The History of the Loch Ness Monster
I first had the idea for this post when I was reading about Big Cat sightings in the newspaper. Notwithstanding my post a few weeks ago about the extinction of various wild species in the UK, I wondered if there had been reports of big cats roaming the UK countryside in the 19th century or earlier. That led me on to thinking about Scottish Wild Cats and from there I leapt to Loch Ness, metaphorically speaking. So here is a potted history of the Loch Ness Monster. I do like quirky history. Nessie was apparently first spotted by the Vikings. Celtic and Norse folklore has stories of water horses seen in the lochs. However, we do have to acknowledge that stories of terrifying Each Uisge, water horses, are quite common in Gaelic folklore so perhaps these cannot be taken as conclusive evidence. The first written account of a meeting with the Loch Ness monster seems to be that of Adamnan in 565 A.D. He describes St. Columba's sighting of a very large monster in Loch Ness. Legend tells of...