‘Jamie sat with his head down... telling tales of silkies & seal-catchers, of pipers and elves, of the great giants of Fingal’s Cave…’

Diana Gabaldon, The Drums of Autumn

I recently started watching Outlander after receiving ten thousand recommendations to do so. Now I understand why; besides being a great production, it’s full of references to Celtic Mythology and Scottish folklore. Yet these references are fleeting, and perhaps confusing for those unfamiliar with the subject. So here’s a guide to Scottish folklore for Outlander fans.

Standing Stones

The natural place to start is with standing stones. Do we really have legends of time travel through standing stones?

Stone circles are found throughout the British Isles. Some recent scholarship claims they originated in Orkney in Northern Scotland. Their original uses are almost entirely unknown, although it is clear that they were used to mark the passing of the year, with many circles being aligned with the midwinter and midsummer solstices.

Sadly, the folklore surrounding them seems to come from a time after they had fallen out of use. A typical tale is the origin story of the famous Ring of Brodgar in Orkney. The story goes that a group of giants were having a ceilidh, or dance, to mark the summer solstice. They danced in a circle while one of the giants, who was providing the music courtesy of his fiddle, stood a little way away from the group. The giants were having such fun that they didn’t notice the sun rising; it appeared over the horizon and turned them all to stone.

Stories such as this are entertaining enough, but they don’t tell us anything about the sacred uses of the stones. And what about travelling through the stones to another time? While I’m not aware of any stories directly referring to this, there are stones which can be literally passed through, such as the donut-shaped Men-An-Tol in Cornwall, which local people would crawl through in the hope of increased fertility.

Stone circles are often associated with fairies, who were very real to the highlanders of days gone by. The stories of mortals passing into the fairy realm are endless. Typically, when the mortal returns, they find they have been gone much longer than they expected; weeks instead of hours, or years instead of days. So while Claire’s journey doesn’t precisely reflect anything in Scottish folklore, it’s not a great leap .

Fairies

Lets talk a bit more about fairies.

Belief in fairies was once universal in Scotland, and still exists today. The fairies are seen a human-like race inhabiting an otherworld which is close to and interwoven with our own. They are often described as exceptionally beautiful, with great skill in weaving, singing, music and other arts. The overall impression given by the stories is that sensible people respect fairies and keep away from them. If you do encounter them, be kind and courteous, and you may be rewarded. Mistreat them and expect to be punished severely.

Claire is suspected of being a banshee, which is an Irish term that literally translates as fairy of the hill, or fairy woman. A banshee once simply meant that, a fairy woman; but it later came to denote a particular kind of fairy who wails when death is imminent. This relates to the practice of keening, a death-song performed by women when a loud one passes over. There were even professional keeners, and the practice is currently being revived in Scotland by a group called The Keening Wake.

My favourite Scottish fairy story is The Fairy Lover; listen to me tell it using the player below.

A related Scottish fairy is the bean nigheachain, the washerwoman. Anyone who comes across her as she washes bloody clothes on a riverbank will know that a death is imminent. I suspect that Diana Gabaldon used the term banshee since it has become so well-known through use in popular culture, rather than because Claire’s story directly connects to the banshee legend.

Another type of fairy which makes an appearance in Outlander is the changeling, or as we sometimes call it in Scotland, the taen-awa (taken-away). Claire finds a baby crying on a hilltop, and is informed that it isn’t a baby but a changeling. Fairies in Scotland are believed to sometimes steal infants which have been left out on fairy hills or other unsafe places, replacing the child with one of their own. Various rituals can be performed in order to retrieve the human child; in one story, the fairy child must be thrown over a waterfall at dawn. In a story from Isla, an island in the Southern Hebrides, a smith suspects that his son has been replaced with a fairy changing. He is advised by a wise neighbour to perform a bizarre action in front of the fairy, which will trick it into revealing itself.

