Fachan

In Scottish folklore, the fachan (also called fachin, fachen, Direach Ghlinn Eitidh, or Dithreach, meaning “dwarf of Glen Etive”) is described as a grotesque monster or giant. According to John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands, it has only one eye set in the middle of its face, a single hand jutting from its chest in place of arms, and one leg positioned at the center of its body. Atop its head grows a single tuft of hair that, as Campbell notes, “it were easier to take a mountain from the root than to bend that tuft.” He also points to possible parallels with beings from Arabic lore such as the Nesnas or Shikk, figures described as half-human creatures that hop about on one leg with remarkable speed.

Douglas Hyde later quoted Campbell’s account in his collection Beside the Fire and drew attention to an Irish manuscript that tells of a nearly identical figure. This being is depicted as holding a heavy iron flail-club in its lone hand, from which hang twenty chains bearing fifty apples apiece, each enchanted with a deadly spell. Its body is bound with a girdle of deer and roebuck skins. Its face is black, with one glaring eye in the forehead, and from its chest extends a coarse, hairy hand. A single thick, veiny leg bears its weight, and its body is draped in a mantle of twisted dark-blue feathers. In Hyde’s words, the monster was “more like unto devil than to man.”

Hyde suggested that these accounts represent different branches of a shared Gaelic tradition. The name fachan may derive from the Irish word fathach (giant) and is likely related to the Scottish famhair (giant).