Morag (lake Monster)
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Morag ( gd, Mòrag) is the nickname given to a
loch monster A lake monster is a lake-dwelling entity in folklore. The most famous example is the Loch Ness Monster. Depictions of lake monsters are often similar to those of sea monsters. In the ''Motif-Index of Folk-Literature'', entities classified as "lak ...
believed by many to live in
Loch Morar Loch Morar (Scottish Gaelic: Loch Mòrair) is a freshwater loch in Lochaber, Highland, Scotland. It is the fifth-largest loch by surface area in Scotland, at , and the deepest freshwater body in the British Isles with a maximum depth of . The l ...
, Scotland. After
Nessie NESSIE (New European Schemes for Signatures, Integrity and Encryption) was a European research project funded from 2000 to 2003 to identify secure cryptographic primitives. The project was comparable to the NIST AES process and the Japanese Gov ...
, it is among the most written about of Scotland's legendary monsters. "Morag", a Scottish female name, is a pun on the name of the loch. Reported sightings date back to 1887, and numbered 34 incidents by 1981. Sixteen of these involved multiple witnesses. A widely reported claim involved two local men, Duncan McDonell and William Simpson, and their boat, with which they claimed to have accidentally struck the creature, prompting it to attack them. McDonell defended with an oar, and Simpson opened fire with his rifle, whereupon it sank slowly out of sight. They described it as being brown, long, with rough skin, three dorsal humps rising above the loch's surface, and a head a foot wide, held out of the water.Janet and Colin Bord, "Alien Animals" (Granada 1980, revised 1985), , pages 13-14


See also

*
Muc-sheilch In Scottish folklore, () is a loch monster said to live in Loch Maree, and its neighbouring lochs. The term loosely translates as "turtle-pig." In the 1850s, a Mr Banks from Letterewe tried at great expense to drain Loch-na-Bèiste, near A ...
(
Loch Maree Loch Maree ( gd, Loch Ma-ruibhe) is a loch in Wester Ross in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland. At long and with a maximum width of , it is the fourth-largest freshwater loch in Scotland; it is the largest north of Loch Ness. Its surface a ...
and environs)


References


Further reading

* Campbell, Elizabeth Montgomery & David Solomon, ''The Search for Morag'' (Tom Stacey 1972) * Peter Costello, ''In Search of Lake Monsters'' (Garnstone) 1974 * ''Modern Mysteries of Britain'' (Guild Publishing 1987), pp 160–1 (Morag photographs) {{Authority control Lochaber Scottish folklore Scottish legendary creatures Water monsters