Baobhan Sith 🧛‍♀️

2024-08-07

The Baobhan Sith (pronounced Baa’van She) are a type of unseelie fairy, often considered the Scottish equivalent of vampires, and are always female. While their name means "fairy woman," it specifically refers to a dangerous group of blood-craving women fairies.

These beings are also shapeshifters, occasionally stalking their prey in the form of wolves, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

When young men are alone in the wild, particularly when hunting, and wish for female company, a group of beautiful women will appear. These women seem perfect in every way—except for the fact that, if the men looked at their feet, they would see deer hooves instead.

As the women dance with the men, everything seems fine. However, with each step, the men fall deeper into an enchantment, leaving them in a drunken-like state.

That is when the Baobhan Sith strike.

Lacking fangs, they use their nails to cut throats and drink the blood.

If one of the men manages to escape, he will find himself pursued at a pace equal to his own. His only hope of getting away is to reach civilization—since the Baobhan Sith do not enter populated areas—or to hide somewhere protected.

The following is a common story retold often, but this one specifically is from the book “Folk-Lore From The West of Ross-Shire” by C.M. Robertson (1905). I picked it, because it not only shows the common characteristics of the Baobhan Sith, but also because it shows the unseelie fairies aversion to iron.

^{Note: a shieling is a hut that was commonly used as a shelter by shepherds or hunters.}

“Four young men were on a hunting trip and spent the night in an empty shieling, a hut built to give shelter for the sheep in the grazing season. They began to dance, one supplying mouth-music.

One of the dancers wished that they had partners. Almost at once four women came in. Three danced, the fourth stood by the music-maker. But as he hummed he saw drops of blood tailing from the dancers and he tied out of the shieling, pursued by his demon partner.

He took refuge among the horses and she could not get to him, probably because of the iron with which they were shod. But she circled round him all night, and only disappeared when the sun rose.

He went back into the shieling and found the bloodless bodies of the dancers lying there. Their partners had sucked them dry.

Folk-Lore From The West of Ross-Shire” by C.M. Robertson (1905)

Online, people sometimes say that women taken by them also become a baobhan-sith, but I haven’t found a source for that yet.

More Quotes:

Baobhan Sith (baavan sbee ). This Highland word is the same as banshee, and means ‘ fairy woman’, but it is generally employed to mean a kind of succubus, very dangerous and evil

A Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katharine Briggs (Published in 1976)

The fire was ‘ dimly burn-ing,’ and the man could not see how things were going with

his comrades and their two strange visitors, but he noticed to his consternation a stream of blood flowing towards the fire from the place where they were, and looking at the same time

at the woman who sat by him he observed that her feet were not like human feet but like the hoofs of a deer.

The Celtic Review: Vol 5 (pg 164) by Watson, W. J. (1908)

The woman pursued him with a speed equal to his own. At length he reached a glen which was inhabited, and there the woman gave up the chase, and exclaimed several times :

“You ate your own victims, but my victim,

escaped from me.”

The Celtic Review: Vol 5 (pg 164) by Watson, W. J. (1908)

Historic Audio Recordings:

(link) People stayed in shielings in summer to watch over animals put out to pasture. MacPhee in Benbecula had a useless dog and three sons. His sons often asked him to put the dog down, but he refused, saying “Tha latha a’ choin duibh ri tighinn fhathast” [the black dog’s day is still to come]. The sons built a bothy on the hill and went out there with the animals, The youngest kept watch the first night while his brothers slept. The black dog and another dog were beside him. Three women came in: two went to the brothers, the third asked the boy to tie the dog with hair from her head. He saw blood where his brothers lay dead. The women left, and the black dog went after them, followed by the second dog. The boy went home. His father told him to put several basins of milk at the door. The black dog came back, drank the three basins and collapsed at the fourth. The other dog was not seen again.