the Sluagh

Sluagh is thought to be the souls of evil people, or people that weren’t baptized that have already died and aren’t welcome in heaven, hell or in the other world, they had also been rejected by the Celtic deities and by the earth itself.

One of the worst and most dreaded in the realm of faerie, Sluagh was more feared than death itself. Death was easy. The Sluagh, now that was something entirely different. Even death has no choice but to defer to the Sluagh, in an otherworldly race for the immortal souls of the living.

Like all fairies, the Sluagh fear iron objects and salt. Religious objects may be helpful. In addition, it is believed that the Sluagh either always approach from the west or can never approach from the east

Said one monk in times of yore, “The spirits fly about in great clouds, up and down the face of the world like the starlings, and come back to the scenes of their earthly transgressions. No soul of them is without the clouds of earth, dimming the brightness of the works of earth. In bad nights, the Sluagh shelter themselves behind little russet docken stems and little yellow ragwort stalks. They fight battles in the air as men do on the earth.”

Coming from the West, the Sluagh fly in groups like flocks of birds and attempt to enter a house where someone is dying to take the soul away with them. West facing windows are sometimes kept closed to keep them out. In the testimonies of many rural folk a distinction is often made between the sidhe who are seen walking on the ground after sunset, and the Sluagh Sidhe, or Fairy Host, who travel or fly through the air at night and are known to kidnap mortals with them on their journeys

The Sluagh are also believed to be sadists, if denied their feast, they don’t balk at the slaughter of cattle, cats, dogs, and sheep with their poison darts. It is said that the Sluagh “commanded men to follow them, and men obeyed, having no alternative. It was these men of earth who slew and maimed at the bidding of their spirit-masters, who in return ill-treated them in a most pitiless manner. They would be rolling and dragging and trouncing them in mud and mire and pools.”

humans are still very much their prey. The Sluagh exists on stealing the souls of the living, and especially the dying. Huddling and hiding in forgotten and dark places, they lay in wait for nightfall. Once the sun has left the sky, they strike out, in what, to the untrained or unsuspecting eye, appears to be a vast and ominous flock of large ravens or other birds. Flapping wings, screeching, and a whirlwind of undulating shadows are all you’d witness as the Sluagh descends for an attack. Owing to the folklore of the Wild Hunt, countless cultures and legends still link black birds (and especially ravens) as evil omens or signals of upcoming misfortune.

The beautiful daughter of a king of France was taken up by the sluagh and carried about in the air, over lands and seas, continents and islands, till they came to the little island of Heistamal, behind Creagorry, in Benbecula, where they laid her down in such an injured state that she died from the hard treatment; not, however, till she had told about the lands to which she had been carried, and of the great hardships she had endured while travelling through space. The people of the island buried the princess where she was found.