Scottish Myths and Legends Read Free Page A

starting to have settlers - perhaps some of our Urquhart ancestors before the name of Urquhart was even spoken - and took advantage of it's abundant food and resources. It was a fertile valley which made life easy.
     
     
Legend has it that these people had a magical well, a spring which Daly the Druid had made magical, which brought forth healing waters for all ills. There was a condition placed on using this magical well - after each use, the cover had to be placed back upon the well lest the well rise up and destroy the valley.
     
     
Alas, one day, a mother had removed the cover from the well and was drawing the magical water. Her baby started to cry and when she heard, like all good mothers, she went to her child's aid. In her speed to do so, she neglected to replace the cover upon the magic well and although she may have had all intentions of doing so, by the time she realized she had left the cover off unattended, the well had turned into a roaring fountain of water, gushing forth water with such force that she had no option but to run with her baby, clambering up the sides of the valley.
     
     
The other settlers, seeing and hearing the great commotion and roaring of the water, also took to the paths up out of the valley, knowing that all was now lost. Their homes, possessions, all were lost, but they managed to escape the rising water.
     
     
One of those who escaped, looking back at their great valley filling with water almost as fast as they could climb, cried out in disbelief and anguish "Tha loch ann a nis!" - which means "There is a lake in it now!" That great valley of the Great Glen, draws it's name from those words "Loch ann a nis": Loch Ness.
     
     
So, all I can say is this, if your over by Urquhart Castle having a look for Nessy, remember those waters around the Urquhart stronghold have magical healing properties, as I cannot find any reference to that healing well ever being covered again.
     
     
So it was that a magical well and the careless action of that mother in haste produced the landscape and loch that the setting of Urquhart Castle takes advantage of.

The Wizard laird of Skene's dance with the devil
     
By Amanda Moffet
     
Skene Loch is an eerie and forbidding place, particularly on cold evenings in the dead of winter - when the waters on the loch can freeze over. If you were to brave the icy conditions and venture down to the lochside and look across the frozen loch you might see what seems like a mysterious set of curved tracks embedded in the ice. Tracks which look newly made by a coach or carriage.
     
     
You could put this down to a trick of the light but there's a local tale behind these strange markings. A legend that has passed down over centuries. This story is about the sinister local landowner who was allied with the devil … those with psychic powers swear they can still feel his presence to this day.
     
     
So the tracks on the ice? are they a lasting reminder of the day Auld Nick himself paid a visit to his devil-worshipping friend the Wizard Laird of Skene.
     
     
Alexander Skene, the 16th Laird, was the man the devil had come to Aberdeenshire to see. It was said the laird never cast a shadow, was followed everywhere by magpies or crows and had the power to reest, or glue, his enemies to the spot where they stood. On at least one occasion Skene was kept awake by neighbors enjoying a ceilidh. His reaction was to cast a spell on the revellers which made them unable to stop dancing - until their feet bled and they cried in agony.
     
     
His mastery of the black arts had been learned while he was a young student at the University of Padua in northern Italy. One of the most famous seats of learning in Europe, Padua was noted for the views some of its members held on the then-controversial subjects of astronomy and necromancy. Many returned with "peculiar ideas" about the heavens and the black arts. The Wizard Laird went one step further and formed a pact with the