That evening, Alasdair MacEachern entered his son’s bedroom carrying a basket full of eggshells in one hand and a bucket of water in the other.
Shuddering at the smell, he set down his basket and bucket on either side of the fireplace, then kindled a fire. That done, he carefully placed each eggshell on the floor before the fire.
As he worked, Alasdair heard Neil stir. He felt his son’s eyes on him.
Once all the eggshells were out of the basket, Alasdair bent down, picked up two of them, carried them over to the bucket and dipped them in the water, scooping up water as if they were tiny bowls. He then turned and carried the eggshells back to their places before the fire. As he did so, he stooped and grimaced, acting as if each speckled vessel were as heavy as an anvil.
Alasdair returned to the bucket with two more eggshells and then staggered back to the fireplace. He took great care to set them down in just the right place.
Over and over Alasdair did this until a laugh rang out through the room.
He turned to face Neil.
His leather-skinned son was sitting up in bed. Neil’s eyes were gleaming in the firelight, his leering mouth revealing broken brown teeth as he cackled hysterically, slapping his knees.
‘Eight hundred years,’ he said, struggling to speak through his laughter. ‘Eight hundred years I’ve lived, and eight thousand strange things I’ve seen, but I’ve never seen anyone do that before!’
Daniel Allison, Scottish Myths & Legends Volume II

Kelpies & Fairy Bulls

Camped beside Loch Garve, Rupert tells the group a story about a builder who is abducted by a water-horse. The water-horse orders the builder to make a fireplace and chimney for his home beneath the loch, so that his wife will no longer feel cold.

Water-horses are nowadays better known as kelpies. A kelpie is a water spirit that lives beneath a loch or sometimes beneath the sea. It takes the form of a black horse with a black beard, and in some stories it shape-shifts into a man. As a horse, the kelpie will try to trick its victims into climbing onto its back, where they find themselves unable to dismount. The kelpie gallops into the water and drowns them.

The sun sank into the mouth of the west. The birds of night spread their wings across the sky.
John closed his eyes.
He waited.
Drifting in and out of sleep, he was awoken by a gentle whinny.
John opened his eyes. Stood a little way away from him, its dark fur glistening in the moonlight, was the kelpie.
It looked him in the eye and whinnied again. Still looking at John, it lowered its hindquarters.
John got to his feet.
‘Oh my,’ he said, ‘what a beautiful horse you are. Would it be alright if I took a ride on you?’
The kelpie whinnied again. It seemed to nod its head, ever so slightly.
Daniel Allison, Scottish Myths & Legends

In the story quoted, a young farmer is trying to capture a kelpie so that it can work on his farm. Similar stories are told of fairy bulls. In these cases, the bull is often tricked out of the water and forced to work by a farmer until it breaks free.

There is an incredible Irish tale of two fairy men who turn into worms, which are eaten by two cows, which then give birth to fairy bulls. The war over the ownership of one of these bulls is known as the Tain Bo Cuailgne, The War for The Brown Bull of Cooley. It is considered to be one of the masterpieces of Celtic literature; and it is! Look out for a future book from me which retells the story.

‘The Kelpies’ sculpture near Falkirk, Scotland

Silkies

In the first book, we learn of how Jamie’s father eloped with his mother, and that people would say that she had gone off with a silkie (or selkie) man.

‘What’s a silkie?’ I asked.
Alick’s eyes slanted towards me, crinkling at the corners.
‘Ye call them seals in English… folk in the village would tell the tale to each other that Ellen MacKenzie was taken to the sea to live among the seals…. did ye know that silkies put aside their skins when they come ashore, and walk like men?’
Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

‘Silkie’ or ‘selkie’ is the Scots word for seal, and has come to denote a mythical creature which wears the skin of a seal yet sheds it to reveal a human underneath. There are many tales of handsome silkie men coming ashore and seducing away young women. Conversely, many tales involve a man stealing a silkie woman’s skin and forcing her to become his wife. Take a look at my blog article on selkies if you want to know more, or listen to Scottish storyteller Kirsten Milliken tell the story of Mary & The Seal on House of Legends podcast using the player below.

Pipers, Elves & The Great Giants of Fingal’s Cave

In The Drums of Autumn, we are given a glimpse of the stories Jamie carries:

‘Jamie sat with his head down, clinging doggedly to her hands, still talking soothingly, telling tales of silkies & seal-catchers, of pipers and elves, of the great giants of Fingal’s Cave…’
Diana Gabaldon, The Drums of Autumn

What might these stories have been?

We don’t tell many stories about elves in Scotland. Elves come from Norse mythology, so stories concerning them were doubtless told in Norse-occupied Scotland, but haven’t survived that time. But we have plenty of stories about pipers!

A favourite story among contemporary Scottish storytellers is the story of The Piper and the Boots. The story begins with a piper walking through the snow on new year’s eve. He comes across a dead man frozen in the snow and notices that the man is wearing a fine pair of boots; much finer than his own.

The piper saws off the man’s boots with the feet still in them, puts them in his sack and heads on until he comes to a farmhouse. The farmer says he can’t come in, but he can sleep in the byre (cowshed). In the byre, the piper leaves the boots by the head of a sleeping cow, hoping her breath will defrost the feet. When the farmer comes through in the morning, he sees the boots and believes the cow ate the piper. This allows the piper to pretend to be a ghost, chase the farmer out of his house and eat his dinner.

