Friday 16 January 2009

Postcard 6: A ripple on Loch Ness



Summer 2008: Urquhart Castle & Loch Ness.
The only monster I saw was a millipede ...
© Caroline Gill 2008

Monster-spotting on Loch Ness became popular in the 1930s, when Bertram Mills offered a £20,000 reward to anyone who could capture the monster. Virginia Woolf visited the loch in 1938, and commented on the monster with 'no head'. Beatrix Potter wrote about its 'humps' (Times Online). John Buchan penned a lean but evocative description of the king's Lieutenant at Loch Ness in his 1928 biography, Montrose.

Books about the monster abound and Edinburgh boasts its own 3D Noch Ness Experience. You can read or listen to The Loch Ness Monster's Song by Scots Makar, Edwin Morgan; and countless other poets have tried to capture something of this elusive phenomenon. Years before Woolf's visit, the monster was afforded special protection under the 1912 Protection of Animals Act for Scotland.Castle Urquhart:

1 comment:

The Weaver of Grass said...

It is good for tourism to keep the folklore going Caroline!
There are all sorts of creatures supposedly round here - beasts, black horses - i love those old stories.