1900 (pub): A Death at Loch Basibol

A story is told of the island of Tiree, Scotland, that on the north side of Loch Basibol, where there is now just sandbanks, there was once a farm called the 'Town of the Clumsy Ones' ("Baile nan Cràganach"), a name supposedly attached to the farm because each man living there once had six fingers on each hand! Six fingers or not, however, it is said that a water-horse in the guise of a young man had started to visit the farmhouse to see a sister of the men who lived there.

        It is told that this all happened at the time that Calum Mor Clarke and his family lived at the farm, and Clarke and his three sons Iain Bàn Mòr (Big Fair John), Iain Bàn Òg (Young Fair John), and Iain Bàn Meadhonach (Middle Fair John), all disliked the attention the young water horse was showing the sister in the house. When the young man next came to visit, the four men arranged for the young man to sit on the edge of a bed with one of each of the men on either side of him. On a given signal, the two men clasped their hands around the young man and laid him on his back on the bed, as the other two men rushed to attack. The young man "assumed his proper shape of a Wather-horse" and a great struggle ensued; but the men soon cut the water-horse to pieces with their dirks (long daggers), and "put it out of the house dead."