The Water of Leith Kelpie at Dean Village

Dean Village, Water of Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland

An urban kelpie — described as a small, dark, sleek-coated horse — said to wait by the millpond beneath Dean Bridge after heavy rain. Children of the village were warned not to go down to the water alone in spate.

The Water of Leith is the small river that drains from the Pentland Hills north-eastwards through Edinburgh to the sea at Leith. Dean Village, a former milling settlement on a sharp bend of the river just west of the New Town, lies in a steep stone-walled gorge crossed by the Dean Bridge — a Telford-designed viaduct of 1832, 32 metres above the water. The Dean Village tradition records a kelpie — the Scottish water-horse, normally a creature of remote Highland lochs — domesticated in this urban setting from at least the 17th century. The kelpie was said to take the form of a small, dark, sleek-coated horse, much smaller than the famous Highland river-kelpies, and to wait by the foot of the weir below the bridge on the days following heavy rain, when the river was running brown and full. The hazard the kelpie embodied was real. The Water of Leith floods rapidly — a metre's rise in three hours is not unusual — and the steep stone banks make escape difficult. Dean Village children were drowned in the spate often enough that the warning against the kelpie became standard parental instruction throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The kelpie itself was given a particular form: it would approach a child with its bridle dragging, looking lost, and try to be petted. Touching the bridle was the fatal moment; once a child took it, the kelpie would walk into the river and the child would walk with it. Edinburgh's last reported sighting was 1923, by a woman returning home in a cab after a Hogmanay party. She saw a small dark pony standing alone at the weir, looked away to direct her cabman, and looked back to find the pony gone. The Water of Leith was in spate that night. A boy from Stockbridge was reported missing the same week, never found.