Scottish Sgeulachdan - The Stolen Bairn and the Sìdh

I recently got my hands a book of Scottish folklore collected by Sorche Nic Leodhas that I'd been trying to find for awhile, Thistle and Thyme.  Thistle and Thyme is full of sgeulachdan (skale-ak-tan), a Scottish word for tale, told by master story-tellers.  Sgeulachdan were told at celebrated events like weddings and Christenings and often held a moral or lesson for the listeners and "in the old days, the high point of the entertainment was the sgeulachdan" (Leodhas 9).  My favorite tales from this collection are The Stolen Bairn and the Sìdh, The Bride Who Out Talked the Water Kelpie and The Fisherlad and the Mermaid's Ring. 

The Stolen Bairn and the Sìdh

 One of the first things that struck me about this sgeulachdan was that the Sìdh did not actually "steal" the child.  There are many tales where the faeries steal people away, especially sneaking babes from their crib but in this story the faeries happen upon the bairn alone.  The two faerie women look about them, and seeing no one, "the first woman of the Sìdh spoke and she said, 'What no one comes to be claiming is our own'" (Leodhas 47).  Arguably, the Sìdh rescued the child when it had been separated from it's mother after she had accidentally fallen off a cliff.  I also love how the mother never gives up the search for her child, Leodhas notes that this sgeulachdan was probably told at a Christening because it focuses on the mother's love in her persistence and determination to find her lost bairn (Leodhas 10-11).

The second thing about this tale that stuck with me is how the mother gets her bairn back.  According to the gypsy grandmother that instructs her on how to reclaim her bairn from the Sìdh, "'For all their wisdom, the Sìdh have no art to make anything for themselves,...All that they get they get they must either beg or steal.  They have great vanity and desire to possess a thing which has no equal.  If you can find something that has not it's like in all the world you may be able to buy your bairn back with it.'" (Leodhas 52).  So the mother weaves a cloak of feathers and creates a harp with golden strings using her own hair.  I was captivated by the way the mother created two unique objects by putting a bit of herself into the objects, a cloak made by her own hands and her own hair into the harp.  The feather cloak especially since I have never seen a feather cloak and would love to own one as it would be super unique, no wonder she was able to get into the Sìdhean, the most exclusive Sìdh party.  I had never thought of the fae as being in capable of creating things before this story.  It showed the unique ability that makes us human, our creativity.  We have the ability to create unique one of a kind objects that have no equal with the power on invention and the willingness to put a bit of our selves into our creations, an attribute of humanity that other beings could desire and envy.  And it won the mother her wee bairn back from the Sìdh!

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Kelpies: All the pretty little horses

The Kelpie is a Scottish demon, a water-horse that lures riders onto it's back, plunging into the loch and drowning it's rider.  I’m not sure what draws me to Kelpies aside from the fact that they’re a more obscure fae.  There aren’t as many stories about Kelpies as there are about mermaids or other sea monsters so whenever I find a new kelpie story I get especially excited. I’ve come up with about six stories having to do with kelpies and they were hard to find (although just recently I've found three articles with stories and first hand accounts of kelpies via JStor).  Stories about kelpies range from terrifying to light-hearted. The most common story that has many variations goes like this:  Some children are playing in the wood (all boys, though the number of boys varies) when they see a little lost pony.  The boys decide to climb on its back, as young impulsive boys will, and all of them miraculously fit (because of course this is no regular horse).  However, the last little boy can’t get on the horses back either because he is too small or he notices that there is something wrong with this horse (it could be the lake weeds in its hair or the fact that its eyes burn like coals).  The littlest boy refuses to get on and is left behind while his playmates are spirited away and drowned.  There are several stories in which a kelpie either helps or torments a miller.  I assume the connection with millers is due to the fact that mills relied on the water power of rivers, the kelpie's domain, in order to function.

