Fabulous Kelpie image from http://www.zardex.com/monsters/index.html.

The water-kelpie may appear either as a horse or a man. In the former case the horse is ready caparisoned; and the wayfarer, weary with his journey, may mount the horse, and, once mounted, the rider can never get off—he is stuck fast to the horse. Even were it only one’s finger, it would stick to the horse, and tales related how people had to cut off finger or hand to save themselves. The horse, having its rider safely mounted, at once gallops off to its lake and plunges in. There is a movement of the waters, a gurgling noise, and shortly after the heart and lungs of the human victim are seen floating at the water’s edge. Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 1888

The water horse often appears on the shore as an extremely handsome man. And his aim is to woo a fair maiden.

Guileless young women from Oklahoma who wore overalls to high school, spent most of their growing up on the back of a horse, and had most of their god-given instinct stripped out of them by a fundamentalism, the aim of which is producing only good, submissive, obedient, and sanitized women, are particularly vulnerable. Especially if they are lonely and don't have much self-esteem. And are too afraid to cross the moors by themselves.

The water horse. The kelpie. The each uisge.

The creature has several names.

When I first learned of the myth of the water horse a couple of years ago, and in my writing about the dark horses, I was struck by the parallels of the ancient stories to my own life. It was almost uncanny. Although, I am, I tell myself, after all, a part of this vast collective unconscious.

There are stories about the water horse dragging maidens down to their deaths, and one nearly dragged me to my own. You see, I married a kelpie, once upon a time, in a kingdom, a long time ago.

Unsuspecting maidens who marry the water horse in disguise may very well find themselves stuck. When you realize the prince has scales and flippers and teeth instead of the crown he was just showing you, boy are you surprised.

And if there are children as a result of the union, the maiden may even have to resort to cutting part of herself off--sometimes with a resounding chop, it's not a very pretty sight, and bloody--in order to become unstuck and to avoid being eaten by this each uisge to whom she finds herself ... married all these years. After all, the maiden will be no good to her children if she's no longer alive.

What good is only her heart?

Which he's promised her he'll make stop beating, if she doesn't behave exactly as he tells her to.

Her lungs?

Which he'll rip from her chest if she dares to breathe a word of her perilous situation to a soul.

And if the kelpie doesn't do it, she can always count on her mean-spirited god to take care of that.

At the divorce proceedings in a stone castle on a hill with lots of banners flying, she's granted joint custody of her children (that means she has them half the time) by the very civilized and overeducated and modern decision makers in their long robes and pointy wizard hats. They are bedazzled by the glamour, the socialite family, the pedigrees, the letter of recommendation by the wife of a Former Governor Himself who'd boxed the lady's ears so hard she's nearly deaf (and everyone knows it too), and all of that other stuff, that is claimed by the real life monster with seaweed dripping from his hair. They don't care if he is standing in a sopping putrid puddle, right in the middle of their hallowed halls.

But dear reader, don't despair. There's a brilliant ending to this story.

Although she was very nearly drowned by the water horse, and gobbled up to boot, the maiden kicks herself free of the muck at the bottom of the loch, swimming through the deep black waters, until she breaks through into the open air, sputtering, coughing, gasping for breath.

Reborn.

Into the full spectrum of life that scares the living dayights out of the water horse and his ilk.