KELPIE, or KELPY, the angry spirt of the water, a Scottish mythological personage who figures prominently in folklore. He is de scribed as a fearful water spirit who delights in rushing out of the lake, the river or the sea to catch some poor human victim and to devour him Or to drag him down to his death beneath the surface of the water. As he rushes out of his native element the water tumbles from his back with a terrible swishing noise like the roar of the angry sea. Accoiding to some stories the IceIme was so named because he lurked among the kelpie or sea-weed, which grows very high and tangled in many parts along the coasts of Scotland. Blown by the sea breezes and lashed by the tide at high water, it assumes fantastic forms which are pictured by the Scotch story-tellers as taking the form of the kelpie himself whom tradition says has, like the Grecian Cyclops (q.v.), but one eye, but that more fearful than any two eyes. Other authorities claim that the word kelpie is related to the German echalp° or ekalba derived from the roar which it was supposed to make when it rushed upon its victims. This idea no doubt originated in the roaring of the ocean waves, which seem to have been personified in the person of the kelpie, which is also often repre sented to be a white horse which frequently presents itself in the most beautiful form, thus inducing people to mount on its back. When this is accomplished it rushes off at such fear ful speed that the rider cannot dismount and so is drowned in the sea or eaten by the horse.• An Irish myth makes Mananan, son of the sea-god Lir, and himself Lord of the Sea, ride on the "white horses,° a poetical personifi cation of the crested waves of the ocean. His great cloak flapped like the clapping of thunder as he rode his fearful white horses around his island home (the Island of Man), especially at midnight. This island is said to have derived its name from the idea that it was the favorite home of the Lord of the Sea. The devouring or malignant water spirit is a mythological character known to most of the Indian tribes of America. Among the Aztecs the "Crying woman" whom the Spaniards name the °Llo rona° (q.v.) hid in deep pools of water to which she attracted people at night by i i tating the crying of a lost child. When e victim, following the voice, fell into the po , she dragged him by the feet down to his dea .
The Greeks and the Romans believed iri a similar character who, the myth said, lured people to death in the water. The kelpie, like the Mexican °woman with the light° fore warned people of coming death. Often this "fool's light° or "will of the wisp° or "ignis fatuns° (q.v.) lead people on to death. This superstition, no doubt, had its origin in the fact that people, following the natur:1 lights that frequently appear in swampy places, sank in the boggy soil and lost their lives. The kelpie, like the Aztec Llorona, was also represented as dragging its victims down to death in the boggy or marshy lands of its habitat. The fact. that there were frequent deaths of this kind would easily explain the superstition that the roaring of the kelpie presaged death. That this death should be through the agency of water was quite natural since the kelpie was a water-spirit.
Though this kelpie myth takes various forms among different races it seems to have been a very primitive myth of the great Indo-European family among all the members of which it ap pears. The special °kelpie° form it assumed in Scotland is easily accounted for by the destruc tive force of the sea which almost surrounds the country. It seems, therefore, to be but a local development of the great white sea-horses of Mananan (Welsh Manawyddan) in whose sea lay the "Islands of the Dead.° This hatter belief would also account for the superstition that the roaring or appearance of a kelpie presaged death.
Francis Willey, American edu cator and writer: b. Ogden, 1858. Graduated from the University of Rochester and after two years' study in Europe, he became professor of Latin in Lake Forest University (1880-89) and later in the University of Michigan (1889). He has edited many Latin and Greek textbooks for schools. Working cojointly with Prof. Percy Gardner of Oxford University they edited