Nessie, the beast of the lake
They were fierce hill tribes in what is now Scotland, and we call them Picts. The name seems to mean “The Painted People” as they were known to love bright body art and multicolored clothing. They were artists, prolific stone carvers, and from the carved standing stones still found in the region around Loch Ness, we can see that the Picts were fascinated by animals, carefully etching their likeness into the surface of the stone. And they left us a mystery.
Because all the animals depicted on the Pictish stones are realistic and easily recognizable, except one. This exception is a strange beast with a long, elongated beak or snout, a beak on its head, and fins instead of feet, somewhat like a swimming elephant. This Pictish beast is the earliest known reference to the belief, which took root in the Scottish Highlands at least 1,500 years ago, that Loch Ness is home to a mysterious underwater animal. The Loch Ness Monster.
Columba did not represent nonsense, not even of a monster. He had ordered one of his monks to swim across the lake to fetch a boat when, halfway across, the beast appeared and pounced on the swimmer, roaring in the most terrifying manner. Santo himself jumped into the lake yelling at the monster “Don’t go any further, don’t touch the man! Come back!”. Thus ordered, the monster fled. The great Columba converted most of Scotland to Christianity and apparently also converted Nessie, for it is said that until she went out into the waters and calmed the beast, she had been a murderer.
In Scottish folklore, large animals are associated with many bodies of water, from small streams to the largest lochs, often labeled Loch-na-Beistie on old maps. These water horses, or kelpies, are cousins to the Irish Pooka and have similar magical powers but often malevolent intent. They are dragons under the water, lurking with ravenous intent, waiting for darkness to come in the long northern nights before emerging and devouring the Innocent.
The monster, the sea serpent, the kraken and other mythological creatures have been part of folklore since the beginning of time. Throughout the world it is said that there are sea serpents or monsters in many bodies of fresh water. Nessie at Loch Ness, Morag at Loch Morar, Shielagh at Loch Shiel, Lizzy at Loch Lochy, Champ at Lake Champlain, Ogopogo at Lake Okanagan, and, oddly enough, Wally at Lake Wallowa.
While research has been done on many of these lochs, Loch Ness is the icon of monsters and Nessie the Loch Ness Monster is undoubtedly the grandmother of them all. It is to Loch Ness that countless researchers have flocked with their cameras and sonars, webcams and mini submarines, their hopes, fears and dreams of solving the mystery of Nessie.
It is reported to have an elongated neck often sticking out of the water with a small head, diamond-shaped fins, and three distinct humps on its back followed by a tail. Sone says that she lives under or around Urquhart Castle and that many (mostly fake) photographs have been taken of her in the vicinity.
The sedimentary rocks that host Loch Ness are some of the oldest in the world. The sandstones were originally laid in warm seas when Scotland was located at the latitude where Australasia is today. As the continents moved north, the land was squeezed into the dry core of the supercontinent Pangea.
400 million years ago, the Great Glen strike-slip fault was created. Almost cutting Scotland in two, this Great Glen is home to the black waters of Loch Ness, Oich, Lochy and Linnhe.
As the continents began to split and cluster around the North Pole, the great Scottish mountains, which would have been the size of the Himalayas, gradually wore down to the stumps you see today. Scotland was still in the grip of the ice twelve thousand years ago, but the major advances had ended and the land was beginning to recover from its sinking into the mantle. The surface of Loch Ness would have been at a similar height to sea level.
Anything living in the loch today must have made its way from the frozen North Sea to the River Ness after the final retreat of the ice.
Many scientists and zoologists will admit to half-believing that a large aquatic animal does in fact exist in Loch Ness. There are numerous theories about its identity, including a primitive snake-like whale known as a zeuglodon, a type of long-necked aquatic seal, giant eels, walruses, floating mats of plants, giant molluscs, otters, a “paraphysical” entity. , mirages, diving birds and, most popularly, a plesiosaur. Nessie was even given a scientific name “Nessiteras rhombopteryx” named by Sir Peter Scott so that Nessie could be added to the British Register of officially protected wildlife.
The name, translated from Greek, means “The wonder of Ness with the diamond-shaped fin”. Over the years, many have noted that if you rearrange the letters in Nessiteras rhombopteryx, it can be made to read “Monster hoax by Sir Peter S”.
This may mean something, or it may not mean anything at all.
Nessie is either there or she isn’t. I like to think that she has mocked our efforts to trap her, immobilize her, categorize her, tame her, and turn her into dishtowels. And one day you may get to see it yourself. May she live a long time on the lake!