The Kelpie’s Pearls
By Mollie Hunter
TO MY GOOD FRIEND
THYRA PEARSON
OF ABRIACHAN
CHAPTER I
The Kelpie
THE story of how Morag MacLeod came to be called a witch is a queer one and not at all the sort of thing you would expect to happen nowadays. It was never proved, mind you, that she was a witch. Nobody has decided that to this day—but that is because they did not know about the kelpie's pearls. And it was the pearls, of course, that were the real cause of all the trouble.
To begin at the beginning however, this Morag MacLeod was an old woman that lived alone in a little house high up on the wild stretch of mountain country rising from the north bank of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. Little farms called 'crofts' are dotted here and there on this high land, and there are a lot of little streams—or 'burns' as the Highlanders call them—running down through the heather. It is from these burns and the little graceful roe deer that come to drink at them that the place gets its name, for in the Gaelic—which is the old language of the Highlands—it is called Abriachan, and this means 'the place where the deer come down to the water'.
One of these burns ran past Morag's house and gathered in a deep pool beside it. The pool had a high bank crowned with bracken and heather on the side farthest away from her house but the bank on the near side was shallow which made it easy for her to draw water from the pool. This she did every evening, and after she had filled her bucket she liked to sit by the pool for a while and look down on the dark blue waters of Loch Ness in the valley below.
It happened then that while she was sitting like this by the pool one fine spring evening she heard a voice calling,
'Old woman! Old woman!'
Morag gave a start and looked all round but there was no one to be seen.
'I am getting old, surely,' she said. 'I am beginning to imagine things!'
'You are old right enough,' said the voice, 'but you did not imagine me. I am here, do you not see?'
It seemed to Morag that the voice came from behind a big boulder at the edge of the burn. She got to her feet and looked round the other side of it, and there was a little old man as shrunken and shrivelled as a nut and all dripping wet.
'Well!' she said in amazement. 'Who are you at all?'
'I am a kelpie, mistress,' the little man snapped as cross as two sticks, and Morag began to laugh.
'Well,' she said when she had done laughing, 'so it's a kelpie that's in it! To think I should have lived to be seventy-two before I see a kelpie!' And she began to laugh again.
'Och, you have bad manners, old woman!' shouted the kelpie. 'There is no need to laugh just because you see a kelpie!'
'Bad manners, is it!' Morag said sharply. 'Then your manners will not mend mine if you talk so disrespectfully to your elders.'
'You will be old before you are older than me,' shouted he, 'for I have lived in this burn for two hundred years!'
Morag was surprised at this, as well she might be, but she saw no reason to doubt what he said, and feeling sorry that she had offended him she said politely,
'Ah well, let us not quarrel over a hundred years or so. But I would like you to know that my name is Mistress Morag MacLeod.'
'A good name,' said the kelpie, polite in his turn. 'And now, Mistress Morag, if you will look down here you will see that my foot is caught between two stones. I have not the strength to free it—not in the shape I am in at the moment, anyway.'
He gave a Morag a cunning look when he said this but she was looking at the place where his foot was caught and she did not see the expression on his face. She worked the stone away from his foot and the kelpie sat rubbing the ache the pressure of the stone had left in it.
'I am very grateful to you, Mistress Morag,' he said. 'I will give you some pearls from the big river to reward you.'
Morag smiled at him. 'I would be a queer one to want a reward for an act of human kindness,' said she, 'and besides, I am an old, withered woman. What would I be doing with pearls?'
'You could sell them in the big town,' suggested the kelpie. 'They would be very fine pearls.'
'And what would I be doing with the money?' Morag asked. 'I have no need of money, kelpie, for I have a flock of white hens that are very good layers, and once a week when the bus goes down the hill from Abriachan to Inverness I leave eggs and the vegetables I grow in my garden at the roadside for the driver to pick up and deliver to the grocer in the town. The grocer sends me back tea and other things that I cannot grow on my croft and that takes care of all my needs.'
'It is not the way of our people to be beholden to a human,' the kelpie said sullenly. 'Surely there is something I could give you?'
'There is nothing I lack,' Morag told him, 'except that sometimes I am lonely for someone to talk to that can remember the days when I was young. But the thought was kind, and I thank you for it.'
She bent to pick up her pail and the kelpie watched her with a strange expression on his face.
'Are you not afraid of me, Mistress Morag?' he asked. 'Do you not know that people say the kelpie will drag a mortal down to his home in the deeps of the water? Have you never heard how the kelpie roams in the shape of a big, black horse and whoever mounts that horse to cross a river will be carried down, as well, to the bottom of the river?'
'I know all these things,' said Morag calmly, 'but I am not afraid, kelpie, for I do not think it is in your mind to harm me.'
She wished him good night and walked back to the house with her brimming pail. 'Well, now I have seen a kelpie,' she said to herself as she walked, and she wondered if she should tell Alasdair the Trapper about it the next time he stopped by with a brace of rabbits for her. But Alasdair was a modern man that did not believe such nonsense as kelpies and so she decided to wait and see if the kelpie would come back again before she said anything to anyone.
