Tarbh Uisge

The Tarbh Uisge — the water bull — inhabits the same lochs and coastal waters as the Each-Uisge (the water horse), but the two creatures are temperamentally very different. Where the Each-Uisge is murderous, the Tarbh Uisge is largely indifferent to human beings. Its interest is in the cattle.

It was said to emerge from lochs on dark nights to mate with domestic cattle, and the calves born of these unions were immediately recognisable: larger than normal, oddly tempered, and with their ears split or notched in a way that marked their supernatural parentage. These calves were considered lucky — or at least, they were considered too dangerous to provoke. A herd containing a water-bull calf was sometimes thought to be under the loch's protection.

J. F. Campbell documented the Tarbh Uisge extensively in Popular Tales of the West Highlands, and it appears in Orcadian and Shetlandic tradition alongside its Hebridean accounts. Unlike the Each-Uisge, no ritual method of avoiding it was thought necessary — it had no interest in taking human life.