It's hard to know what all of those creatures are supposed to be.
Baines puts them all in a section called "zoomorphics".
Some are clearly birds, or dogs.
There are others Baines describes as "dog-like animals with top-knots, tails, tongues, legs, and toes with claws".
A Gaelic speaker many years ago described the "Celtic beasts" engraved on pipes as each-uisge, that is, water-beasts, what we would call sea-serpents. But things like the Loch Ness Monster aren't "serpents" but more like mammals.
Here's the each-uisge or Celtic beast on a friend's old set of Henderson pipes
Last edited by OC Richard; 18th May 20 at 11:39 AM.
Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte
Bookmarks