The peat-fire flame : folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands

A Blue Man Captured.
STORM-KELPIES
Once upon a time, a ship passing through the Stream of
the Blue Men came upon a bkie-coloured man asleep on its
waters. The sleeper, for all his nimbleness, was captured,
and taken aboard. Since captain and crew regarded him
as belonging to a supernatural race, they bound him, hand
and foot, with the strongest rope they had aboard, until
they felt assured that he was powerless. But scarcely had
the ship proceeded its own length thereafter when two men
were seen to be following closely in its wake.
" Duncan will be
One was overheard to say to the other :
one man."
The other likewise
will be two."
was overheard to reply : " Farquhar
Thereupon, the blue-coloured man, lying bound on the
deck, broke his bonds as though they had been made of
gossamer, and leapt overboard to return home with his
rescuers to the Stream of the Blue Men.
In Lewis and in Harris, and also in the western parts of
Skye, the tradition of the Blue Men of the Minch is still
current.
It is believed in the Isles that the fallen angels were
expelled from heaven in three groups which are closely akin
to one another. The Faeries came to earth : the Blue Men
were relegated to the sea : the Nimble Men (Na Fir Chlis)
were banished to the sky, where to this day, in frosty
weather, they appear as the Merry Dancers, or Northern
Lights. And they say in the Outer Hebrides that, when
the Merry Men enter conflict, the blood of their slain and
wounded falls to earth, where, in congealing, it turns into
those coloured stones known as * blood-stones.' My own
kinsfolk in the Hebrides frequently allude to the stains on
such ' blood-stones ' as Elf's blood !
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