fey horse in forest pool, its mane tangled with green waterweeds

The Each Uisge, the Prince of Waterhorses

He’s not a Dark Lord in the usual sense of Dark Lords, but he’s male, powerful and evil, so he comes close. And he’s AUTHENTIC, since he plays an important role in ancient Celtic folklore.

The Each Uisge on Wikipedia

“The each-uisge, a supernatural water horse found in the Scottish Highlands, has been described as "perhaps the fiercest and most dangerous of all the water-horses" by the folklorist Katharine Briggs.[1] Often mistaken for the kelpie (which inhabits streams and rivers), the each-uisge lives in the sea, sea lochs, and fresh water lochs.[1] The each-uisge is a shape-shifter, disguising itself as a fine horse, pony, a handsome man . . .

“If, while in horse form, a man mounts it, he is only safe as long as the each-uisge is ridden in the interior of land. However, the merest glimpse or smell of water means the beginning of the end for the rider, for the each-uisge's skin becomes adhesive and the creature immediately goes to the deepest part of the loch with its victim. After the victim has drowned, the each-uisge tears them apart and devours the entire body except for the liver, which floats to the surface.[1]

“In its human form it is said to appear as a handsome man, and can be recognised as a mythological creature only by the water weeds[2] or profuse sand and mud in its hair.[3] Because of this, people in the Highlands were often wary of lone animals and strangers by the water's edge, near where the each-uisge was reputed to live.”

The Each Uisge in the Bitterbynde Trilogy

“Present also was the malignant Each Uisge in mail like the delicate silver scales of fish, and a mantle the colour of seaweed. A fillet of pearls adorned the sleek horse-hair mane which framed the frigid and charming face, as pale as death, as cold as the under­belly of a lamprey.
”Flanking the Prince of Waterhorses, two dour and doughty men in ragged plaid and thick calf-hide each held a pike twined with dripping red filaments of spirogyra. Water streamed from their gar­ments. Their eyes were blank as stones. Ashalind recognised them as two of the Each Uisge’s mortal slaves, sons of tragedy. . . “

The WHAT?

And before you start saying, “That’s all very well, Cecilia, but how do you pronounce ‘Each Uisge?’” Let me assure you that I had a lot of trouble with it too, and so did my poor tormented audiobook narrator. It’s a Scottish Gaelic term, literally meaning “horse water'“, and before you jump to conclusions, that really means ‘horse OF THE water’. “Each” is pronounced roughly like “yach” with a throaty ‘ch’ sound, and “uisge” sounds a bit like like “OOSH-guh”.

If you don’t know anything about waterhorses yet, you’re in for a treat. Google them.

Notes for Fellow Word-Nerds

There’s a relationship between waterhorses and whisky. In Scottish Gaelic, “whisky/whiskey” is uisge-beatha (pronounced roughly oosh-guh beh-ha), which literally means “water (of) life.”
The modern English word whisky actually comes from an anglicised shortening of this term. Early English speakers wrote it as usquebaugh, which eventually became whisky.

I ❤️ etymology!

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