Kelpie
In Scottish folklore, a water spirit in the shape of a horse that lures travellers onto its back and carries them into its pool to drown.
Meaning
The kelpie (KEL-pee, as Dictionary.com respells it; the word is first recorded in the 1740s and its origin is unknown) haunts the deep pools of Scottish rivers. Walter Gregor, collecting in north-east Scotland, wrote in 1881 that it “had commonly the form of a black horse”, and that it coaxed travellers at fords and old bridges into mounting it, then rushed into its pool and carried them to their death. It belongs to Scotland’s folklore, and today to Falkirk, where the artist Andy Scott’s 30-metre horse sculptures bear its name.
Origin and history
Gregor gives the kelpie’s other side. It could be caught by throwing over its head a bridle marked with the sign of the cross, and then it worked hard, usually carrying stones to build a mill or a farm, before it was set free. A blacksmith killed one with two red-hot iron spits, and it fell, Gregor was told, into a heap of something like starch.
J. G. Campbell, collecting in the Highlands and Islands, described the Gaelic water-horse (each uisge) in much the same terms: it lived in lonely lochs, mixed with farm horses, carried off those who mounted it and devoured them in the loch, and in the shape of a man could be known by its hoofs and by the green water weed or sand in its hair.
Kelpie or water-horse?
Most writers treat them as one, and Gregor’s kelpie and Campbell’s water-horse do the same things. Campbell himself insisted they were “distinctly separate”: the water-horse haunts lochs, the kelpie streams and torrents, and the kelpie that swells rivers and drowns women and children “has no representative in Gaelic superstition”. A Shetland correspondent told him nobody knew what shape kelpies took; they splashed in the burns and held mill-wheels still.
The Kelpies at Falkirk
The kelpie’s name is now best known from the Kelpies, Andy Scott’s horse sculptures at Falkirk. The Helix, which runs tours of them, describes them as 30 metres tall and as honouring the horses that worked in Scotland’s industry. The Selkie is Scotland’s other shape-changer of the water.
Read next
- Next in Mythical creatures of Greece and EuropeBansheeIn Irish folklore, a woman of the fairies whose wailing at night is heard before a death in one of the old families.
- The same shape in Diwali symbolsDiya (oil lamp)A small clay oil lamp, set out in rows for Diwali. Hindus light diyas for Lakshmi and for Rama’s homecoming, Jains for Mahavira’s liberation, and Sikhs light lamps and candles on Bandi Chhor Divas.
See also
Selkie, Minotaur, Centaur, Chimera, Hydra, Harpy.
Sources
- Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland (Walter Gregor, 1881), Walter Gregor, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland (London: Folk-Lore Society, 1881), Internet Archive, Waterkelpie, pp. 66–67, and Horses, p. 131
- Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (J. G. Campbell, 1900), John Gregorson Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, Collected Entirely from Oral Sources (Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1900), Project Gutenberg, The Water-Horse (Each Uisge), and The Kelpie, pp. 203–215
- Kelpie (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com, “Kelpie” (Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary), Dictionary.com, entry, pronunciation and origin
- Kelpies Tour (The Helix, Falkirk), The Helix (Falkirk Community Trust), “Kelpies Tour”, The Helix, tour page
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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