Kelpie

Rare card · No. 29872

In Scottish folklore, a kelpie, or water kelpie (Scottish Gaelic: each-uisge), is a mythical shape-shifting spirit inhabiting lochs in Scotland. They also reside in meres and streams in Yorkshire (Jórvik) mythology. Legends of these shape-shifting water-horses, under various names, spread across the British Isles, appearing in the Northern Isles, Irish, Manx, Northern English, and Welsh folklore. It is usually described as a grey or white 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 Central America and the Australian bunyip. The origins of narratives about...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Thomas Nugent, CC BY-SA 2.0