A Gruagach, according to Scottish tradition, is a domestic spirit who cleans your house at night in exchange for milk or cream offerings. He is the last hope of his kind in Mike Mignola’s universe, having been converted into a horrific creature during a rite that was halted by Big Red himself. Since then, he has had a lifelong grudge toward him.
This Boar-like Fairy-Monster is one of the most intriguing creatures in the Hellboy universe, and we will go over everything there is to know about him. This is a look at Gruagach’s origins.
Gruagach’s Tragic Backstory
While most legends and myths have several elements that set them apart from each other, they do share some basic commonalities. Every major world religion will have figures representing the 4 elements. Most of them will divide the world into 3 basic realms; 9, in the case of Norse Mythology.
And all of them feature at least one story about a mortal attempting to gaze into the true nature of their Gods; and being mortified by the sights revealed to them, setting off a path that only ends in destruction. It is on this road that Gruagach’s life story is beset. Countless millennia ago, he was a fierce, shape-shifting warrior of The Tuatha De Danann; the kingdom of the Old Gods of Ireland. Out of all the transforming troops in their mystic legions, Gruagach was by far the best, able to take shapes that no other fairy could even dare imagine.
He had ridden into battle beside the sons of the High King Dagda, taking on their Fomorian enemies with might that matched theirs. Gruagach’s ungodly strength became the deciding factor in the Fairy-Fomorian War, as he was able to transform into a hulking, behemoth of a creature so hideous to gaze upon that it inspired fear in the people who saw it. Gruagach killed 20 giants in this state and became a beloved hero of the War. As was customary during those days, to the victor went the spoils of war; and Gruagach’s prize was the love of a mortal woman.
For weeks they’d spend their time together, weaving their own tales of adventure, mischief, and passion. And then one fateful day, his lover asked him to show her the one thing he knew would be his doom; she asked him to show her the form he took when he killed the giants. If you know anything about folklore and mythology, she might as well have been wearing a red flag that covered her entire frame.
You see, in folklore and mythology, magic is as powerful as it is fickle. The Vanir goddess Freyja (Pronounce: Fray-yeah) had to travel across all the Nine Realms and extract promises from every living thing that they would not hurt her infant son Baldur; the shining Norse God of Light. She managed to forge pacts with everything that had cosmic life dwelling within it; except the young mistletoe, which she deemed to be “too innocent” to pose a threat to any creature, much less her son.
She’d become the greatest (and most tragic) example of the phrase “Don’t Cut Corners”, as the very thing she thought could never hurt her son would go on to become the triggering mechanism for Ragnarok; the Twilight of the Gods. Gruagach would face a similar trial; only for him, doom wasn’t waiting on the furthest edges of time. Fairy magic is as fickle as Vanir magic, and amongst Gruagach’s petite brethren, it was forbidden to show a human being their shape-shifted avatars; because if they screamed in terror at the sight they were beholding, the fairy would then be banished to the misty lands of purgatory, to dwell there for breaching his order’s sanctity for eternity.
Gruagach’s beloved tried to stifle her screams to the best of her ability, keeping them down even as she witnessed his horrific, tusked, bestial persona emerge. She’d have made it through had he not tried to be considerate. Gruagach shape-shifted into a songbird to allay his lover’s fears; but an approaching cat startled her, and in her attempt to warn him, she let out a scream that sealed Gruagach’s fate.
Now trapped within the mist-filled dimension that his people thought of like purgatory, Gruagach’s wandered; aimless, purposeless, and utterly alone. He encountered various other wretched creatures like him in this place; lost souls that the fairy-folk had long since abandoned to fantasy. Around the time he started losing all sense of time and space, Gruagach’s body began withering as well, turning into a literal husk of his former self. And just when he was about to lose himself, he managed to make his way back into the world; but his life would never be the same again.
