Most people outside Scotland have heard of the Kelpie. Far fewer have heard of his bigger, blacker, and altogether more dangerous cousin: the Each-Uisge.
The Each-Uisge (literally 'water horse' in Scottish Gaelic, pronounced roughly ech-ooshk-ya) is, in the Highland tradition, considered the most dangerous of all the water spirits. The Kelpie haunts running water — rivers, fords, fast streams. The Each-Uisge haunts the deep, still places: sea-lochs and the great freshwater lochs of the Highlands. Loch Ness, Loch Morar, Loch Treig — all are said to be his.
Like the Kelpie, he appears on the shore as a beautiful horse, often glossy black, sometimes a pony, sometimes a magnificent stallion, always saddled and tame-looking, always grazing alone. A weary traveller, far from home, climbs gratefully onto his back. The horse walks calmly for a moment.
Then the trap closes. The skin of the Each-Uisge becomes adhesive. The rider cannot dismount. The horse turns, breaks into a gallop, and plunges straight into the deepest part of the loch. The unfortunate is dragged under and drowned, then devoured. The old tales are very specific about what is left to wash up later: only the liver. Everything else, the Each-Uisge consumes.
He is also a shapeshifter. He can appear as a handsome young man on the lochside — usually with the giveaway of waterweed in his hair, which the suspicious girl in the story always notices just in time — or sometimes as a great bird. But he is at his most lethal in horse-form, because he plays on the most ordinary human kindness: the impulse to accept help when you are tired.
Our Veiled Each-Uisge design honours him at the moment of the lie: the dark loch, the perfect horse on the shore, and the dripping mane that should already have told you everything. The Highland lochs are beautiful at dusk. They are also the deepest in Britain. There are reasons the old folk did not swim.