Fireside Folklore: Nuckelavee, Scotland's Scariest Demon
Stories of Scotland
Annie and Jenny
4.8 • 728 Ratings
🗓️ 26 April 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We journey to the cold waters of the North Sea for Jenny to tell the famed story of the Nuckelavee as captured by farmer and folklorist Walter Trail Dennison. The nuckelavee is a skinless horse who haunts Orkney’s coasts, terrifying travelers. He also brings blight and plague to crops, livestock and even humans with his terrible toxic breath. Meanwhile, Annie will do anything to avoid the nuckelavee, including summoning the ancient Sea Mither to ensure the nuckelavee is trapped for summer.
Independently made in the Highlands, Stories of Scotland is gratefully funded through listener support on Patreon.www.patreon.com/storiesofscotland
Come and see Annie’s play! The Wound, the Rag and the In-Between follows a Highland journalist as she unravels a Victorian death. She exposes secrets that had been buried for generations. By the clootie tree, in a place meant for recovery and wellbeing, tragic forces are looming, ever-present. Book online at: https://eden-court.co.uk/event/the-wound-the-rag-and-the-in-between
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Imagine sweeping through green fields, floating five feet above ground, sun on your face as you slide by on track to your destination, not a care in the world as you simply lean back, and before you know it, you're there. |
| 0:16.7 | London to Manchester from just 32 pounds each way. |
| 0:20.5 | Avanti West Coast. |
| 0:22.2 | Feel good travel. |
| 0:23.8 | Exclusions and limitations apply full terms and conditions can be found at avantiwestcoastcoast.com. |
| 0:28.0 | UK forward slash plan. Hello and welcome to this fireside folklore episode of Stories of Scotland. |
| 0:47.3 | I'm Annie and I'm a very happily swelling wave. |
| 0:51.3 | And I'm Jenny, a piece of kelp. |
| 0:53.9 | And in this episode, we are exploring some folklore from |
| 0:57.4 | Orkney about a monster, often considered to be one of the scariest in all of Scottish mythology. |
| 1:05.9 | It is the nefarious, the nasty, the noxious, knocklevy. |
| 1:11.6 | We know about the knocklevy thanks to the Victorian farmer and folklorist from Arkney, Walter Trail Denison. |
| 1:20.6 | He essentially wandered round, asking all his fellow working-class Arcadians if they could tell him an old story, and then he wrote them all down. |
| 1:32.2 | So we owe him a lot for this one. |
| 1:34.5 | However, it must have been a truly cursed day when he discovered the old lore of the Noclevee, |
| 1:41.9 | whose name translates to the devil of the sea. |
| 1:45.9 | Now I'll give listeners a wee warning here that this monster is more like gory horror than |
| 1:51.8 | our usual folklore episodes. So be prepared for the scariest monster in Scottish lore. This is a |
| 2:00.7 | gruesome one. |
| 2:02.2 | And on that frightful note, let us begin in the sea, |
| 2:06.3 | the home of the Nocla Vee, |
| 2:08.6 | because dipping below the waves will help us understand |
... |
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