Wulvers and other hybrids

The wulver or wullver is a wolf-like humanoid being known in the folk tradition of the Shetland Islands. The folklorist Jessie Saxby, in her 1932 book on Shetland Traditional Lore, provides almost the sole report of it; she described it as:

“a creature like a man with a wolf’s head. He had short brown hair all over him. His home was a cave dug out of the side of a steep knowe, half-way up a hill. He didn’t molest folk if folk didn’t molest him. He was fond of catching and eating fish, and had a small rock in the deep water which is known to this day as the ‘Wulver’s Stane.’ There he would sit fishing sillaks and piltaks [saithe, or coalfish, aged up to twelve months or up to two years] for hour after hour. He was reported to have frequently left a few fish on the window-sill of some poor body.”

In his looks, there are some clear resonances with the wider British tradition of the black dog, or shuck, as well as the greater European concept of the werewolf. At the same time, though, the wulver seems to be quite happy to mind his own business- which is fishing, rather than scaring or menacing humans or, as is occasionally the case with the black dogs, acting as a kind of warning of death or disaster. The wulver has a link with the knolls in which the trow folk typically live, but the nature of this is not explained, as well as indications of some sort of transactional relationship to his human neighbours.

What we can observe. though, is that hybrid faery beasts that have animal bodies and human heads appear to be a feature of the folklore of the Celtic parts of the British Isles. On the Orkney islands, south of the Shetlands, there is the nuckelavee; this is a sea monster that’s part-horse and part-terrifying human. The nuckelavee has been described as having a huge head like a man’s but with a pig’s snout and a very wide maw, from which comes breath like steam. It has only one eye, which is as red as fire; its body is like a horse’s but with fins as well as legs. In the middle of the back there sprouts what seems to be a rider, except that he has no legs but rather grows directly from the horse. To add to all of this, the creature has no skin, just raw flesh with black blood visible flowing in yellow veins. Given the description, it need hardly be said that the nuckelavee is a dangerous and terrifying creature to encounter, in contrast to the relatively benign wulver.

On the Isle of Man, there are two comparable beings. The first is the fynoderee, a rough equivalent of the English hob or boggart that’s known to live on the land of about twelve farms on the island. They don’t tend to enter the farmhouses themselves, nor come near to them unless food is left out. They are rarely seen, because during the daytime they keep to the woods and glens. Manx folklorist Mona Douglas described the fynoderee as having “the body of a goat and the head and shoulders of a man; he may perhaps be called a sort of mythical goat.” At Grenaby on the island, the buggane called Jimmy Squarefoot has a pig’s head and face with two large tusks and has been known to charge at passers-by on the highway and even to carry off people to a cave. Another such ‘pig buggane’ menaces travellers on the highway at Lezayre. Once again, there is something of a split between the more ‘domesticated’ fynoderee and the wild and generally hostile buggane. Terrifying as we might naturally find a creature that’s part human and part beast, outward appearances apparently ought not to guide our judgment too much.