, it’s more like feeling that they are there than actually seeing them. Just north of you, a few small fishing towns dotted the shoreline, and to the south, the mountains and moors and wider country. Standing here was like standing at the edge of the world. The only thing beyond the shore where you stood was the cold water and the bare rock islands that dotted the coast.

You would normally be fishing, either the sea or one of the nearby, smaller lochs. But today, you were resting. Recent days had been plentiful and you were taking a well-deserved break.

You wrapped your coat tighter around you, and continued your walk. Your destination, a cliff overlooking the ocean, one of your favorite spots to visit. On a clear day, you could see for miles from the point.

Along the north-western coast of Scotland, a unique brand of folklore grew over the centuries. Full of stories of the lochs and the oceans and the moors, the western coast is home to a number of creatures and strange tales.

One among them, strange and nebulous, is a story of a shapeshifter. Sometimes described as a unique entity, or even as a god or demon; and other times simply considered a magical beast, the boobrie is a creature native to those cold, foggy shores.

The boobrie was a shape-shifter, taking the form of a massive bird, or of a bull or horse that can run across water as if it were solid ground. Their bellowing call could be heard echoing across the shore as it hunted. They were generally malevolent, often blamed for disappearing livestock and attacking ships; the boobrie were widely feared and loathed.

The boobrie fits in an odd space between folklore and mythology. While its roots appear to be in the folklore of western Scotland, it has many overlaps with creatures and stories from Norse mythology. Regardless of its origins, it took on a life of its own as a shape-shifting terror that often attacked livestock, stole horses, and just as quickly vanished back beneath the waters of the ocean and lochs.

I am Andrew Eagle, and I would like to invite you to join me as I pass Through the Veil, and explore the story of the boobrie.

You reached the point within an hour or so. The climb left you breathing heavily, and warmed up enough that you’d partially undone your coat.

The fog was still thick, but the warming day was beginning to thin it out. You still couldn’t see detail, but you could see the shorelines of the rocky islands.

Up this high, the wind whipped and whistled. Carrying away all the sound except for it. Even the waves were faint and distant undertones to the ocean winds.

But there was something else on the wind… A sound that was barely there, so faint you couldn’t quite find any detail to it. But whatever it was, it was off-putting. Like it didn’t belong, it was somehow counter to all of this.

You shook your head, trying to shake away whatever that awful sound was, and you caught sight of a ship.

It was a small thing, but larger than the local fishing boats would be. It had just begun to emerge from behind the smaller of the two islands, making its way through the bay, it seemed to aim to cut between the larger island the shore of the mainland.

Must be carrying cargo of some kind to the towns to the north. A fairly rare thing, a boat like that coming this far north, but not unheard of. You shrugged to yourself and thought little of it. Then the sound began to grow. Louder and softer, louder and softer, something growing closer… The noise was terrible. It reminded you in some way of a gigantic bull.

As a shapeshifter, the boobrie can be difficult to describe. Unlike many of the shapeshifters in folklore, limited to one or two unique forms, the boobrie was possessed of many forms. Although it had a few favorites that showed up again and again, it was capable of materializing as a variety of creatures.

The most common form of the boobrie by far is that of a gigantic bird. Often described as resembling a cormorant or great northern diver, black and white birds with straight, sharp beaks and long necks; if they were seen at a massive scale. According to one story, a boobrie could appear “larger than seventeen of the biggest eagles put together.” With a massive beak over a foot in length and sharp claws on its webbed feet, the boobrie was certainly fearsome in its bird form.

In this form, it most often hunted livestock, stealing away calves, sheep, and goats, much to the chagrin of local farmers.

Its other common forms include a water bull, or in stories where it was particularly malevolent, a water horse.

In versions of the story where the boobrie takes the form of a water bull, it sometimes plays a malevolent role, but other times comes to the rescue of young maidens. In those where it takes the form of a water horse, it is often responsible for carrying off young people to their death underwater. In both cases, it is said that it can run across the surface of water as if it were land, and it can move much faster than its mundane counterparts. In some stories, its speed is described as so great it is more akin to teleportation than actual movement.

The last of its common forms is far more rare than the other three, however it consistently shows up in stories of the boobrie taking place at the peak of summer. It is said the boobrie can take the form of a giant insect with many legs and antennae. In its insect form, the boobrie often attacks and drinks the blood of horses.

When you first saw the bird, you thought your eyes must be tricking you. The true form hidden in the fog. That was the only way to explain what you thought you saw. The sheer size of the thing.

When it glided over your head, you realized you had underestimated its size. It was massive, the size of a dozen eagles or more, put together. And as it tore through the sky above you, flapping its gigantic wings hard enough that you could feel the wind from them, you realized that this bird, this massive bird, was the source of the terrible sound.

