Page:Fairy Tales Their Origin and Meaning.djvu/177

Campbell says, males and females; they have web-feet, yellow hair, green dresses, tails, manes, and no noses; they marry human beings, are killed by light, are hurt by steel weapons, and in crossing a stream they become restless. These spirits resemble mermen and mermaids, and are also like the Kelpies, and they have also been somehow confused with the kind of spirit known in Ireland as the Banshee. Many stories are told of them. A shepherd found one, an old woman seemingly crippled, at the edge of a bog. He offered to carry her over on his back. In going over, he saw that she was web-footed; so he threw her down, and ran for his life. By the side of Loch Migdal a woman saw one—"about three years ago," she told the narrator—she sat on a stone, quiet, and dressed in green silk, the sleeves of the dress curiously puffed from the wrists to the shoulder; her hair was yellow, like ripe corn; but on a nearer view, she had no nose. A man at Tubernan made a bet that he would seize the Fuath or Kelpie who haunted the loch at Moulin na Fouah. So he took a brown right-sided maned horse, and a brown black-muzzled dog, and with the help of the dog he captured the Fuath, and tied her