Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend

My first forays into finding a group of uniquely Scottish gods seemed to prove fruitless. I could find no single source or ancient book that told the story of the Scottish gods. Although there are many Scottish myths the gods are hardly ever even mentioned in them. However, just as I was beginning to think that Scottish gods were the same as the Irish gods and did not appear in the Scottish myths I made a discovery. Here was a work that featured a goddess, who was unique to Scotland and appeared in several connected myths and interacted with several other clearly god like beings.

In a pdf on line I found Donald Alexander Mackenzie’s work “Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend”. This was a good starting point in presenting some gods and goddesses who were uniquely Scottish. Donald Alexander Mackenzie was a Scottish journalist and folklorist and a prolific writer on mythology in the early 20th century. I drew heavily on his Beira the Winter Goddess and those other gods and goddesses mentioned in her stories to build a pantheon of Scottish deities.

The other Scottish myths seemed to be mostly about Giants and Fairy folk so I included them as if they were relatives of gods. Indeed such creatures seem to have been fallen Gods and Goddesses anyway. I also included Myths from the Isle of Man which I found in the work of Peter Berresford Ellis. As the stories that included named gods, goddesses or even fairies/elves were indeed sparse in Scottish myths. Eventually I had to make up some gods and goddesses which I named for their aspects in Scottish or Pictish Gaelic.

Although the Scottish myths were very lacking in the participation of gods I managed to find ways of including them in the stories or at least naming major participants as gods. One story about witches I realized must have been a story about the goddesses of fate in some distant past. This allowed me to create a group of Pictish gods and goddesses. 

Although these stories are now connected, they can be read in any order.

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