Fachan

Also called Fachin, Dithreach, Direach, Direach Ghlinn Eitidh, Fachen.

The Fachan is a hideous one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged goblin of Irish and Highland tradition, hidden under a cloak of matted feathers and violent toward all who stray into its wastes.

Tradition: Irish folkloreScottish folklore
Region: Scottish Highlands (place of origin)
Trait family: The False Guides
Symbols: AppleChainIron

Near this figure

Nasnas One-armed one-legged body · Single large eye
Shiqq One-armed one-legged body · Single large eye
Graeae Single large eye

Symbols

Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.

Apple bears image-domain The apple denotes rejuvenation, love and hidden wisdom alongside sin, deceit and discord, and splits to reveal a five-pointed star read as a feminine sign.
why
An Irish manuscript account of the same misshapen kind arms it terribly, with a thick iron flail-club in its skinny hand carrying twenty chains, and fifty apples on every chain, every one of them capable of harm.
Chain bears image-domain The chain denotes linkage in both senses: the bondage of fate and servitude, and the supporting ladder joining earth to heaven link by link.
why
An Irish manuscript account of the same misshapen kind arms it terribly, with a thick iron flail-club in its skinny hand carrying twenty chains, and fifty apples on every chain, every one of them capable of harm.
Iron bears Iron denotes meteoric power, hardness, durability, strength, and constancy, but also bondage, cruelty, war, evil, slavery, and a dark final age.
why
An Irish manuscript account of the same misshapen kind arms it terribly, with a thick iron flail-club in its skinny hand carrying twenty chains, and fifty apples on every chain, every one of them capable of harm.

Traits

Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.

Form

One-armed one-legged body
why
The fachan of Irish and Scottish Highland tradition is built on the arithmetic of one: one hand protruding from the ridge of its chest, one leg from its haunch, one eye in the front of its face, and one tuft of hair on its head — of which the Gaelic teller says it were easier to pull a mountain up by the root than to bend that tuft.
Single large eye
why
The fachan of Irish and Scottish Highland tradition is built on the arithmetic of one: one hand protruding from the ridge of its chest, one leg from its haunch, one eye in the front of its face, and one tuft of hair on its head — of which the Gaelic teller says it were easier to pull a mountain up by the root than to bend that tuft.

Behaviour

Guards remote monstrous domain
why
The Highland exemplar is the Direach Ghlinn Eitidh, the sole inhabitant of Glen Eiti near Ballachulish, and the class it belongs to — the athach, the monstrous giants of lonely glens, within the broader company of the fuaths — is defined by exactly that solitude: the fachan attacks any mortal who strays into its ground.

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.