Kelpie Coloring Pages
Picture yourself walking past a Scottish loch and spotting a beautiful horse standing at the water's edge, calm and friendly, like it's been waiting just for you... in the old Scottish stories, that's exactly when you'd want to keep walking (maybe even a little faster!).
That horse is a kelpie, a water spirit that lived in the rivers and lochs, and it was a lot sneakier than it looked.
Most stories describe a kelpie as a grey or black horse, and the giveaway is its mane, which always looks wet, like it's just climbed out of the water. Some people said you could even find bits of waterweed tangled in it. A dark grey coat with blue-green shadows looks great, and the reeds and water around it are the perfect spot for soft greens and blues.
The Horse You Should Never Ride
A kelpie's favourite trick was a simple one. It stood still and looked gentle until somebody climbed onto its back, and then the rider found they couldn't let go, because the kelpie's hide was as sticky as glue. Off it galloped, straight into the deepest part of the loch. In one well-known tale, a group of children climbed on one after another, and the kelpie's back simply stretched longer to fit them all. Only the boy who'd touched it with a single finger managed to pull free and run home.
So why would anyone tell such a scary story? Lochs and rivers are deep and cold, and a tale about a sneaky horse was a pretty good way to keep children from wandering too close to the edge on their own.
There was one way to beat a kelpie, though. Whoever got hold of its bridle could make it obey. One old story tells of a Scottish laird who caught a kelpie this way and made it haul the heavy stones to build his castle, and it was the strongest horse anyone had ever seen.
When a Kelpie Looks Like a Person
Kelpies didn't always look like horses. Sometimes one turned up as a handsome young man, and the thing that gave him away was his hair, which was always dripping wet and tangled with weed. In some versions he kept his hooves, too, which is a hard thing to hide under a pair of trousers.
These days kelpies have a much friendlier reputation in Scotland. Near the town of Falkirk there are two giant kelpie heads made of shining steel, each one about as tall as a ten-storey building, and at night they light up in all sorts of colours. They've turned the sneakiest horse in Scotland into one of its favourite landmarks.