Gruagach in the Hellboy comic universe
In 1959, Gruagach resurfaced on the World Above, reduced to a mere infantile changing. The Daikon Sidhe, the last remnants of the fairies in the modern era, was hoping to integrate their society with the humans’ in order to survive their fast-approaching extinction. Gruagach was to be the vessel that facilitated this crossover into a new era and was swapped out for the infant Alice Monaghan. Unfortunately for them, the Bureau for Paranormal Research & Defense was alerted to their schemes.
Hellboy arrived at the scene and used an age-old fairy ward- Cold Iron- to draw out Gruagach from his underneath his deceptive veil. He made the spirit give up Alice’s location, and to add insult to injury, banished him through the chimney which should’ve been the end of him. But Gruagach was nothing if not tenacious, and he survived, swearing undying vengeance upon Hellboy and becoming gripped by a rage so strong that it would eventually lead to the extinction of all fairy-kind.
When Hellboy was transporting the corpse of Tam O’Clannie to his resting place, Gruagach attacked him with the help of the now-loose Grom; a Fomorian Giant who was imprisoned by the fairies after the last war. Hellboy slugs it out with Grom, but not before the latter devours an unwitting Gruagach from behind. After being defeated by a holy relic that shrinks him down in the size, the last of the giants truly dies when Gruagach takes over his diminishing consciousness and usurps Grom’s body for his own.
At the Council of the Daikon Sidhe, Gruagach laments his current state and openly declares his desire for revenge and glory in clear opposition to his former king. Where Dagda would have the fairies return to the world to live out their last days, Gruagach would have them go out in a blaze of death and ecstasy; and according to him, Hellboy’s death would be their salvation.
While his claims are mostly shot down by the members of the Sidhe, Gruagach wasn’t one to be deterred. He sought out Mab, the former fairy queen of the Tuatha De Danann, in an attempt to sway the witches to his side in his vengeful quest. But he was only told that Hecate had not sent word to her followers yet. Getting more blood-thirsty and maniacal with every passing moment, Gruagach proclaimed that it was time for a change; and that the ancient mistress of the fairies would have to return for their kind to survive and make it to the New World.
Through coercion, deceit, and outright intimidation, Gruagach recovered the unholy remains of the former Blood Queen of the Fairies; Nimue. When Dagda saw what his former comrade was doing, he envisioned fairy kinds’ extinction; and he himself met his death at the hands of one of Gruagach’s fanatical supporters. His golden ichor christened the spot where Nimue made her return to the world; a mistake Gruagach would pay for until the end of this world.
After being spurned by the Blood Queen for his ineptness and his perceived lack of will, Gruagach encountered the wizard Merlin, when he stood upon his grave by mistake. Merlin chastised the fairy for his selfishness and his desire for vengeance; which loosened his evil former lover upon the world. Merlin cursed him to live until he had seen the consequences of his actions through to the end.
Hellboy finds him hanging from a tree near the Blood Queen’s tower when he goes to confront her. Much like the corpse, he was carrying when Grom attacked him, Gruagach was nothing more than a talking dead body at this point. The only difference was, that he couldn’t die till the end came. Big Red emptied an entire clip in his chest to put him out of his misery, but it didn’t work. It was only after Morgan le Fey found him that Gruagach finally found peace; mercifully, it would be the everlasting kind, for their world was at its end and Morgan and the fairy to go “where people like them must go”.
The Boar-like fairy in 2019’s Hellboy live-action movie
Though he was absent from the Guillermo del Toro iteration of the franchise, Gruagach made his live-action debut in 2019 as the secondary antagonist of the R-rated Hellboy film, starring David Harbour as Big Red. In the film, his first appearance was in 1992 when he and the Daione Sidhe kinapped Alice Monaghan; much like the events of The Corpse. Things diverge after Hellboy brands the fairy with iron.
Instead of taking over the body of the Fomorian Grom, Gruagach morphs into a grotesque, half-man half-boar creature, and it is this transformation that becomes the stimulant of his vengeful hatred. He goes on to consult with Baba Yaga- a Russian nightmare entity and a common foe of Hellboy, who happens to know just how Gruagach can defeat Anung un Rama; once and for all.
