The Kelpie of Loch Garve

Loch Suainort, Isle of Skye, Scotland

A patch of Loch Garve never freezes, locals say, because it sits above the underwater fireplace a kelpie forced a kidnapped mason to build for him.

Loch Garve, in Ross-shire near the village of Garve, is home to one of the best-documented kelpie traditions in the Highlands — a water-horse whose stories here follow two distinct, well-known threads. The first concerns the kelpie in its more familiar role as predator: taking the form of a fine stallion, it lures a young woman onto its back at the water's edge and carries her down into its lair beneath the loch, where she remains as its reluctant, unhappy bride, always cold in her underwater home. The second story is stranger and more specific to Loch Garve. In this version, the kelpie tricks a builder or mason onto its back the same way it lures its human brides, dragging him down into the loch — but rather than drowning him, it strikes a bargain: the man will build the kelpie a proper chimney and fireplace for its underwater home, and in exchange his family will never again want for fish. Loch Garve is genuinely noted for a patch of water near its centre that reportedly resists freezing even in the depths of winter when the rest of the loch is solid — a real, observed feature of the loch that local tradition explains directly by way of the story: it is above the kelpie's chimney, kept warm by the fire the captured mason built for him.