Frequently the guardian of the flood appeared in distinctly human shape. An excellent example of this is to be found in Hugh Miller's "My Schools and Schoolmasters," where a picturesque description is given of the spirit haunting the Conan. Hugh Miller was an expert swimmer, and delighted to bathe in the pools of that Ross-shire stream. "Its goblin or water-wraith," he tells us, "used to appear as a tall woman dressed in green, but distinguished chiefly by her withered, meagre countenance, ever distorted by a malignant scowl. I knew all the various fords, always dangerous ones, where of old she used to start, it was said, out of the river before the terrified traveller to point at him as in derision with her skinny finger, or to beckon him invitingly on; and I was shown the very tree to which a poor Highlander had clung when, in crossing the river by night, he was seized by the goblin, and from which, despite of his utmost exertions, though assisted by a young lad, his companion, he was dragged into the middle of the current, where he perished. And when in swimming at sunset over some dark pool, where the eye failed to mark, or the foot to sound, the distant bottom, the twig of some sunken bush or tree has struck against me as I passed, I have felt, with sudden start, as if touched by the cold, bloodless fingers of the goblin." At Pierse Bridge, in Durham, the water-spirit of the Tees went by the name of Peg Powler, and there were stories in the district, of naughty children having been dragged by her into the river. In the Highlands and Lowlands alike, the spirit inhabiting rivers and lakes was commonly known as the water-kelpy. A south country ballad says:-- "The side was steep, the bottom deep Frae bank to bank the water pouring; And the bonnie lass did quake for fear, She heard the water-kelpie roaring." Who does not remember Burns's lines in his "Address to the Deil"?-- "When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord, An' float the jinglin' icy-boord, Then water-kelpies haunt the foord By your direction; An' 'nighted travellers are allur'd To their destruction. An' aft your moss-traversin' spunkies Decoy the wight that late and drunk is: The bleezin', curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes. Till in some miry slough he sunk is, Ne'er mair to rise."