Kasha the Kelpie — The Tale of a Dingo in Ireland
I landed in the plot of a Celtic mystery
Kasha the kelpie just turned up one day, at the house in the middle of a field in a bog at the tip of a peninsula at the end of Europe. She was young, thin, and her coat was matted. There was a short length of broken rope around her neck.
A kelpie is a dangerous shape-shifting water creature that can appear on land as a horse. As Scottish legend has it, they will tempt you to ride on their back, then carry you down to your grave at the bottom of the ocean.
A kelpie is not to be confused with an Irish selkie, a creature half fish, half human, otherwise known as a mermaid.
But of course, Kasha was the other kind of kelpie, a breed of dog half Scottish collie, half Australian dingo. I am originally Australian-born myself, and often wondered if somehow she sensed that. How did a dingo come to be in Ireland? Perhaps that is a tale as long and strange as my own.
“Where did you come from?” I asked her.
She sat, and looked at me.
“I do love dogs,” I told her, “but I have a cat, Liba, and she is my best friend; Do you get on with cats?”
The woebegone creature slid her forepaws out from under her, dropped her head onto them…