The next evening then, she went down to the pool as usual to draw water, and sure enough the kelpie was there. He was sitting on a stone at the edge of the water and as Morag drew close he wished her good evening and went on with his game of throwing stones into the water with a sideways twist of his hand so that they bounced off the surface two or three times before they sank. Morag filled her pail; then she straightened and watched him for a while. The kelpie went on throwing and at last she said,
'That was a game I played often at this pool when I was a little girl.'
'See can you still skiff a stone then,' said the kelpie, handing her one.
Morag turned it over in her hand and exclaimed 'But kelpie, this is a pearl!'
'Och, there is nothing to that,' said he airily. 'There are always pearls to be found in the big river.'
'But it is too round and light to be a skiffer,' Morag objected. 'We used always to play with flat stones that were heavier than this.'
'Round or flat, heavy or light, if I say it will make a skiffer it will make a skiffer,' the kelpie said irritably. 'Now throw if you want to throw.'
So Morag threw the pearl and to her delight it bounced off the surface of the pool three times before it sank. 'I'll take you on at a game, kelpie,' she cried. 'I still have the cunning in my hand for it.'
'Done!' cried the kelpie, getting ready to throw. And so their game began and it lasted as long as the kelpie had pearls to throw. Morag had never enjoyed a game of skiffers so much in her life even though the pearls were a bit light to throw. However, they bounced off the water as well as any flat stones had ever done and she wondered to herself whether this had something to do with the kelpie's claim that anything he said would make a skiffer would make a skiffer.
At the end of the game they sat down and talked and Morag told the kelpie more abo
ut her croft. 'My house is very old,' she said, 'for it was built in my great-grandfather’s time, but it is still very snug and strong for all its great age. The walls are of clay and straw mixed together and the roof is of pine-boughs thatched with heather, and on either side of my front door I have a bush of small white roses that smell as sweet as anything under heaven. I have a little garden too, where I grow herbs and beyond this is the field where I grow oats, and hay for winter feeding for my cow. Then there are my sheep which give me wool for carding and spinning, and every so often Alasdair the Trapper calls in on me with a brace of rabbits for the pot. So you see, kelpie, I lack for nothing.'
'I still do not like to be under a debt to you,' the kelpie said.
He spoke so sourly that Morag could see he was still set on giving her some of his pearls. She went back to the house feeling rather troubled about this and wondering what she should do, but the next morning something happened that put the problem of the kelpie and his pearls out of her mind for the time being.
CHAPTER 2
King Solomon's Ring
IT was a Saturday, the next day, and when Morag came out of her house early that morning she was surprised to see a boy sitting on the bank where she and the kelpie had been the night before. No one ever came near the house as a rule apart from Alasdair the Trapper, and so curiosity made her go down and speak to the boy.
He would be somewhere between ten and eleven years old, she judged, but for all that it was Saturday and no school to go to he had a face as long as a fiddle on him. It was not his miserable face that made her stare, however, it was the polecat ferret that lay curled like a white fur round his neck and the fledgeling blackbird that perched on his head. She looked at him for a good minute and he looked at her and so did the bird and the ferret, and then Morag asked,
'And what have you the long face for—you that is lucky enough to have King Solomon's ring?'
'I have no ring,' he said, looking down puzzled at his bare, dirty fingers.
Morag laughed. 'It is not a real ring,' she explained. 'It is just a manner of speaking. Have you never heard it before?'
'No, I never have,' said the boy, and so Morag sat down beside him on the bank and told him how King Solomon in the Bible had such a power to draw wild creatures to him that people said he had a magic ring that showed him how to speak their language.
'But that was only a tale made up by ignorant people,' she said. 'It was no magic he had but only the gift of understanding that comes to those with the patience and kindness to learn the ways of wild creatures.'
She looked at the fierce red eyes of the polecat ferret glinting like splinters of cold hard ruby and she added, 'And that is why I am thinking you have the gift King Solomon had.'
'The Woman does not see it that way,' said the boy. He bent his head and gave such a sniff that the blackbird nearly lost its balance, and in no time at all after that, Morag had the whole sad story out of him.
His name was Torquil MacVinish, he told her, and he lived with the Woman on a croft at the foot of the hill where the Abriachan road joins the main road to Inverness. The Woman was a distant relative who had taken him to live with her after his parents died and though she was kind enough to him in her own way she could not abide his animals.
'She told me to take them out and drown them in the loch,' he said, looking at Morag with all the woe of the world in his eyes, 'but I can't do it, mistress—it would be murder! I can't do it!'
'And no more you shall,' Morag said indignantly. 'The very idea! Listen, boy, there is a shed at the back of my house where they can stay and no one a penny the wiser. And you can come up every day after school to feed them.'
'I have a lot more than these two,' Torquil said doubtfully.
'Well, it is quite a big shed,' she told him, and so it was all arranged between them.
