When we look at types of folkloric creature, we often encounter the same types in different places, such as mermaids or fairies. But occasionally, you encounter a creature so localised that it only appears in a single place. The Blue Men of the Minch are one such example.
Feared by sailors, the Blue Men of the Minch lived in the straight between the Shiant Islands and Long Island. This stretch of water is known as sruth nam Fear Gorm, or the Stream of the Blue Men (Mackenzie 1935: 85).
Most descriptions mention how similar they look to humans – if those humans had blue skin. They usually have grey faces, white beards, and long arms. They’re also fearfully strong (Graeme 2024). And they’re also humans with a fondness for pulling ships into the depths.
Let’s find out more about them!
What did the Blue Men do?
They made their homes in underwater caves, and they were sometimes called storm kelpies because locals believed they created the sudden storms around the Shiant Islands (Briggs 1976: 28). They actually have very little in common with kelpies, other than a fondness for water.
The islands are also reputedly home to selkies, with the Mac Codrums of the Outer Hebrides claiming a selkie ancestor (Mackenzie 1935: 87).
But the Blue Men kept a lookout and if they saw ships approaching their strait, they would send up an alert cry and leave their caves to wreck ships. Their favourite method was to rise en masse from the churning waters of the Minch, and all pull the hull of the ship down. This echoes sailors’ reports of ships rocking in a most violent way (Graeme 2024).
Some sailors chose to go the long way around the Shiant Islands rather than cutting through the strait, so fearsome was the Blue Men’s reputation.
Surprisingly, the Blue Men granted safe passage to fishermen who hadn’t annoyed them (The Newsroom 2016). It seems the Blue Men objected to large vessels like ships, so small fishing boats didn’t catch their attention.
The Blue Men were also weather omens in folklore from the Isle of Skye. If anyone saw the Blue Men in the sea off the headland of Rubha Hunish, a wild storm was on the way (Mackenzie 1935: 88).
They weren’t all bad. According to tradition, locals lit a candle by the sea for the Blue Men at Halloween, before pouring ale into the water. This encouraged the Blue Men to deposit seaweed on the beach that locals then used as fertiliser (The Newsroom 2016).
Were you doomed then?
Surprisingly, no. Even more surprisingly, you could ward the Blue Men off by engaging in a rhyming battle with them. The chief Blue Man lifted out of the water and challenged the captain. Mind, he didn’t challenge the captain to a test of physical strength, but rather intellectual capacity and wit. The chief shouted a rhyming couplet. The captain needed to reply with his own couplet that rhymed with the chief’s couplet without thinking about it. This would continue until the chief was suitably impressed.
If the captain got the last word, they left the ship (Briggs 1976: 28). If the captain got stuck, or failed to match the chief’s rhyming prowess, the Blue Men wrecked the ship.
One legend even preserves this folklore rap battle, related by Donald A. Mackenzie. It seems the ship involved was large with white sails, and the Blue Men found it difficult to pull it beneath the waves as they normally would. Even they were quietly impressed by its strength and speed. The chieftain reared up to the top of the waves and shouted his challenge to the captain. It seems the captain was a skilled bard if their exchange is anything to go by (Mackenzie 1935: 89).
Blue Chief: “Man of the black cap, what do you say
As your proud ship cleaves the brine?”Skipper: “My speedy ship takes the shortest way
And I’ll follow you line by line”Blue Chief: “My men are eager, my men are ready
To drag you below the waves”Skipper: “My ship is speedy, my ship is steady.
If it sank, it would wreck your caves.”
The chief admitted defeat and sank beneath the waves. Bested by the captain, he couldn’t seize the ship. Sadly, the names of the ship and its captain have not survived.
How did anyone know the Blue Men existed?
According to legend, crews sometimes spotted the Blue Men sleeping under the surface of the water on calm days. If this was the case, you might get lucky, and you’d sail by them without them waking up.
In one story, a sailor had the daft idea to capture a Blue Man sleeping on the surface. He was human-sized, and when they got him onboard, they bound rope around him. It seems they passed it around him from shoulders to feet, leaving him unable to move his limbs. Yet shortly after this, the crew noticed two Blue Men swimming after the ship. One of them said, “Duncan will be one man”. The other replied, “Farquhar will be two”. Hearing this, the captured Blue Man leapt up, broke the bonds “like spider threads” and jumped overboard. The crew watched the three of them swim away (Campbell 1900: 200).
