The earliest sighting of the mythical ‘Monster of Loch Ness’ (‘Nessie’) dates back to the Middle Ages. On 22 August 565 the monster is said to have been spotted by the Christian priest Sint-Columba. Modern interest in the water monster only started centuries later, from 1933, when the legend became widely known.
Sint-Columba sees the Loch Ness Monster
The occurrence of the first sighting of the Loch Ness monster is contained in a hagiographical work from the Middle Ages, written by Abbot Adomnán (628–704): The Life of Saint Columba.
The Irish priest St Columba was on a mission to convert people in Scotland to Christianity. He attended a funeral, near the River Ness (near the present North Scottish town of Inverness), which flows into Lake Loch Ness. According to bystanders, the person who was buried was killed by a large water monster. As a result Sint-Columba decided to let his assistant missionary Lugneus Mocumin enter the water. Then the monster would have emerged from the water to attack Mocumin. Priest Sint-Columba would have saved the situation by holding up a wooden cross, while punishing the monster with words of the following purport:
“To here and no further! Don’t touch the man! And leave immediately!”
The sample then disappeared under water. Critics of this story, which is of course highly hagiographical, point out that the monster was spotted in the river and not in the lake. Furthermore, this type of folk tale, in which a brave hero killed a monster in the name of Christianity, was common in the Middle Ages. A well-known example is the legend of St George and the dragon from the third century AD. We also know the sign of the cross from the vision of Constantine the Great ‘In this sign thou shalt overcome’.
Some later ‘appearances’ of the Loch Ness Monster
After the adventure of St Columba it remained silent around Loch Ness in Scotland for over thirteen centuries. It was not until the 1870s and 1880s, according to tradition, that the Loch Ness Monster reappeared several times.
On 22 July 1933 a certain couple, George Spicer and his wife, were said to have spotted a great beast at Loch Ness. Their story made the newspaper, with which the ‘saga of Nessie’ was born. Later that year there were a few more reports from people who would have seen a large monster at the lake.
The oldest known photograph of the alleged monster was shot that same year by Hugh Gray, who captured the alleged Loch Ness monster at Foyers, on 12 November 1933. This was followed in the 1930s by a number of reports of people who believed they had seen the monstrosity. In 1938 someone even managed to make film material of the supposed danger, but from analysis decades later it turned out to be a floating object.
