The Book of Mythology and Mythical Creatures

The Kelpie

A kelpie, or water kelpie (Scottish Gaelic: Each-Uisge), is a shape-shifting spirit inhabiting lochs in Scottish folklore. It is usually described as a black horse-like creature, able to adopt human form. Some accounts state that the kelpie retains its hooves when appearing as a human, leading to its association with the Christian idea of Satan as alluded to by Robert Burns in his 1786 poem "Address to the Devil".

Almost every sizeable body of water in Scotland has an associated kelpie story, but the most extensively reported is that of Loch Ness. The kelpie has counterparts across the world, such as the Germanic nixie, the wihwin of South America and the Australian bunyip. The origins of narratives about the creature are unclear but the practical purpose of keeping children away from dangerous stretches of water and warning young women to be wary of handsome strangers has been noted in secondary literature.

The etymology of the Scots word kelpie is uncertain, but it may be derived from the Gaelic calpa or cailpeach, meaning "heifer" or "colt". The first recorded use of the term to describe a mythological creature, then spelled kaelpie, appears in the manuscript of an ode by William Collins, composed some time before 1759 and reproduced in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh of 1788. The place names Kelpie hoall and Kelpie hooll are reported in A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue as appearing in the 1674 burgh records for Kirkcudbright.

The kelpie is the most common water spirit in Scottish folklore, and the name is attributed to several different forms in narratives recorded throughout the country. The late 19th century saw the onset of an interest in transcribing folklore, and recorders were inconsistent in spelling and frequently anglicised words, which could result in differing names for the same spirit.

Commentators have disagreed over the kelpie's aquatic habitat. Folklorists who define kelpies as spirits living beside rivers, as distinguished from the Celtic lochside-dwelling water horse (each-uisge), include 19th-century minister of Tiree John Gregorson Campbell and 20th-century writers Lewis Spence and Katharine Briggs. This distinction is not universally applied however; Sir Walter Scott for instance claims that the kelpie's range may extend to lochs. Mackillop's dictionary reconciles the discrepancy, stating that the kelpie was "initially thought to inhabit ... streams, and later any body of water." But the distinction should stand, argues one annotator, who suggests that people are led astray when an each uisge in a "common practice of translating" are referred to as kelpies in English accounts, and thus mistakenly attribute loch-dwelling habits to the latter.

Others associate the term kelpie with a wide variety of legendary creatures. Counterparts in some regions of Scotland include the shoopiltee and nuggle of Shetland and the tangie of Orkney; in other parts of the British Islands they include the Welsh ceffyl dŵr and the Manx cabbyl-ushtey. Parallels to the general Germanic neck and the Scandinavian bäckahäst have been observed; Nick Middleton observes that "the kelpie of Scottish folklore is a direct parallel of the [sic] bäckahästen [of Scandinavian folklore]". The wihwin of Central America and the Australian bunyip are seen as similar creatures in other parts of the world.

The 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 Iceland.

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 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. Usually a little boy, he then pets the horse but his hand sticks to its neck. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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".