Cu Sith
Mythological Narrative
A massive fairy hound the size of a bull, with shaggy dark green fur and braided tail. Its three barks summon death, and it roams the Scottish Highlands collecting souls of the dying.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## The Green Hound of the Sithein
Scottish Gaelic tradition knows a large green fairy dog, the cù-sìth, whose barks (often three) are a death omen. Collectors (J. G. Campbell, later folklore archives) place it on the moors between this world and the sìth mounds. It is not Cú Chulainn's hound.
The record is oral and early-modern; there is no medieval tract devoted to the beast.
## Three barks
In the Highland lore gathered by John Gregorson Campbell in *Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland* (1900), the fairy dog moves silently and leaves footprints as large as a man's hand. It barks three times, with long pauses between, and anyone who has not reached safety by the third bark is overtaken by terror or death. Women were sometimes said to be taken by it to nurse fairy children in the mounds.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Cu Sith.
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