Torquil spent the rest of the day bringing his animals up the hill and Morag learned their names as she helped to settle them in the shed. The polecat ferret was Polar from his white fur and his back humped like a polar bear's and the blackbird was Dondo which is the little name for Donald. The big white Angora rabbit with fur as soft and pale as moonlight was called Luna. The voles and hamsters were Sugar, Spice and Candy according to their colours, and the lame young pigeon with the sad expression that pigeons have was Sad Sam. Last of all was the moor-hen called Moses, and you can guess how it got that name!
It was wearing well on to evening before it was all done and Morag was thinking that it was just about time for her to go down to the pool. However, there was just time for a cup of tea first and so she asked Torquil into the house where they both sat down to tea with scones spread with butter and royal crowdie, which is a kind of cheese made with sour milk and so called because it is tasty enough for royalty to eat—which indeed they probably do.
Torquil was still looking a bit down in the mouth and so, to amuse him while he ate, she told him about the kelpie and his pearls.
'There is no such thing as a kelpie,' Torquil said immediately, and then in the next breath as Morag rose to get her pail to draw water from the pool he asked 'Can I come down to the pool with you to see him?'
'You have just said there is no such thing as a kelpie,' Morag pointed out reasonably.
'No more there is,' Torquil said, 'but if there is, I should dearly like to see one.'
Morag smiled a little at this. 'I do not know if he will come back again,' she said, 'and in any case it would not be a mannerly thing to do to go there just to stare at him.'
'I could hide in the bracken above the pool,' Torquil said. 'I will not disturb him, mistress, I promise you.'
Morag laughed outright this time. 'Very well, you may come,' she agreed. 'But keep well hidden.'
'I'll go and hide now,' Torquil said, and off he ran. Morag waited for a few minutes to make sure that he had plenty of time to settle down in the bracken and then she took her pail and followed him down to the pool.
The kelpie was sitting by the pool as she had hoped, for Torquil's sake, that he would be. He did not seem to be in the mood to talk, however, neither did he offer to start a game of skiffers. He kept looking uneasily around till at last Morag asked what was troubling him 'There was one of your own kind, a boy, came past a few minutes ago,' he said angrily, 'and I do not like human-kind near my pool.'
'You do not seem to mind me,' Morag pointed out and the kelpie said, 'Ach, you! Why would I mind you when you have been drawing water from my pool all these years? Anyway, you are quite sensible for one of your kind.'
'But would you not be friendly to another if he came in a friendly fashion?' Morag asked, raising her voice enough to be sure that Torquil heard her in his hiding-place in the bracken above the pool.
'Never!' the kelpie shouted. 'There will always be war between us and human-kind!'
He looked so angry that Morag said no more on the subject, and the next day when Torquil came up to her house to feed his animals she warned him seriously of the danger of crossing the kelpie's wishes.
'You heard what he said, Torquil,' she told him, 'so do not be taking risks. He is not a being of our world, you understand, so that he has no soul. And it is a dangerous thing for one as young as yourself to tangle with a creature that has no soul.'
'But what about yourself?' Torquil asked. 'Will the kelpie not harm you?'
Morag shook her head. 'Come here and I will show you something,' she said, and she took Torquil into her bedroom and showed him a painting that hung on the wall. It was a picture of herself painted by a travelling artist when she was a young girl and it showed her in a white dress with long, golden hair streaming down her back.
'I would not have stopped to speak with the kelpie when I looked like that,' she told Torquil, 'for it is the young and the strong and the beautiful that the creatures of the other world seek to capture and bind to their will. Now I am old and weak and withered and the kelpie is old too so that we have things to talk about that only the two of us can remember, and I t
hink that pleases him. He will not harm me.'
'Very well, then, I am content to have seen him and I will not come near the pool again,' Torquil agreed.
He was a boy that had been trained to the habit of obedience, you understand, and besides, his curiosity about the kelpie was satisfied for the time being. Moreover, the Woman had been so pleased to get rid of his animals that she had asked no questions on what had become of them, and so Torquil thought to himself that if he kept his visits to Morag's house a secret all would be well with him. He put the matter of the kelpie to the back of his mind, accordingly, and never spoke of it or of Morag to anyone.
Morag herself had no chance to mention it to Alasdair the Trapper as she had thought of doing since he was away from the hill that year, part of the time in jail for poaching and part of the time working as a ghillie on a big estate.
The result of this was that for a long time—until the following spring, in fact—no one except the two of them knew anything about the kelpie and during that time everything did indeed go well with them. Morag quickly won the trust of Torquil's animals so that they became as tame with her as they were with himself. And at last she had someone to talk to who could remember the days of her youth, for the kelpie continued to appear every evening at the pool.
As for Torquil, he had never been happier. Every day after school he stole out of the Woman's house and climbed the hill to feed his animals, and for him it was like climbing up to a secret world and going through the door of a dream. Everything up there was so quiet and peaceful after the roar of the traffic passing the Woman's house and the sound of her scolding voice in his ears. There was nothing to be heard there but the brown burns purling over the stones and the peewits calling the lost, sad cry of their kind: nothing to be seen but purple heather and golden bracken, with maybe a pair of hunting buzzards wheeling on big slow wings in a sky as deep blue as the loch below. And always, in the spring and the summer, little brown specks of larks pouring song like golden rain down from the highest point in the sky.
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