Editing Loch Ness Monster (section)

==== Saint Columba (565) ====
The earliest report of a monster in the vicinity of Loch Ness appears in the ''Life of St. Columba'' by [[Adomnán]], written in the 7th century AD.<ref name="Carruth">J. A Carruth ''Loch Ness and its Monster'', (1950) Abbey Press, Fort Augustus, cited by Tim Dinsdale (1961) ''Loch Ness Monster'' pp. 33–35</ref> According to Adomnán, writing about a century after the events described, Irish monk [[Columba|Saint Columba]] was staying in the land of the [[Picts]] with his companions when he encountered local residents burying a man by the [[River Ness]]. They explained that the man was swimming in the river when he was attacked by a "water beast" that mauled him and dragged him underwater despite their attempts to rescue him by boat. Columba sent a follower, Luigne moccu Min, to swim across the river. The beast approached him, but Columba made the [[sign of the cross]] and said: "Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once."<ref name="Adomnan176">Adomnán, p. 176 (II:27).</ref> The creature stopped as if it had been "pulled back with ropes" and fled, and Columba's men and the Picts gave thanks for what they perceived as a miracle.<ref name="Adomnan176" />

Believers in the monster point to this story, set in the River Ness rather than the loch itself, as evidence for the creature's existence as early as the 6th century.<ref name="Adomnan330">Adomnán p. 330.</ref> Skeptics question the narrative's reliability, noting that water-beast stories were extremely common in medieval [[hagiography|hagiographies]], and Adomnán's tale probably recycles a common motif attached to a local landmark.<ref name="BinnsColumba">R. Binns ''The Loch Ness Mystery Solved'', pp. 52–57</ref> According to skeptics, Adomnán's story may be independent of the modern Loch Ness Monster legend and became attached to it by proximity and by believers seeking to bolster their claims.<ref name="Adomnan330" /> Ronald Binns considers that this is the most serious of various alleged early sightings of the monster, but all other claimed sightings before 1933 are dubious and do not prove a monster tradition before that date.<ref name="Binns">R. Binns ''The Loch Ness Mystery Solved'' pp. 11–12</ref> Christopher Cairney uses a specific historical and cultural analysis of Adomnán to separate Adomnán's story about St. Columba from the modern myth of the Loch Ness Monster, but finds an earlier and culturally significant use of Celtic "water beast" folklore along the way. In doing so he also discredits any strong connection between [[kelpie]]s or water-horses and the modern "media-augmented" creation of the Loch Ness Monster. He also concludes that the story of Saint Columba may have been impacted by earlier Irish myths about the Caoránach and an [[Oilliphéist]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Bro |first1=Lisa |title=Monsters of Film, Fiction and Fable, the Cultural Links Between the Human and Inhuman |last2=O'Leary-Davidson |first2=Crystal |last3=Gareis |first3=Mary Ann |date=2018 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |isbn=9781527510890 |pages=377–399}}</ref>