Nicnevin is a figure from Scottish folklore who occupies an uneasy position between the fairy queen and the arch-witch. Sir Walter Scott identified her directly: 'The fairy queen is identified, in popular tradition, with the Gyre-Carline, or mother witch, of the Scottish peasantry. She is sometimes termed Nicneven.' Her name first appears in a literary source around 1580, in Alexander Montgomerie's satirical poem 'The Flyting of Montgomerie and Polwart,' where she rides through the night sky at the head of a supernatural host.
The story
The Gyre-Carling, with whom Nicnevin is often equated, is the Lowland Scottish counterpart of the Highland Cailleach — a monstrous old woman depicted as partially cannibalistic and well-armed. The sixteenth-century Bannatyne Manuscript describes 'an grit Gyre-Carling' who 'levit vpoun Christiane menis flesche.' In Fife, the figure was associated with spinning and domestic craft: it was considered unlucky to leave knitting unfinished at New Year, lest the Gyre-Carling steal it.
Nicnevin's particular association with Samhain — the night when the boundary between the living and the dead is thinnest — sets her apart from the more nature-bound Cailleach. She presides over the festival's terrors, leading wild processions of the dead and dispensing both curses and blessings. In May 1569, a real woman known as Marion Nicneven was condemned and burnt at the stake at St Andrews, suggesting the name carried such dark weight that it could serve as both a label and an accusation.