The fire was still burning, ye see. So he racket up the fire and got a gid heat and there was a good drop whisky left in the bottle. The Ould piper… drunk the whisky an had a bit o this chicken.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘maybe that’s set them… a lesson for no letting people in at night.’
Alan Bruford & Donald MacDonald, Scottish Traditional Tales

Many tales of pipers are light-hearted folk tales of this type. It seems, though, that pipes have a more intriguing use than for entertainment or to rally troops on the battlefield. According to a contemporary Baltic pagan priest, pipes were once used to call the souls of the dead to the underworld. You can learn more in this intriguing interview on Fair Folk Podcast.

And as for the great giants of Fingal’s Cave?

My favourite subject!

This is a reference to the Fianna, a legendary band of warriors led in their heyday by Finn MacCool, also known as Fingal. The Fianna lived semi-nomadic lives, hunting in the forests during the summer and feasting in their halls during the winter. They were charged with protecting the shores of Scotland and Ireland from invaders, and when they weren’t busy doing that, they kept busy by getting into all kinds of trouble.

One famous story describes the origin of the rock formation in Northern Ireland known as the Giant’s Causeway. Finn was walking along the Antrim shore when he looked out to sea, all the way over to the Scottish island of Staffa, where the Scottish giant, Benandonner, was also looking out to sea. The two started shouting insults to one another, and before long they were both tearing up rocks to make a road across the sea.

Benandonner called Finn a name so foul that all the milk in Ireland curdled as he spoke it. Finn answered in similar terms. Insults flew back and forth between them, growing more and more venomous, until they moved from insults to threats, and from threats to deeds.
Finn leapt from the clifftop down to the beach. He began to rip and pull at the bare rock, which broke apart into six-sided columns. These he arranged into what soon became a road, leading from the beach into the sea, towards Alba and towards Benandonner.
Over on Staffa, Benandonner began to do the same; then changed his mind. Let Finn tire himself out, making a road to his own ruin.
Daniel Allison, Finn & The Fianna

Finn was a hero, a friend and a brother to the highlanders. Jamie would doubtless have known dozens of Finn tales. The stories themselves are, for me, the greatest in the Celtic canon. Tragically, though they are well-known in Ireland, they are mostly forgotten on Scotland. When I go into a Scottish school and ask a classroom full of children who has heard of Finn MacCoull, it’s rare for a hand to go up. This is a situation I’m working to remedy.

Nessie

I suppose I’d better mention Nessie…

Visitors to Scotland are wild about Nessie. Scots, not so much. I think what irritates me is the attention that Nessie gets while the riches of our actual folklore goes unnoticed.

Yet Nessie isn’t just a tourist trap.

Stories about the Loch Ness monster began to surface in the 19th century. However, the oldest known story concerning a monster in those parts dates back to the sixth century.

An Irish priest, later known as St Columba, founded a monastery on the Hebridean island of Iona with the intention of spreading christianity to the pagan tribes of Scotland. His chronicler, Adomnan, describes a journey Columba made up Loch Ness in 536AD, right into the heart of Pictish territory. At the court of the Pictish king Brude, Columba took up Brude’s challenge to debate which was the true religion with Brude’s own chief druid. Columba won, but the picts remained pagan, at least for a while.

On that same journey, Columba met some men burying a neighbour by the River Ness. He was told that a water beast lived in the river, and had killed the man when he entered the water.

Columba instructed one of his followers to enter the water in order to lure the creature out. When it appeared, he performed a kind of exorcism, ordering it to go away and never trouble men again.

‘“Go! Go! Back, creature – back! In the name of Almighty God, Creator of you as of us all – go! Turn! Leave us. Back, I say, in the name of Jesus Christ God!”
For dire moments thereafter the monster came on, and in those moments even Colum’s faith wavered. Then, in an almost graceful motion that head and arching neck curved down into the river again, and there were only three humps, still moving fast.
Nigel Tranter, Columba

Conclusion

That’s all for this primer on Scottish folklore for Outlander fans. If you’d like to diver deeper into Scottish folklore, take a look at my USA Today bestselling book, Scottish Myths & Legends, have a listen to House of Legends Podcast or read my article on Selkie folklore.

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Daniel Allison

USA Today Bestselling Author of Scottish Myths & Legends,

Scottish Folklore for Outlander Fans