Akin to the each-uisge, or water-horse, was the tarbh-uisge, or water-bull. Unlike the water-horse, however, the water-bull was of a harmless disposition. It inhabited lonely tarns among the hills, and made its appearance only at night-time. When seen, which was seldom, it usually was grazing with ordinary, domestic cattle. It was believed in the Highlands that calves born with ears that were short, and that looked as though they had been indented with a knife, were the offspring of the water-bull. The creature itself had no ears at all; and thus it was explained how such calves were what was termed “knife-eared” or “half-eared”. At dark the strange lowing of the water-bull might be heard by some lonely lochan, as it emerged to graze with ordinary cattle.
There is a folk-tale told in Lorne of how a dairy-maid and a cattle-man, when on the point of leaving for the night the fold where the cows had been collected after milking-time, noticed a small, black, bull-shaped animal, velvety and soft in appearance, approaching the cows. Its bellowing they described as one of the weirdest sounds to which they ever had listened. It was "like the crowing of a cock". On hearing it, they fled in panic. But, when they returned to the fold at morning, they found that no harm whatever had befallen the cows. So they concluded that the strange visitor of the previous evening must have been the tarbh-uisge.
The Peat-Fire Flame : folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands, Alasdair A. MacGregor
