Blue Men of the Minch

The Blue Men of the Minch are storm spirits said to haunt the strait between Lewis and the Shiant Islands off the west of Scotland — the only stretch of water where they were known to dwell. Blue-skinned and human in form, they swam alongside passing ships, raising sudden gales and reaching up to drag vessels and sailors down beneath the waves. The notoriously treacherous currents of the Minch were reckoned their doing.

A ship might be spared, tradition held, if its captain could outmatch the Blue Men's chief in a contest of verse: the chief would call out the opening lines of a rhyme, and the skipper had to cap them instantly and keep the last word, or be lost. Folklorists have linked the Blue Men variously to fallen angels, to the old sea-deities of the region, or to a memory of captured North African sailors; whatever their origin, they are among the most distinctive sea-spirits in the folklore of the Hebrides.