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Carvings of this unidentified animal, made by the ancient
inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands some 1,500 years ago, are the earliest evidence that Loch Ness harbors a strange aquatic creature.
| Birth of a Legend
by Stephen Lyons
"Many a man has been hanged on less evidence than there is for the Loch Ness
Monster."
—G.K. Chesterton
When the Romans first came to northern Scotland in the first century A.D.,
they found the Highlands occupied by fierce, tattoo-covered tribes they
called the Picts, or painted people. From the carved, standing stones still
found in the region around Loch Ness, it is clear the Picts were fascinated by
animals, and careful to render them with great fidelity. All the animals
depicted on the Pictish stones are lifelike and easily recognizable—all but
one. The exception is a strange beast with an elongated beak or muzzle, a head
locket or spout, and flippers instead of feet. Described by some scholars as a
swimming elephant, the Pictish beast is the earliest known evidence for an idea
that has held sway in the Scottish Highlands for at least 1,500 years—that
Loch Ness is home to a mysterious aquatic animal.
In Scottish folklore, large animals have been associated with many bodies of
water, from small streams to the largest lakes, often labeled Loch-na-Beistie
on old maps. These water-horses, or water-kelpies, are said to have magical
powers and malevolent intentions. According to one version of the legend, the
water-horse lures small children into the water by offering them rides on its
back. Once the children are aboard, their hands become stuck to the beast and
they are dragged to a watery death, their livers washing ashore the following
day.
The earliest written reference linking such creatures to Loch Ness is in the
biography of Saint Columba, the man credited with introducing Christianity to
Scotland. In A.D. 565, according to this account, Columba was on his way to
visit a Pictish king when he stopped along the shore of Loch Ness. Seeing a
large beast about to attack a man who was swimming in the lake, Columba raised
his hand, invoking the name of God and commanding the monster to "go back with
all speed." The beast complied, and the swimmer was saved.
When Nicholas Witchell, a future BBC correspondent, researched the history of
the legend for his 1974 book The Loch Ness Story, he found about
a dozen pre-20th-century references to large animals in Loch Ness, gradually
shifting in character from these clearly mythical accounts to something more
like eyewitness descriptions.
The Loch Ness Monster has been headline news all over the world for more than 60 years.
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But the modern legend of Loch Ness dates from 1933, when a new road was
completed along the shore, offering the first clear views of the loch from the
northern side. One April afternoon, a local couple was driving home along this
road when they spotted "an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the
surface." Their account was written up by a correspondent for the Inverness
Courier, whose editor used the word "monster" to describe the
animal. The Loch Ness Monster has been a media phenomenon ever since.
Public interest built gradually during the spring of 1933, then picked up
sharply after a couple reported seeing one of the creatures on land, lumbering
across the shore road. By October, several London newspapers had sent
correspondents to Scotland, and radio programs were being interrupted to bring
listeners the latest news from the loch. A British circus offered a reward of
£20,000 for the capture of the beast. Hundreds of boy scouts and
outdoorsmen arrived, some venturing out in small boats, others setting up deck
chairs and waiting expectantly for the monster to appear.
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Big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell
| The excitement over the monster reached a fever pitch in December, when the
London Daily Mail hired an actor, film director, and big-game hunter
named Marmaduke Wetherell to track down the beast. After only a few days at the
loch, Wetherell reported finding the fresh footprints of a large, four-toed
animal. He estimated it to be 20 feet long. With great fanfare,
Wetherell made plaster casts of the footprints and, just before Christmas, sent
them off to the Natural History Museum in London for analysis. While the world
waited for the museum zoologists to return from holiday, legions of monster
hunters descended on Loch Ness, filling the local hotels. Inverness was
floodlit for the occasion, and traffic jammed the shoreline roads in both
directions.
The bubble burst in early January, when museum zoologists announced that the
footprints were those of a hippopotamus. They had been made with a stuffed
hippo foot—the base of an umbrella stand or ashtray. It wasn't clear whether
Wetherell was the perpetrator of the hoax or its gullible victim. Either way,
the incident tainted the image of the Loch Ness Monster and discouraged serious
investigation of the phenomenon. For the next three decades, most scientists
scornfully dismissed reports of strange animals in the loch. Those sightings
that weren't outright hoaxes, they said, were the result of optical illusions
caused by boat wakes, wind slicks, floating logs, otters, ducks, or swimming
deer.
Saw Something, They Did
Nevertheless, eyewitnesses continued to come forward with accounts of their
sightings—more than 4,000 of them, according to Witchell's estimate. Most of
the witnesses described a large creature with one or more humps protruding
above the surface like the hull of an upturned boat. Others reported seeing a
long neck or flippers. What was most remarkable, however, was that many of the
eyewitnesses were sober, level-headed people: lawyers and priests, scientists
and school teachers, policemen and fishermen—even a Nobel Prize winner.
Continue
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© | Updated November 2000
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