Given the tales of the Blue Men whipping up storms in fury, it seems the crew were lucky that the Blue Men decided not to punish them on this occasion. Some interpretations add an extra line, attributed to the captured Blue Man, in which he names himself. The general consensus is that the shouts of his compatriots roused him into action, to save him the indignity of needing to be rescued.
How do we explain the Blue Men of the Minch?
In some versions found in the North Hebrides, they were fallen angels. This model saw one group of fallen angels become fairies found on the land, one group became the Blue Men associated with the sea, and the third group became the Nimble Men, or dancers in the sky (Campbell 1900: 199). J. G. Campbell recorded the belief but also added that the stories of the Blue Men didn’t appear in Argyllshire. Nor were there other mentions of the Merry Dancers being related to fairies. You might know the Merry Dancers better by their other names – the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights.
Incidentally, the Merry Dancers were anything but merry. While these angels only fell as far as the sky, they were believed to fight an eternal battle. That’s what we see as a beautiful light show. Conflict inevitably leads to bloodshed, and their blood gathers as a red cloud before falling to earth. This explains the ‘blood stones’ apparently found on the ground (Kruse 2022).
Some also suggest that locals invented the Blue Men to explain the storms in that area. Following this logic, the Blue Men are highly localised due to highly localised conditions. They appear nowhere else around Scotland nor in the rest of the world, but that’s because they reference a changeable stretch of water with volatile storm patterns.
We could argue this explains why they seemingly left fishermen alone and targeted larger ships. It’s possible fishermen were more highly attuned to weather conditions and therefore didn’t venture out if a storm was imminent. If they only went out on calm seas, it might look like the Blue Men had overlooked their presence. It is fascinating that other such waterways haven’t likewise developed something similar to the Blue Men, so it seems the tales of them didn’t travel far enough to be adopted elsewhere.
A Possible Historical Connection
Another theory draws on the Annals of Ireland, which suggests that Vikings captured North Africans and brought them to Ireland. The Annals dated from the sixth to the tenth century, although they reference earlier writings that have now been lost. Mackenzie describes the tendency of the Moroccan men to stain their skin blue and suggests they ended up marooned in the islands where they turned to piracy (1935: 95). This could explain the appearance of the Blue Men, but also their tendency to wreck large ships while ignoring smaller ones.
They could potentially also refer to blue-tattooed Picts attacking the islands in boats (Graeme 2024). In either case of the Blue Men being Picts or North Africans, this would give a human genesis to the legend, which might explain the descriptions of the Blue Men as appearing largely human. It’s almost impossible to know where the legend originally came from, but these suggestions do perhaps lend weight to the sightings.
The rhyming rap battle part doesn’t quite fit into the legend if the Blue Men have a human origin, although this kind of encounter feels far more likely if they had a supernatural origin.
And of course, there’s always the possibility that they were real.
What do you make of the Blue Men of the Minch? Let me know below!
References
Briggs, Katharine (1976), An Encyclopedia Of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, And Other Supernatural Beings, New York: Pantheon Books.
Campbell, JG (1900), Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons.
Graeme (2024), ‘Stories Of The Blue Men Of The Minch – Scottish Folklore’, Scotland’s Stories, https://scotlands-stories.com/blue-men-of-the-minch/. Accessed 9 December 2024.
Kruse, John (2022), ‘Northern Lights & Nimble Men’, British Fairies, https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/2022/02/27/northern-lights-nimble-men/. Accessed 9 December 2024.
Mackenzie, Donald A. (1935), Scottish Folk-Lore and Folk Life: Studies in Race, Culture and Tradition, London: Blackie & Son.
The Newsroom (2016), ‘Scottish myths: The Blue Men of Minch’, The Scotsman, https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/scottish-myths-the-blue-men-of-minch-1483877. Accessed 9 December 2024.
This reminds me a little of the green merman that was recorded in Orford, Suffolk in the 12th century. He was captured and held but when put back into the sea with nets to contain him, swum much lower than people thought possible and ultimately escaped. He was, apparently, mute and quite passive but on reading about the blue men of Minch, he was what I first thought of.
Ah I’m glad he escaped!