English romantic poet Lord Byron (1788-1824 A.D.), the patron saint of aristocratic excess once said, “Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore”.  This is amply demonstrated by our poetic Scottish storm kelpie friends, the Na Fir Ghorma, more commonly called, “The Blue Men of the Minch” who according to legend haunt the rough waters of the strait that separates the western highlands of Northern Scotland from the northern islands of the Outer Hebrides, particularly near the waters of the Shiant Islands.  The strait is appropriately referred to in Scottish Gaelic as the Struth nam Fear Ghorm (“Stream of the Blue Men”).  The Na Fir Ghorma are reputed to be kelpies, a general Celtic classification for supernatural water beasties, kelpie having derived from the Gaelic “cailpeach” (eng. colt), which is why kelpies are occasionally referred to as “water horses”.  Legend says the Blue Men of the Minch live in underwater caves and swim out with the sole unfriendly purpose of capsizing passing ships, an avoidable fate if a sharp and literary Captain can beat them at a rhyming game, in what amount to a 15th Century version of a rap battle with an aquatic killer Smurf.

Now, the Blue Men of the Minch legend seems fairly cool and trippy.  The Blue Men apparently are only found in the Minch, between the Island of Lewis and the Shiant Isles (the charmed islands) and they wear blue caps and have grey faces.  This totally reminds me of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode called “Go Swim” where Xander joins the swim team as an undercover stint to find the monster that is killing the swimmers.  Or rather, swim team members are seemingly eaten, leaving only their skins.  Yum. Dinner anyone? So, watching this episode of Buffy got me thinking about water legends and where Joss Whedon and Marti Nixon got their inspiration from. And, I then came across this Blue Men of the Minch legend that is ubiquitous on the web.  Where the Blue Men supposedly swam was often referred to as “The Current of Destruction”, because so many ships were sunk therein.  Hmm. The Current of Destruction. The Thin Blue Line. Weapons of Mass Destruction.  The Buffy episode was supposedly written to show how athletes who use steroids ruin their bodies. Ok. I have gone off on a tangent. Back to the internet and its citation sources.

I’ve spent some time on and off trying to find original source literature for the “Blue Men of the Minch”, and if one were to believe the internet (a chancy proposition), the “Blue Men of the Minch” are first mentioned by the esteemed scholar of Gaelic folklore Reverend Robert Kirk (1644 – disappeared in 1692 A.D., popularly believed to have been abducted by faeries) in his seminal 1692 work The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (first published for general consumption by Sir Walter Scott in 1815).  I got my hands on Andrew Lang’s 1893 version of The Secret Commonwealth and meticulously went through it page by page, determining that there was not even a tangential reference (an offhand, unrelated mention of water-kelpies is made) to the Blue Men of Minch or Na Fir Ghorma in the entire book, yet it is repeatedly cited as an authoritative source for the Blue Men myth.  As far as I can reasonably determine, the ubiquitous internet citation of “Blue Men of Minch [Kirk 1697]” is an utter fabrication.  That’s right. The internet lies -akin to how data lies.

Specifically in this journey to find an original citation I found that Kirk never mentions the Blue Men of Minch, had been dead or abducted for 5 years before the reputed date of 1697, and his writings cited were not actually published until 1815.  Luckily, we have other sources, and I say luckily because most of those modern writers interested in the Blue Men of Minch seem overly concerned with drawing some sort of strange Scottish-Atlantean connection, and are determined to see the Blue Men as some vague reference to alien reptilians they believe are controlling human history.  Luckily, there are a few marginally more sober (or at least functionally alcoholic) historical researchers out there, such as Scottish journalist and folklorist Donald Alexander Mackenzie (1873-1936 A.D).

Ten years ago, I was teaching a cultural psychology course and had assigned several key psychology research articles that could be found in journals such as The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (known in the field as JPSP).  I read and graded a student’s paper on the articles giving him a “C-“ and I was grading on a curve.  He was somewhat shocked and wanted to talk to me about it. I asked him whether he truly had read the articles. He looked at me and admitted he had not. I asked him to explain why he hadn’t bothered to read them and then why would he be shocked at his grade. Do you know what his response was? He said he couldn’t find the articles. I was incredulous. I had asked the psychology department’s library to set aside those key journals so that students could take them out for an hour to read or copy the article. He just looked at me with these great big eyes and said “the library? I looked on the internet and couldn’t find them. Thought they didn’t exist”.  He had no idea how to find a journal article in an actual library.   First off, many journals unfortunately are produce by greedy companies that do not make their articles widely available although more often than not said articles are written based on research funded by the government through our tax dollars.  Thus, if I am forced to purchase a research article on the web aren’t I being double taxed?  Sigh.  But if these articles are not readily available on the web how do people do research and cite primary sources?   They probably do not and thus they cite a citation of a citation of a citation.  Seems that the real full story is missing from many people’s review and understanding of events, research and legends.  Some people do not go beyond Wikipedia. Did you know that I came across a Wikipedia entry once that claimed William Shakespeare wrote some of his best in the 1950s and that “fact” was cited in a training presentation.

On this 7 year anniversary of Twitter, where do we go from here? As a society we have more access to information but what does that gain us? What do we have to wade through to get to the truth?  What are you willing to wade through?

P.S. Did you also know that this year 2013 is the year of the locusts. Specifically this is the end of the 17-year old hibernation of the locusts and now the cicadas will come in mass. Just saying.  Perhaps , the Sea-stream of the Blue Men is already teeming with locusts and twitter will soon be all abuzz and college students will be writing term papers all into the night citing the latest sighting cited by some random internet user.

References

Mackenzie, Donald A. 1873-1936. Wonder Tales From Scottish Myth & Legend. London: Blackie and Son, Ltd., 1917.