Others associate the term kelpie with a wide variety of legendary creatures. 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. ![]() ![]() Mackillop's dictionary reconciles the discrepancy, stating that the kelpie was "initially thought to inhabit . This distinction is not universally applied however Sir Walter Scott for instance claims that the kelpie's range may extend to lochs. 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. Ĭommentators have disagreed over the kelpie's aquatic habitat. 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. 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. Folk beliefs Description and common attributes 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 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 etymology of the Scots word kelpie is uncertain, but it may be derived from the Gaelic calpa or cailpeach, meaning "heifer" or "colt". Kelpies have been portrayed in their various forms in art and literature, including two 30-metre-high (100 ft) steel sculptures in Falkirk, The Kelpies, completed in October 2013. 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 kelpie has counterparts across the world, such as the Germanic nixie, the wihwin of South America and the Australian bunyip. 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".Īlmost every sizeable body of water in Scotland has an associated kelpie story, but the most extensively reported is that of Loch Ness. It is usually described as a black horse-like creature, able to adopt human form. For the Dungeons & Dragons monster, see Kelpie (Dungeons & Dragons).Ī kelpie, or water kelpie ( Scottish Gaelic: Each-Uisge), is a shape-shifting spirit inhabiting lochs in Irish and Scottish folklore. For the dog breed, see Australian Kelpie. This article is about the folkloric creature.
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