KELPIE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Kelpie

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Kelpie

noun

(pl. kelpies)

(Scottish folklore) water spirit in the form of a horse that likes to drown its riders. Synonym: kelpy.

An Australian sheepdog with pointed ears.

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Etymology of 'Kelpie'

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"Kelpie" Quotes from Famous Books

... could not be assigned for a calamity it was ascribed to the operations of evil spirits. The evil one had power to make compacts, but against these was the virtue of the charmed circle. One of the most dangerous and malignant of beings was the Water-kelpie, which allured women and children into its element, where they were drowned, and then became its prey. It could skim along the surface of the water, and browse by its side, or even suddenly swell a river or loch, which it inhabited, until an unwary traveller might be engulfed. ...

— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... I reckon you'd run double-quick to pull me off the milk-white steed. You couldn't get along without me two days. Look here! what story has a moral for you, miss? It's the 'Water-kelpie.' You are like the man that married Moneta: you're ...

— Fairy Book • Sophie May

... many a story about Aros, as I used to hear from my uncle's man, Rorie, an old servant of the Macleans, who had transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of the marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-kelpie, that dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his own among the boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once met a piper on Sandag beach, and there sang to him a long, bright midsummer's night, so that in the morning he was ...

— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

Words linked to "Kelpie" : folklore, Scotland, sheep dog, shepherd dog, evil spirit, sheepdog