While the salt-water mermaids of the Hebrides — and their crueller cousins, the blue men of the Minch — get most of the attention, the Highland lochs and rivers have a mermaid all of their own. She is called the Ceasg, and she is one of the most distinctive figures in Scottish Gaelic folklore.
The Ceasg (sometimes called maighdean na tuinne, 'the maid of the wave') is described as having the upper body of a beautiful woman and the lower body of a young salmon. The salmon detail matters: she is a creature of the freshwater, of the cold mountain rivers and the deep glacial lochs, not of the open sea. She belongs to the inland water of Scotland in a way no other folkloric creature does.
Her stories are unusually gentle by Highland standards. The Ceasg is said to grant three wishes to anyone who can capture her — and unlike most fae bargains, the wishes will hold, provided the human keeps their side of whatever promise was made in return. There are tellings in which the Ceasg even marries a fisherman, returns with him to his croft, and bears him children, only slipping back to the water if he ever breaks his word or speaks ill of the loch.
But there is darkness in the older versions. The Ceasg has also been described as devouring those who failed her bargain, swallowing them whole and keeping their souls inside her until she was killed. The way to kill her, the storytellers said, was to find and destroy a separate object — sometimes a small egg, sometimes a single trout — in which her life was hidden, far from her body. It is a motif as old as folklore itself.
Our Veiled Ceasg design honours her in her quietest moment: the still loch, the rising mist, the salmon-tail just breaking the surface. Treat her honestly and she will give you what you asked for. Lie to her, the old folk said, and the loch will keep you.