The elf bull is one of the odder items in the confessions. In the same documents the Devil is said to take the form of a bull, and Steve Patterson suggests other roots in older tales, such as the supernatural bulls of Irish epic and a tenth century Icelandic saga in which offerings of an ox are made outside an elf mound. These are comparisons by a modern writer, not statements by Gowdie.
The bulls are best read as part of the way Gowdie described the fairy hill as a guarded, dangerous place.
Comments