Kelpie

From The Book of THoTH (Leaves of Wisdom)

The kelpie is a supernatural shape-shifting water horse from Gaelic folklore that is believed to haunt the rivers and lochs of Scotland. In Orkney a similar creature was called the Nuggle, and in Shetland a similar creature was called the Shoopiltee. It also appears in Scandinavian folklore where it is known by the name Bäckahästen, the brook horse.

1 History and mythology
2 Kelpie Ledgends
3 Other Appearances
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

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History and mythology

In Scandinavia, the brook horse was a transformation of the Nix, a water spirit in the shape of a man. It was often described as a majestic white horse that would appear near rivers, particularly during foggy weather. Anyone who climbed onto its back would not be able to get off again. The horse would then jump into the river, drowning the rider. The brook horse could also be harnessed and made to plough, either because it was trying to trick a person or because the person had tricked the horse into it.

The Nix as a brook horse by Theodor Kittelsen, another depiction of the nix as a white kelpie

The kelpie sometimes appeared as a rough hairy man who would grip and crush travellers, but it most commonly took the form of a beautiful tame horse standing by a stream or river. If anyone mounted it, it would charge into the deepest part of the water, submerging and taking the rider with it. They would sometimes interbreed with humans' horses, and the foals were said to be fine fleetfooted horses. The kelpie was also said to warn of forthcoming storms by wailing and howling. Rarely, kelpies could be benign. The folktale The Kelpie's Wife tells of one in Loch Garve, Ross-shire, who had a human wife. The Jethro Tull song Kelpie, from the 1988 album 20 Years Of Jethro Tull, tells of a young woman tempted away by a kelpie. [1] A similar creature from Gaelic folklore, the each uisge ("water horse" in Gaelic) haunts bodies of salt water, rather than the fresh water rivers and lochs with which the Kelpie is associated.

According to the Swedish naturalist and author Bengt Sjögren (1980), the present day belief in lake monsters in for example Loch Ness, is associated with the old legends of kelpies. Sjögren claims that the accounts of lake-monsters have changed during history. Older reports often talk about horse-like appearances, but more modern reports often have more reptile and dinosaur-like-appearances, and Bengt Sjögren concludes that the legends of kelpies evolved into the present day legends of lake-monsters where the monsters "changed the appearance" to a more "realistic" and "modern" version since the discovery of dinosaurs and giant aquatic reptiles from the horse-like water-kelpie to a dinosaur-like reptile, often a plesiosaur.

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Kelpie Ledgends

The following tale is a good illustration of the brook horse:

A long time ago, there was a girl who was not only pretty but also big and strong. She worked as a maid on a farm by Lake Hjärtasjön in southern Nerike. She was ploughing with the farm's horse on one of the fields by the lake. It was springtime and beautiful weather. The birds chirped and the wagtails flitted in the tracks of the girl and the horse in order to pick worms. All of a sudden, a horse appeared out of the lake. It was big and beautiful, bright in colour and with large spots on the sides. The horse had a beautiful mane which fluttered in the wind and a tail that trailed on the ground. The horse pranced for the girl to show her how beautiful he was. The girl, however, knew that it was the brook horse and ignored it. Then the brook horse came closer and closer and finally he was so close that he could bite the farm horse in the mane. The girl hit the brook horse with the bridle and cried: "Disappear you scoundrel, or you'll have to plough so you'll never forget it." As soon as she had said this, the brook horse had changed places with the farm horse, and the brook horse started ploughing the field with such speed that soil and stones whirled in its wake, and the girl hung like a mitten from the plough. Faster than the cock crows seven times, the ploughing was finished and the brook horse headed for the lake, dragging both the plough and the girl. But the girl had a piece of steel in her pocket, and she made the sign of the cross. Immediately she fell down on the ground, and she saw the brook horse disappear into the lake with the plough. She heard a frustrated neighing when the brook horse understood that his trick had failed. Until this day, a deep track can be seen in the field. (Hellström 1985:16)

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Other Appearances

A kelpie appears in the video game Drakengard 2 as the pact-partner of Hanch, one of the game's boss enemies. In this interpretation the kelpie is a blue horse with a large fish tail that extends from its mid-section and is about 25 feet in length.
Kelpie is also a name of Cirilla's horse in The Witcher saga.

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