A female kelpie story?
I don't think I've ever come across a folktale with a female kelpie, so it immediately piqued my interest when J.F. Campbell casually throws out the sentence "he would seize the kelpie of Moulin na Fouah and bring her bound to the inn at Inveran" on a page that seemed to discuss another kind of creature entirely.
It seems he collected—some first-hand, some second-hand—several stories that feature a creature named a "Vough" or "Fouah", which he thinks is the Gaelic word "fuath" (hate) spelled phonetically. He theorises:
"From all these it appears that the Fuath in Sutherland is a water-spirit; that there are males and females; that they have web-feet, Yellow hair, green dresses, tails, manes, and no noses; that they marry men, and are killed by light, and hurt with steel weapons that in crossing a stream they become restless. From the following stories it appears that they are hairy, have bare skin on their faces, and have two large round eyes." (Campbell, 1890, Vol. II, p. 205)
But to reach that conclusion, I think he did do a lot of extrapolating.
The stories include one Vough that only shows herself once her son, the Brollachan (a Gaelic expression for a shapeless deformed creature according to Campbell), has been hurt. She then rushes to his aid, with laments that rather reminded my of Grendl's mother from Beowulf. But the Vough is not described beyond her being fierce, able to speak, and capable of chasing a woman and tearing her heel off.
The line that initially caught my eye is from the second tale, "told in Gaelic to D. M., gamekeeper, and written by him in English":
One of John Bethune's forebears, who lived in Tubernan, laid a bet that he would seize the kelpie of Moulin na Fouah and bring her bound to the inn at Inveran. He procured a brown, right-sided, maned horse, and a brown black-muzzled dog; and, by the help of the latter, having secured the Vough, he tied her on the horse behind him, and galloped away. She was very fierce, but he kept her quiet by pinning her down with an awl and a needle. Crossing the burn at the further side of Loch Midgal, she became so restless that he stuck the shoemaker's and the tailor's weapons into her with great violence. She cried out, "Pierce me with the awl, but keep that slender hair-like slave (the needle) out of me. When he reached the clachan of Inveran, where his companions were anxiously waiting for him, he called to them to come out and see the Vough. Then they came out with lights, but as the light fell upon her she dropt off, and fell to earth like the remains of a fallen star--a small lump of jelly. (These jellies are often seen on the moors; dropt stars resembling the medusie on the shore--COLLECTOR. They are white, do not seem to be attached to the ground, and are always attributed to the stars. They are common on moors, and I do not know what they are.--J. F. C.)
The third simply states that "the same creature, or one of her kind" called out to someone. The next is almost at anecdote:
And it is said, that a family of Munroes had, many generations ago, married with the Vougha of Beann na Caltuinn. Their descendants had manes and tails till within the last four generations.
But this does at least confirm that there are manes and tails involved, which the next two examples do not, because they are both about a "banshee" (in this case just meaning a female fairy), one of which is beautifully clothed but has no nose, and one who looks like an old woman but has webbed feet.
So while I am inclined to accuse Campbell of the same lumping together as his Irish colleague Croker did, it is very interesting to see a female water-spirit with at least some equine attributes!
The whole section of the book (Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, 1890, Vol. II, XXXVII) can be read online.
