![]() ![]() Quoting the same narrative Jennifer Westwood, author and folklorist, uses the descriptor water kelpies, adding that in her opinion "Kelpies, here and in a few other instances, is used in a loose sense to mean something like ' Imps'".Ĭommentators have disagreed over the kelpie's aquatic habitat. It was a magnificent piece of work resplendent with gold piers and posts, but sank into the water to become a treacherous area of quicksand after a grateful onlooker tried to bless the kelpies for their work. The same story is recorded by Folklore Society member and folklore collector Charlotte Dempster simply as The Kelpie's Bridge (1888) with no mention of Voughas or Fuoah. The spirits had set about constructing a bridge over the Dornoch Firth after becoming tired of travelling across the water in cockleshells. Entitled Of the Drocht na Vougha or Fuoah, which is given the translation of the bridge of the fairies or kelpies, it features a group of voughas (evil water spirits). Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860) has a different perspective. Kelpie myths usually describe a solitary creature, but a fairy story recorded by John F. Gregorson Campbell considers the creature responsible to have been a water horse rather than a kelpie, and the tale "obviously a pious fraud to keep children from wandering on Sundays". The surviving boy is again saved by cutting off his finger, and the additional information is given that he had a Bible in his pocket. The same tale set at Sunart in the Highlands gives a specific figure of nine children lost, of whom only the innards of one are recovered. Such a creature said to inhabit Glen Keltney in Perthshire is considered to be a kelpie by 20th-century folklorist Katharine Mary Briggs, but a similar tale also set in Perthshire has an each uisge as the culprit and omits the embellishment of the young boy. The lad does cut his finger off when the event takes place in Thurso, where a water kelpie is identified as the culprit. ![]() In some variations the lad cuts off his fingers or hand to free himself he survives but the other children are carried off and drowned, with only some of their entrails being found later. Usually a little boy, he then pets the horse but his hand sticks to its neck. The creature's nature was described by Walter Gregor, a folklorist and one of the first members of the Folklore Society, as "useful", "hurtful", or seeking "human companionship" in some cases, kelpies take their victims into the water, devour them, and throw the entrails to the water's edge. In its equine form the kelpie is able to extend the length of its back to carry many riders together into the depths a common theme in the tales is of several children clambering onto the creature's back while one remains on the shore. An Aberdeenshire variation portrays the kelpie as a horse with a mane of serpents, whereas the resident equine spirit of the River Spey was white and could entice victims onto its back by singing. ![]() The mythological kelpie is usually described as a powerful and beautiful black horse inhabiting the deep pools of rivers and streams of Scotland, preying on any humans it encounters. One of the water-kelpie's common identifying characteristics is that its hooves are reversed as compared to those of a normal horse, a trait also shared by the nykur of Scandinavian and Icelandic lore. Douglas Harper, historian and founder of the Online Etymology Dictionary, defines kelpie as "the Lowland name of a demon in the shape of a horse". It is the most common water spirit in Scottish folklore, though many of its transcriptions are misspelled.
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