Nessie Does Hollywood
Well, at least an animated version. Benjamen Radford uses the new movie coming out for Christmas as a vehicle to look at the dubious "history" of Loch Ness monster sightings. The producers of the new movie, "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep" probably should have looked into what, precisely, a "water horse" is in Scots legend. It isn't actually connected to Nessie at all, nor is particularly pleasant.
Stories and legends about "water horses" have been told in the Scottish highlands for centuries, though there's no clear link to the Loch Ness monster. According to George Eberhart's book "Mysterious Creatures," water horses are native to the British Isles and Europe. They sometimes graze with normal horses, but if anyone is foolish enough to try and mount a water horse, it will immediately gallop to a nearby lake or river, drown its rider, then eat the hapless person's flesh.
One type of water horse, the Kelpie, is also said to chase down young Scottish women and take sexual liberties with them; I suspect these parts of the water horse's legend will not be explored in the family film.
We do have an example of a more correct Hollywood-type version of a water horse.
We can but hope that this kind of historical accuracy is in the new film! We have no real hope of that, though, darn it. The site for the picture itself is here.
By Bleepless, Wednesday, 19 December , 2007 @ 7:32 pm
Leave it to Scotland and Hollywood to get it wrong. The Romans had it first: hippopotamus.