buarach-bhaoi

"Wild shackle", "wizard shackle." A leech or eel-like animal supposedly found in certain fords and in dark waters that twisted itself like a shackle round the feet of passing horses, so that they fell and were drowned. It then sucked their blood. The creature had nine eyes or holes in its head and back, at which the blood it sucked came out. Hence it was called buarach-bhaoi nan sùilean claon, "the furious shackle of the squinting eyes."

In Skye it was believed the animal could be found in Badenoch. It haunted the dark waters of Loch Tummel in Perthshire, and was also known on the west coast of Argyll.

❧