The huge creature was fast. Too fast for its size. It launched itself into the sky, higher and higher, nearly vanishing. Then it came plummeting down in a dive. It plunged into the water only to reappear again in a moment. Back into the sky it went, this time settling into a circle above the ship. It would loop low occasionally, low enough that it looked like it was scraping along the deck.

It did this cycle a few times, swooping low, a circle high up. A continuous attack on the ship. Until suddenly, on one of its assaults, it was carrying something in its cruel talons. And it began to fly up and away, straight over the point where you were standing and soaring inland carrying its bounty.

From the shape of it, you guessed it was an unlucky calf or sheep clutched in its claws. Without thinking, you started running after the thing. It was much faster, but it was heading in a single direction, so that is the way you ran.

Not everyone is agreed about the origins and etymology of the boobrie.

Edward Dwelly, a Scottish lexicographer, offers a name translating to monster, demon, or god capable of changing into many forms. There are many regional variants on the spelling and details, but folklorists and scholars have, over the course of time, associated those many variants into one creature - which we know today by the name boobrie.

The folklorist Campbell of Islay claimed that perhaps the stories of boobrie could be based on sightings of the great auk, and the strange sound that was attributed to it could come from the bittern, a bird that is an occasional visitor to Scotland known to have a bellowing call.

It is a strange pairing of attributes, considering the great auk is a flightless bird and matches few of the other descriptions provided for boobries, and the bittern is a small bird but perhaps contributed its bold cry.

You quickly crested a hill and just beyond the next hill, you could see the glimmer of a loch’s waters through the fog.

Although you saw no sign of the creature itself, you saw its prize. The body of the calf it had stolen from the ship lay near the loch’s waters. You moved slowly down the hill and into the valley between the two. Making your way along a small stream that flowed from the loch.

You slowed and stopped behind a pair of large boulders, lowering yourself into hiding to watch the loch.

Suddenly the air was filled with the horrible bellowing call of the creature. Looking up, you saw it circling high above the loch. It slowly lowered itself down. Coming to land next to the body. It loosed another bellow and splayed its wings out. Up close, its size was even more evident. Its wings were larger than a person was tall, larger than two people put together.

It tossed the body into the loch where it sank abruptly. Then the creature changed before your eyes. It practically melted, morphing like water until what had been a massive bird had become a beautiful, black horse.

The horse slowly walked into the loch, first stepping onto the surface of the water impossibly and then sliding forward and down until it vanished beneath the water.

You barely believed your eyes, and you were stopped and stunned for nearly an hour before you left that strange loch and its denizen behind.

Although most stories featuring the boobrie demonstrate its malevolence, some common boobrie stories feature a boobrie in the role of a savior.

One story is about a man, Eachann, and his betrothed, Phemie. It begins with Eachann discovering a massive black bull hurt and dying along the shore of Loch nan Dobhran. He helps the creature and goes about his way. It is described that Phemie’s former lover was a brutish man, and prone to violence, and she worried greatly that he would seek her out in jealousy of Eachann. And so it was that several months after Eachann saved the bull, Phemie was attacked from the bushes. But before she could be harmed, the bull emerged from the water’s of the lake and drove her assailant away. The creature allowed Phemie to climb onto its back and in a matter of moments, had crossed a vast distance to deposit her on the doorstep of her mother’s home safe and sound.

It is recorded that shortly after, the creature disappeared, sometimes speaking a moment before it vanishes.

More commonly, it fulfills the role of antagonist.

An example is the story of a farmer and his son. They were out with a team of horses, plowing a field beside a loch. However, when one of their horses lost a shoe, it was unable to continue the work. They noticed a horse grazing nearby, and the farmer thought maybe he could use it as a replacement.

It’s claimed that the horse seemed familiar with the task, and work continued at a steady pace. However, as it came closer to the loch it grew restless and wild.

When the farmer whipped the horse in an attempt to encourage it to continue, it immediately transformed into a giant bird and dove into the loch, dragging the plow and the three other horses behind it. They vanished into the water, and although the farmer and his son waited at the side of the loch for seven hours, they saw no sign of the creature or their animals again.

The Scottish highlands have a wealth of folklore and creatures that were only more widely investigated and studied in the 19th-century. The boobrie among them. It is a strange creature, with many names, and each region telling its tales a different way. Some find it more benevolent while others speak of it only as an evil force. But they all attribute it with powerful magic, including the ability to shape-shift.

Some think it was a spirit bound to a particular place, others that it was more like a magical animal, that roams and hunts wide ranges of the Scottish highland.

Interestingly, one of the creature’s that may serve as the origin of boobrie stories, the bittern, is seen as a harbinger of death. Which may be part of the reason stories so often feature boobries in a malevolent role.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Through the Veil. I hope you enjoyed. I encourage you to subscribe to receive new episodes weekly wherever you listen as we continue our exploration of folklore, myth, and magic.

If you are enjoying the show, and have subjects you would like to hear covered, please email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter, you can find me @ThroughVeil.

As always, thank you, for listening.