“Doe on, doe on, Yanal!” cried Davie; and Yanal did his very best, but was only halfway to the farm, when Turkey came bounding back to take Davie from him. In a few moments we had shaken the snow off our shoes and off Davie’s back, and stood around Kirsty’s “booful baze”, as Davie called the fire. Kirsty seated herself on one side with Davie on her lap, and we three got our chairs as near her as we could, with Turkey, as the valiant man of the party, farthest from the centre of safety, namely Kirsty, who was at the same time to be the source of all the delightful horror. I may as well say that I do not believe Kirsty’s tale had the remotest historical connection with Sir Worm Wymble, if that was anything like the name of the dead knight. It was an old Highland legend, which she adorned with the flowers of her own Celtic fancy, and swathed around the form so familiar to us all.
“There is a pot in the Highlands,” began Kirsty, “not far from our house, at the bottom of a little glen. It is not very big, but fearfully deep; so deep that they do say there is no bottom to it.”
“No, goosey,” answered Kirsty. “A pot means a great hole full of water--black, black, and deep, deep.”
“Well, in this pot there lived a kelpie.”
“What’s a kelpie, Kirsty?” again interposed Allister, who in general asked all the necessary questions and at least as many unnecessary.
“A kelpie is an awful creature that eats people.”
“It’s something like a horse, with a head like a cow.”
“Bigger than Hawkie; bigger than the biggest ox you ever saw.”
“Well, there was a shepherd many years ago, who lived not far from the pot. He was a knowing man, and understood all about kelpies and brownies and fairies. And he put a branch of the rowan-tree (_mountain-ash_), with the red berries in it, over the door of his cottage, so that the kelpie could never come in.
“Now, the shepherd had a very beautiful daughter--so beautiful that the kelpie wanted very much to eat her. I suppose he had lifted up his head out of the pot some day and seen her go past, but he could not come out of the pot except after the sun was down.”
“I don’t know. It was the nature of the beast. His eyes couldn’t bear the light, I suppose; but he could see in the dark quite well.--One night the girl woke suddenly, and saw his great head looking in at her window.”