FROM THE VAULT
Strange tales from the archives. This month – mythical creatures terrorising Scots on land and sea
BIGFOOT was living in the woods of Fife and Angus in early 2005, according to claims. Sightings of the creature were reported at Carmyllie, in Angus, as well as at the Five Roads roundabout, near the Fife end of the Tay Road Bridge.
Bigfoot is a huge Yeti-type monster – very hairy and with the ability to put on a good sprint when it wants to.
In February 2015, a former civil servant broke his 10-year silence to tell of his encounter at Five Roads roundabout. He saw it at 3.40am one summer morning and said, “This was a large, hairy, ape-like creature. There was an unpleasant odour in the air.”
At that time of the morning, it could well have been a clubber returning from a night out. Factor in a fulsome hairstyle, and you can begin to understand the confusion.
Regarding other mythical creatures, while there are credible accounts of mermaids in Scots waters, mariners’ encounters in the Far East are laced with farce.
Pirates used to create “mermaids” and place them on rocks to try to force Western merchants vessels to stop.
Their favourite trick was to shave a monkey, smarten it up with some rouge, a fetching blouse and a wig, and tie a large fish tail over its lower half.
Then they would wait for a boatload of wolf-whistling Jack Tars to appear.
It might sound like an unsophisticated trick but, when you’ve been at sea for weeks, beauty is comparative. By 1870, mermaid sightings were largely confined to the Solway, Orkney and Argyll – though, in earlier times, there were frequent reports on the east coast.
In the 1600s, singing mermaids made regular appearances near Aberdeen harbour.
In 1857 there was a well-documented sighting near Port Charlotte, Islay, and as late as 1950, a mermaid’s skeleton was dug up on Staffa. This was believed to be 2000 years old and had a semi-aquatic leg formation. A more frightening marine creature was the sea serpent, which seemed quite at home off the east coast.
In 1894 the crew of the Dundee sloop, Dart, had a terrifying brush with a serpent in the Moray Firth.
As they were sailing from Buckie to Aberdeen, the angry beast broke the surface and projected itself to the height of the mast.
Robert Barclay and his crew had ample time to study the serpent and one sailor, by the name of A Gavin, later made a sketch of it, which was printed in a newspaper.
“There air” was an unpleasant odour in the