FAMOUS OTTER STORIES

Cuthbert and the Otters

Otters are referred to as “water dogs” in Celtic folklore, and generally portrayed as helpful, friendly creatures, providing fish or firewood to people in need and even warming their feet, as in the story of St Cuthbert – patron saint of otters. A Celtic monk living during the seventh century, Cuthbert was reputedly fond of taking nocturnal walks along the seashore. One night, a curious colleague watched as he waded into the sea up to his neck and began singing psalms. As dawn broke, he returned to shore, whereupon two otters came up and warmed his cold wet feet with their fur. Cuthbert blessed them and they returned to their holts.

Ring of Bright Water

Gavin Maxwell’s celebrated 1960 memoir describes his life in a remote cottage at “Camusfearna” (Sandaig, near Glenelg), and the two imported otters he kept there as pets. He sourced his favourite – Mij – in Iraq and brought him to the UK during an eventful plane journey that saw it chew its way out of its box and running rampage around the cabin. Maxwell, left, fed the animal and walked it through the streets in a custom-made harness, allowing it free rein of his home where it frequently pierced visitors’ ears with its teeth. The story was partially fictionalised in a 1969 film adaptation and for a generation of children, the scene with Mij’s brutal dispatch, at the end of a road-digger’s shovel, was a tearjerker on a par with the shooting of Bambi’s mother.

Tarka the Otter

This 1927 novel by Henry Williamson recounts the life story of an otter cub that becomes separated from its mother and wanders the north Devon countryside alone, until it eventually fathers a family of cubs of its own, before being killed by the local otter hunt. As a boy, Andy Howard watched the 1979 film version and was “terribly upset” by Tarka’s demise, “as most children should be”.