Boy on White Horse by Theodor Kittelsen

Kelpies live in lochs and streams although I found one story were a Kelpie lived in a well.  They are shape-shifters but no matter what shape they take Kelpies always have some mark of their watery home about them.  Often they have lake weeds in their hair or their skin will be cold and wet.  Kelpie’s often take the guise of lost horses.  They are notorious for coaxing riders on their backs only to dive under the waters of the loch where they would devour their rider leaving only the liver to float on the surface of the loch.  The kelpie's aversion to liver is featured in an episode of the anime Hakushaku to Yosei (Earl and Fairy), when the Earl Edgar offers a kelpie liver pate.  Not realizing that this delicacy is made of liver the kelpie eats the foie gras and becomes sick, which I find amusing despite myself.  Poor kelpie!  The Scottish clan MacGregor is supposedly in possession of a golden bridle that may be used to bind a kelpie to the riders will.  the golden bridle is the only thing that will allow a person to have complete control over a kelpie although the Bible or saying the Lord's prayer will deter the kelpie.  In one story of a maiden tried to strike a water horse and her hand became stuck, as the kelpie galloped toward the nearest loch the frightened maiden stammered the Lord's prayer and was released.

There are variations of water horses in Scandanavia and Ireland and their appearances range from being black, white or green as glass.  Their eyes may be pearly white or red as a brand but most often their manes and tails are black.  The kelpie’s  Scandinavian cousin the Njogel (also known as Nikker or Neck) is pure white and possesses a long tail.  According to J. A. Teit in his article "Water-beings in Shetlandic folk-lore, as remembered by Shetlanders ing British Columbia", "some claim that his naturally very long tail was dragged behind and occasionally rolled up like a hoop or the rim of a wheel, between his legs, or on his back" (183-184).  I had never heard of this detail about the water-horse's tail before but as soon as I read this it reminded my of Tony DiTerlizzi's rendering of the Kelpie in Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You, where the Kelpie's tail does roll up at the end as described to Teit.

Illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi

The nikker was also known to be quite the ladies man and sometimes kelpies will appear as men to seduce women and take human wives.  As a man a kelpie may charm a girl into letting his head rest in her lap while she combs his hair, usually the maiden finds a bit of lake-weed and realizes the kelpie's true nature.  Although there are kelpie women they are reported to be be very few of them.  Another suggestion put forward by the kelpie character from the anime Earl and Fairy is that kelpie woman are too contrary, head strong and unruly for kelpie men to handle.  While some kelpie husbands might raise gales if their human wives managed to run away from them, others were very caring husbands.  The legendary Kelpie of Loch Garve brought a stone mason down to his watery home to build a fireplace and chimney so that the kelpie's human wife could be warm under the loch.





Resources:

DiTerlizzi, Tony and Holly Black. Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2005. Print.

Froud, Brian and Allen Lee.  Faeries.  New York : Abrams, 1978.  Print.

Gregor, Walter. "Kelpie Stories from the North of Scotland". The Folk-Lore Journal , Vol. 1, No. 9 (Sep., 1883), pp. 292-294. Web. 11 Sept. 2013. http://0-www.jstor.org.www.consuls.org/stable/1252794

"Kelpie".  Wikipedia.com.  30 August 2013.  Web. 11 Sept. 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelpie

"Kelpie Stories" The Folk-Lore Journal , Vol. 7, No. 3 (1889), pp. 199-201. Web. 11 Sept. 2013.  http://0-www.jstor.org.www.consuls.org/stable/1252766

"Loch Garve".  ambaile.org.  Web. 11 Sept. 2013. www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_photograph.jsp?item_id=37365

Parkinson, Daniel. "Kelpie". Web. 11 Sept. 2013. http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/scotland/folklore/kelpie.html

Teit, J. A."Water-Beings in Shetlandic Folk-Lore, as Remembered by Shetlanders in British Columbia".

The Journal of American Folklore , Vol. 31, No. 120 (Apr. - Jun., 1918), pp. 180-201. Web. 11 Sept. 2013.  http://0-www.jstor.org.www.consuls.org/stable/534874

"Water Horses". fantasyhorses.homestead.com.  26 October 2012. Web. 11 Sept. 2013. http://fantasyhorses.homestead.com/water.html

"White Bow Scarlet Bow". Hakushaku to Yosei.  Writ. Mizue Tani, Asako Takaboshi, and Tokuko Nagao.  Dir. Koichiro Sotome.  Artland, 2008. Web. 11 Sept. 2013. youtube.com.