Cù Sìth — The Fairy Hound of the Highlands

Isle of Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland

The size of a young bull, moving in total silence despite its bulk, the Cù Sìth gives three baying howls before a death — and you must be indoors before the third.

The Cù Sìth — literally "fairy dog" — is one of the oldest and most consistently described creatures in Highland and Hebridean folklore, an animal that belongs to the Otherworld of the Sìth rather than to the natural world it moves through. It is described as roughly the size of a young bull or a large calf, with a shaggy coat most often described as dark green, though some regional accounts give it white fur with red ears — a colouring elsewhere in Gaelic tradition reserved for Otherworld animals generally. Its tail is long and either braided or curled, its eyes are said to glow, and its paws are described as being the size of a man's hands. Despite its size, it moves without a sound, and is capable of covering enormous distances in a small number of bounds. Its most distinctive trait is vocal rather than visual. The Cù Sìth gives three loud bays, audible for great distances across open moorland. Tradition holds that a person who hears the baying must reach shelter before the third and final bay — those caught in the open at that moment are said to die of fright on the spot, whether or not the hound itself ever appears. The Cù Sìth is said to den in clefts of rock, ancient cairns, and the fairy hills (sìthean) that dot the Highland and Hebridean landscape, emerging to roam the moors and hunt — by some accounts for game, by others for the souls of the dying, acting as a guide or harbinger between the mortal world and the Otherworld it calls home.