Monstrous Mondays: K is for Kelpie

History

Kelpi are an old scottish/celtic water monster that looks like a horse, the stories tell of a fine horse which appears from the water in Scotland. It tempts people to ride it and once they are on it becomes uncontrollable, carrying them back into the water to drown. There are ways to survive this encounter, one tale tells of a boy who cut of his own fingers to escape its gripping fur once he touched it, another said that if you can get the bridle away from a kelpie you can escape and maybe even control it.

Like many water basic monster stories, these exist to keep children away from water, but they also serve to stop young maidens from talking to strangers since kelpie can take on human form – usually male, though some later art shows them as siren-esque women.

One theory for their origin is that they’re linked to a misunderstood weather effect known as waterspouts – which are columns of water that can appear over body of water, these can sometimes make unusual shapes on the water.

These monster are not seem much in books or films today, except when they are linked to the Loch Ness monster.

Physiology

  • They have the head of horse with glowing green or red eyes.
  • They have the front body of a horse.
  • They usually have the back end of a horse,
    • But sometimes they are depicted with a fishtail as there back half, like a hippocampus.
  • Their tail is sometime horse hair tail, but made from matted seaweed.
    • Sometimes it is a fishtail instead
  • They’re usually covered in fur made from matted seaweed.
  • Some story tell of them having inverted hooves.
  • They can also change form into human, but their feet sometimes stay as hooves.

 

Ideas

 

  • You could have someone who keeps horse and have some of them be kelpie that they tamed.
  • You could have a kelpie that lives in the human world as human, where they are a swimmer and a real lady’s man.
  • The heroes could find a set of horses abandoned on their journey, that reveal their true nature in the middle of the heroes’ journey

 

References

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/The-Kelpie/

https://www.pottermore.com/explore-the-story/kelpies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kv3m_ACEmE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelpie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterspout

 

Please follow and like us: