Word: nessness
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Many thanks to TIME, Oct. 8, for ... English-hating Bertie McCormick's letter to a British monthly, and the BBC's trial of the Loch Ness monster...
English visitors to both Chicago and Loch Ness are invariably asked on their return home, "Did you see it?" Almost always they have to reply, "Well, no, not really." Many of us here have come to believe that both monsters are mythical. This is sad because we are rather proud of both of them. Now, once more, we can happily discuss whether it really has nine humps, and whether he really has a near-English accent...
...thorough as a Royal Commission, the BBC went back to the beginning. The first mention of a Loch Ness monster was in the 7th Century account of St. Columba's visit to the province of the Picts. He came to the river Nesa (the Ness) and found that an aquatic monster had just bitten and killed a Pict. So the saint ordered another Pict to dive into the water. The monster rose to take him as a salmon takes a fly, but the saint made the sign of the Cross "and the monster was terrified and fled away more...
...Horrible Great Beastie." After this defeat, the monster lay doggo for more than 1,000 years. At any rate, the people who lived near the loch did not think it worth reporting. Since most Scottish lochs, they believed, had water kelpies, why shouldn't Loch Ness have one? His Grace the Duke of Portland noted in 1885 that his ghillies were quite familiar with a "horrible great beastie" in Loch Ness...
...Whale or a Hoax? During World War II, the monster became a military secret. It was reportedly seen by many servicemen, but the region around Loch Ness was a Commando training ground, and to quote the soldiers would have betrayed the secret of their station. Both German and Italian airmen claimed to have killed the monster, but this, said the BBC, was quite untrue. Right after the war, the witnesses testified, the monster reappeared undamaged...