She sends him to a church that houses the severed head of Nimue, where he rips out the tongue of the priest who knows the incantation that can revive her. After consuming it, he gains that knowledge himself, and resurrects the Blood Queen, quickly reassembling her dismembered body at his new mistress’ command. He brutally massacres several people at the Osiris Club, where Hellboy encounters him and recalls the Monaghan incident from ’92. When Big Red chases down The Blood Queen in an effort to put an end to her apocalyptic schemes alongside Daimio, he is stopped in his tracks by Gruagach; who easily dispose of his opponents, by the way.
It’s as if Hellboy and Daimio- who can shape-shift into a friggin’ panther- are toy soldiers to him the way he tosses them around. In the end, he is betrayed by the Queen he swore to serve because she needed Hellboy more than she needed him for her final plan to take effect. As his body shrank uncontrollably, Gruagach cursed his nemesis for the fate he had brought upon himself; before his body exploded into a bloody mess. While his back story and his eventual fate were heavily revised to fit a cinematic format, the one thing that Hellboy 2019 nailed was conveying just how big of a threat Gruagach truly is.
What makes Gruagach so powerful?
Do you mean aside from the fact that he’s literally escaped the Fairy Phantom Zone? Well, a lot of things. For starters, Gruagach is one of the strongest fairy warriors of his generation. He was able to take out 20 giants all by himself; a feat unheard of at the time. His shape-shifting abilities were so advanced and fluidic, that he could seamlessly transform from one being to another with nary a flaw visible.
If the Monaghan’s hadn’t figured out there their child was behaving suspiciously, they might never have realized that the Alice they were holding in their arms was actually Gruagach in disguise. The 2019 Hellboy movie shed a lot of light on just what kind of strength this Gaelic fairy might have possessed in its most-fearsome form. The Boar-like monster was an unstoppable freak of magic. He could punch through walls like they were made out of Styrofoam, ripped off a priest’s whole jaw, and turned Hellboy & Daimio’s panther form into his personal punching bags.
His skin is impervious to most mortal damage, as neither bullets nor blades could leave a mark on it. Hellboy was only able to break his skin thanks to his own tusk; and even then, Gruagach showed no signs of being in pain. Speaking of his tusks, they were so sharp that they literally impaled Hellboy; a feat that required the Angel of Death to save his life the last time he was on the big screen. His only known weakness is one that all fairies share, which is cold iron. Well, that, and his temper, and the fact that he couldn’t anticipate Nimue’s eventual treachery. As a physical specimen, he’s Mignola’s Juggernaut come alive, thanks to Neil Marshall, Stephen Graham & Douglas Tait.
Why Gruagach Deserves More Recognition
This Boar-faced fairy is nowhere near the Lovecraftian levels of cosmic horror that Vivienne Nimue, Grigori Rasputin and the Ogdru Jahad itself emit. In terms of the Food Chain of Malevolence, Gruagach resides somewhere firmly between a schoolyard bully and the Ravager infamous for being known as Taserface. But the real reason for giving Gruagach more recognition isn’t the fact that he is, for the lack of a better word, ridiculous. It’s the uncontrollable thirst for revenge and his bottled-up rage that makes him such an intriguing character to us.
We’ve all had moments where the only thing we want from the world is to watch it burn; no matter how slight the inconvenience we faced might have been in the grander scheme of things. But dammit, if it isn’t addictive to lose yourself to that primal emotion and let loose; before realizing its consequences and spending the rest of your life either making up for it, or watching it unfold helplessly.
If anything, Gruagach is the clearest allegory for choosing rationality over favoring raw emotion. Had he not resolved to spite Anung un, Rama, for stealing his opportunity to essentially live again, the Apocalypse wouldn’t be coming to end the world. Ogdru Jahad might have still been slumbering in his other-dimensional prison, and who knows; Hellboy might just have become his friend later on in life! It was his jealousy and his irrational pursuit of emotional gratification that led to the downfall of all mankind; and if that isn’t a vendetta to recognize and remember, then we don’t know what is!