An old saying claims that it was so large that it fed on seven whales: Local folklores say this huge animal can disguise itself as a small silver fish when fishermen came in contact with it.
[3] Other accounts state the reason for the disguise was to attract its next meal; when the fisherman would catch it in its small silver fish form, once aboard it changed back to the monster and ate him.
[4] A saying goes:[5] Poem collected by Alexander Carmichael[6] It was taken down in 1860, with much more old lore, from Kenneth Morrison, cottar, Trithion, Skye.
According to Alexander Robert Forbes, cionarain-cro is substituted for the cirein-croin in different saying, and ranks second to the "great sea animal".
He also proposes it as a dinosaur:[8] It is not known what this monster animal was, though it may well have been one of these "Giant fish-destroyers," so ably, inler alia, described by Dr Carmichael M'Intosh, which waged war in sea and on land against all and sundry as well as against each other, viz., the gigantic Deinosaurs [sic], some of which, notably the Atlantosaurus, reached to one hundred feet in length with a height of thirty feet, and proportionately awful of aspect.