Buggane
The Buggane is a vicious Manx shape-shifting goblin, identified by some with the island's water horse, famous for haunting waterfalls, carrying off a girl, and tearing the roof from St Trinian's church.
At a glance
- Tradition
- Manx folklore
- Region
- Isle of Man (place of origin)
- Trait family
- The Doom-Howlers
- Symbols
- Horse
Near this figure
Symbols
Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.
- Horse is image-domain The horse denotes harnessed striving power, mount of gods, sun and sea alike, carrying the dead as psychopomp and the living into their conquests.
why
The Buggane is a vicious Manx shape-shifting goblin, identified by some with the island's water horse, famous for haunting waterfalls, carrying off a girl, and tearing the roof from St Trinian's church.
Traits
Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.
Sight and sound
- Chains dragging sound heralds approach
why
One strand of Manx collection identifies the buggane outright with the cabbyl-ushtey, the Manx water horse, and the water association runs through its best-known haunts — the creature of Spooty Wooar, the big waterfall of the Patrick district, usually showed itself as a big black calf that crossed the road and leapt into the pool with a sound like shaken chains.
Utility powers
- Shapeshifting
why
The buggane is the Isle of Man's contribution to the family of northern shape-shifting goblins, and the tradition is blunt about where it stands in that family: adept at changing form like the English brag or the Hedley Kow, but more dangerous and more vicious.
Roles
Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.
- Shadow carries both readings
3 citations
- Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons, s.v. "Buggane."
- Carol Rose, Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins, s.v. "Buggane."
- Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, s.v. "Buggane."
- Trickster carries both readings
3 citations
- Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons, s.v. "Buggane."
- Carol Rose, Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins, s.v. "Buggane."
- Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, s.v. "Buggane."
- Hero meets
3 citations
- Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons, s.v. "Buggane."
- Carol Rose, Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins, s.v. "Buggane."
- Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, s.v. "Buggane."