Types of Vampires : Baobhan Sith

By C.H. Scarlett

In Scottish Lore these are Vampire Fairies. They take the image of young, beautiful women who are noted to wear green. Its interesting because Baobhan Sith happens to be a Highland term for a Banshee and is normally used towards deadly, evil SUCCBI. The legends tell that the Baobhan Sith find men and dance with them until the men are so exhausted that they can’t fight or just pass out. It is then that the Vampire Fairies feed on them.

Weaknesses: Iron –really the only thing that I have found that will kill them. In some stories it explains that they fear sunlight but it does not say as to why or the effects the sun has on them.

Legend tells us that they love hunters and any young man who is found wondering around after dark. One folktale of Scottish descent speaks of four young hunters who didn’t return home once the moon rose. Like most stories in days which the IPOD or CD player didn’t exist, they began to entertain themselves while one of the Hunters played music. The other three hunters began to dance around a small fire when one of the three actually wished he had a female partner to dance with.

Out of  nowhere his wish took flight and four very beautiful women appeared. Three of them danced while one stood quietly by the music maker. When the one who made the music noticed blood falling from his three friends; he panicked and ran away hiding himself among their horses. The vampire fairy encircled him until dawn unable to claim her prey because of the iron shoes the horses wore on their feet.  The angry Baobhan Sith  was forced to disappeared for the sake of her life. The hunter returned to the place he and the others took shelter and was horrified by what he found. There was his three friends dead and drained of all their blood.

Moral of the story? Who really knows if there is one? Why do these stories exist? Were there really Baobhan Sith lurking about  under the cloak of night waiting to find some poor man who easily fell  for her charms?

Maybe these stories were created by women who wanted to make sure their husbands remained faithful and thought twice before they decided not to return home. Maybe too many women were fed up watching their men leave at dawn to hunt only to return some days after having no kill to show for it. Those women later hearing rumors that they spent those days at the local brothel, perhaps?

Or maybe the Baobhan Sith existed and were a human woman’s means to rid of her cruel husband or a lover who had tossed her to the side? Maybe the Baobhan Sith cared nothing for human women at all and thought of men as cattle. The possibilities are endless as  are the theories, but in the end….only you can decide.

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Written by C.H. Scarlett

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