A grotesque kind of hob or brownie who haunts mills. It is described at some length by William Henderson in Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties (p.252-253). Every mill used to be supposed to have its killmoulis, or mill-servant. He was not very pleasant to look at, for he had no mouth but an enormous nose, up which he must have snuffed his food, for a rhyme quoted by Henderson runs:

Auld Killmoulis wanting the mow,

Come to me now, come to me now!

Where war ye yestreen when I killed the sow?

Had ye come ye'd hae gotten yer belly fou.

Perhaps he fed on the foyson of food.

Killmoulis was deeply devoted to the welfare of the miller and his family, and wailed like a banshee before illness or misfortune, but he was more than half a boggart, and delighted in practical jokes, such as blowing ashes over the shelled oats spread out to dry. Only the miller could keep him in order by calling out his invocation: 'Auld Killmoulis, etc.,' when the hob would appear, puffing and blowing, and be given his orders. In an emergency he would thrash the corn, or ride for the howdie (or midwife) if the miller's wife needed her, and he was also used at Hallowe'en in divination. He generally lived in the killogee, the space before the fireplace in the kiln.

He seems to have been a Lowland spirit, for the Highland mills were haunted by brownies, urisks and brollachans, most of them more sinister than Killmoulis. In Holland, however, the mill spirit Kaboutermannekin is more helpful and industrious.

[Motifs: F480; F482.5.3; F482.5.4.1]