The Kintyre Mermaid, 1811: John M'Isaac and Catherine Loynachan

The east coast of Kintyre, about four miles south of Campbeltown. Lachlan M'Isaac was tenant in Corphine. His son John was 23. At the neighbouring farm of Ballinatunie, Lachlan Loynachan was herd. His eight-year-old daughter Catherine minded the cattle by the shore.

Sunday, 13 October 1811, about three or four o'clock in the afternoon. The day was stormy, and the ebb tide had left the rock dry. John M'Isaac saw something on the Black Rock of Corphine. He crept closer through a cornfield and over the rocks, as the wind blew off the land. He "continued concealed looking at the animal for near two hours."

The upper half "was white, and the shape of a human body." The lower half was brindled or reddish-grey, apparently scaled, ending in a greenish-red, shining tail. It was 4 to 5 feet long, with a human face, long light-brown hair and short arms. It would put back the hair on both sides of its head, and spread its tail like a fan, the tail "in tremulous motion." At last it drew its body forward to the edge of the rock, "and then tumbled clumsily into the sea."

Catherine Loynachan saw a creature "sliding upon its belly off one of the rocks very near her into the sea." It had long dark hair, white shoulders and back, and a body that narrowed like a fish. Its face had "all the appearance of the face of a child." She took it for a boy fallen from a passing ship. It turned its face towards the shore, then swam away south towards Corphine and disappeared.

Her mother called Lachlan back to report a boy swimming. By the time the family reached the shore, no one was there. M'Isaac stated that boys at the neighbouring farm saw a similar creature that day.

29 October 1811. At Campbeltown, both witnesses and Lachlan Loynachan swore statements before Duncan Campbell, Sheriff Substitute of Kintyre. Two Campbeltown ministers, Rev. Dr George Robertson and Norman M'Leod, and James Maxwell, Chamberlain of Mull, vouched for M'Isaac. They knew "no reason why his veracity should be questioned."

On 9 November Campbell, signing "D.C.", sent the papers to the press as support for "the existence of the fish called the Mermaid." The witnesses differed on hair colour. That, he wrote, "may be accounted for by the sun shining more or less bright at the time." The Glasgow Courier printed the statements on 28 November, and The Times followed the next day. By early December the story was circulating widely in the British press.

No source alleges a hoax. The writer Chris Woodyard has noted that some 19th-century "supernatural affidavits" name witnesses who cannot be traced. The Kintyre witnesses fit local records. Corphin and Achinhoan appear in the Ordnance Survey Name Books. The usual explanation for Scottish mermaid reports is a seal hauled out on a tidal rock, and seals live on this coast. A clumsy tumble off a rock at the ebb fits, but a scaled, fan-shaped tail and long hair are harder to explain.

In 1925 the historian D. Murray Rose summarised the statement in the Oban Times. In 2025 West Coast Today returned to it in a short podcast, "The Mermaid of Kintyre." The case sits beside other mermaid reports from Scottish shores, from Sandside Bay and Canna in 1809 to Tiree in 1813. Two centuries on, it comes down to what was sworn at Campbeltown. A farmer's son, a herd's daughter, and a creature on the rocks at the ebb tide.