Bucca

No single origin myth is recorded in the supplied sources. Nineteenth‑century commentators sometimes suggested that Bucca represents a survival of pre‑Christian sea or storm deities and compared it to other Insular forms (e.g., Irish Púca or British Nodens), but those interpretations are presented as conjectural in the sources. Etymological accounts offered in the sources propose competing possibilities—that the Cornish form may derive from Old English puca or that it is cognate with or borrowed from Irish Púca/Welsh Pwca—without definitive resolution.

Sources primarily identify Bucca as a male sea‑spirit or 'merman' in English summaries; detailed corporeal description is limited outside a recorded tale. In the Lamorna Cove tale Bucca is described as having 'the dark brown skin of a conger eel and a tangle of seaweed for hair,' appearing in waves, sea caverns, or sitting among rocks. Beyond that tale, accounts mostly refer to Bucca in general terms as a male aquatic/shore spirit whose precise appearance is not consistently specified in the available material.

Bucca is portrayed ambivalently. Helpful behaviours attested include driving fish into nets and crabs into pots for Lamorna fishermen and receiving portions of the catch as reciprocal offerings. Ambiguous or dangerous aspects include causing storms or being associated with winds (fishermen referred to southwesterly storms as 'Bucca calling'), and functioning as a bogeyman figure (bucca‑boo) used to frighten children. Some accounts also describe Bucca as associated with tin‑mining or mine workings—analogous in role to subterranean 'knockers'—but that mining association appears variably across sources rather than as a single cohesive origin myth.