Native American tree spirits, literally meaning “they live in a tree.” From the mythology of the Lakota of North and South Dakota.
Caoineag
(Pronounced konyack.) Meaning “weeper,” caoineag is one of the names of the Scottish banshee. Her wail, heard in the darkness at a waterfall, heralds catastrophe for the clan. She is heard, but never seen. Unlike the bean nighe, she can’t be approached to grant wishes.
Caointeach
(Pronounced kondyuch.) Meaning “wailer,” the caointeach is another version of the caointeag, the Scottish banshee. She is local to Argyllshire, Skye, and the neighboring islands. She has a particularly lamentable and loud cry that rises almost to a scream. In appearance, she has been described as a very little woman or child wearing a high-crowned white hat, short green gown, and petticoat. She sometimes beats clothes on a rock, like the bean nighe.
James Macdougall and George Calder’s Folk Tales and Fairy Lore (1910) relates the story of the caointeach who followed the MacKay clan. When a death was going to take place, she would call at the sick person’s house with a green shawl around her shoulders and warn the family by wailing sadly outside his door. When the friends and family heard her lament, they lost all hope of the sick person getting better, for it was proof that the end was near.
The caointeach has ceased to give warning to the MacKays since one wet, cold, winter night, when she stood softly wailing outside a house and a member of the family took pity on her and offered her a plaid (blanket). She accepted the gift, but in the same way as when a brownie accepts a gift of clothes his spirit is “laid,” or set free, so too the caointeach has never come back to mourn for the MacKays.
Capelthwaite
In Westmorland, northwest England (now part of Cumbria), there was once a barn called Capelthwaite Barn, in which the Capelthwaite made its home. He was said to be able to assume any form at will, but his preferred shape was that of a black dog the size of a calf. He was friendly toward the owners of the barn, and helped them by rounding up their sheep and cows. However, when it came to strangers, he showed a mischievous and spiteful streak. In the end, the vicar of Beetham performed a ceremony and “laid” this supernatural black dog in the river Bela. It was not seen again, except for in one tale related in William Henderson’s Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (1866), when a man returning from the local fair somewhat disheveled, without his cap or coat, persisted in blaming the Capelthwaite for his misadventure, telling his wife that the Capelthwaite had chased him and thrown him into the hedge.
Carmichael, Alexander (1832–1912)
A writer, antiquarian, and folklorist, Alexander Carmichael was born on the island of Lismore, Inner Hebrides, Scotland. He attended local schools and later became a civil servant in various locations in Ireland and Scotland. It was while he was on the Isle of Skye that he became a collector of stories for J. F. Campbell.
The strict methodology that was Campbell’s approach did not suit Carmichael’s artistic temperament, but nonetheless he learned to take notes on everything that interested him. He left Scotland and lived in Cornwall for two years before taking up a post in the Uists (the central group of islands of the Outer Hebrides). Here he continued collecting ballads, hymns, anecdotes, incantations, poems, and songs. From 1873 some of his lore was printed in the newspaper the Highlander.
He went on to work in various locations in Scotland and retire to Edinburgh, by which time he was considered by many to be a pillar of the Gaelic intellectual community. He then embarked on a more ambitious work and compiled Carmina Gadelica (1900), a treasure trove of culture, lore, and traditions from various Gaelic-speaking regions of Scotland.
Cauld Lad of Hilton, The
A domestic spirit, half-brownie, half-ghost. His story is as follows. Long ago at Hilton Hall in Northumbria, there lived a contrary spirit called the Cauld Lad of Hilton. Some say he was the spirit of a stable boy who had been killed by one of the past Lords of Hilton. Now he could be heard at night clattering about in the kitchen after the servants had gone to bed, putting sugar in the salt cellar, upturning chamber pots and setting everything topsy-turvy. If the servants left him a bowl of cream or a cake spread with honey, he would clean and tidy. Sometimes he could be heard sadly singing, lamenting that the person who would “lay” him to rest, or exorcise his spirit, was yet to be born:
Woe’s me! woe’s me!
The acorn’s not yet
Fallen from the tree,
That’s to grow the wood,
That’s to make the cradle
That’s to rock the bairn,
That’s to grow to the man,
That’s to lay me.
Woe’s me! Woe’s me!
However, the servants knew that the way to lay a brownie was to pay for its services in non-perishable goods such as clothes. So they left out a green cloak and hood for the Cauld Lad of Hilton. He dressed in them at midnight and frisked about in them until dawn, singing:
Here’s a cloak and here’s a hood,
The Cauld Lad of Hilton shall do no more good!
As the sun rose, he vanished, never to be seen again.
Ceasg
(Pronounced keeask.) A Scottish mermaid. Half-woman, half-grilse (a young salmon), she is also known as maighdean na tuinne, “maiden of the wave.” Her top half is that of a beautiful woman, while below the waist she has the tail of grilse. She may grant three wishes to anyone who catches her.
There are stories of marriage between ceasgs and humans. The male offspring of these unions are said to grow up to be excellent sea captains.
Like most sea maidens, the ceasg is also believed to have a darker, dangerous side. This is described in a story in J. F. Campbell and George Henderson’s The Celtic Dragon Myth (1911), in which the hero is swallowed by a ceasg.
An idea common to tales from the Scottish Highlands is that of the separable soul. Ceasgs are believed to keep their souls separately from their bodies, hidden in an egg or in a box. To destroy a ceasg, one
