Have you ever wondered whether or not there was some truth in the stories of monsters in Loch Ness? Here are all of the answers.
Loch Ness Monster Explained & Loch Ness Understood: The Co-Founder of the Loch Ness Centre Provides a Personal Perspecti...
[2018 author's note: This book was written a few years ago, before we knew about the abuse conducted by the monks of Fort Augustus. I have not changed the book, just added a few comments like this. As far as I'm aware, Fr. Andrew never abused anyone, but the Abbot did physically abuse boys with corporal punishment so severe, it hospitalised some of the victims. Fr. Andrew is not shown in the photograph above, but the 'two visiting monks', Fr. Paul Moore and Fr. Nicholas White, were both paedophiles being hidden at Fort Augustus by the Catholic Church.]
I cannot finish with the Abbey without telling one or two more stories of my time working with the monks.
The parishes of Fort Augustus and Stratherrick were managed by the Abbey and the long term parish priest was Father Andrew MacKillop who had a very emaciated look about him and was stone deaf. I cannot imagine what confession would have been like because sometimes, when you spoke to him in the cloisters, for instance, every word he said could be heard around the entire ground floor of the Abbey buildings. He did sometimes talk in hushed tones, but I have a worrying vision of him telling parishioners in the confessional, "Don't worry, your secret fornication is safe with me," while everyone else in the church looked around in anticipation of discovering who was about to emerge from the booth.
I don't know that this was a problem, of course, it is just a fanciful observation.
As he approached his ninetieth year he was still parish priest and he also had another name, Father Flat-Out from the way he drove the parish car. Unable to hear which gear he was in, you always knew which direction he was coming from by the acoustics. An engine in second gear running at 6,000 revs coming through the village with burning oil streaming out of the exhaust would almost certainly be Fr. Flat-Out.
On one occasion one of my staff, Judith Mitchell from Errogie, who was relatively new to working at the Abbey, was driving home unknowingly following Father Flat-Out who was travelling in the same direction. He was all over the road, swerving from side to side, then he slammed on his brakes and turned into the local junior school. As soon as Judith got home, just half a minute later, she telephoned the school secretary and said, "I just thought I ought to warn you that a crazy drunk driver has just turned into the school grounds, he was driving a red Renault."
The school secretary just replied, "Oh no, don't be concerned, it's just Father Andrew come to teach divinity."
On another occasion Ron Mackay came to my office and said we had a serious problem. He had been driving down from Cumin's Seat, a rather lovely viewpoint over-looking Stratherrick, and had come across Fr Andrew's car in the heather. It was fifty yards from the road and there were no tyre marks in the heather at all.
"How do you mean?" I asked.
Ron explained that it was quite obvious that the car had left the road at high speed, flown through the air and landed in the middle of the bog.
Very concerned, I asked how Fr. Andrew was and Ron replied, "No idea. There was no sign of him anywhere. We searched around, looked under the car and walked around the local vicinity. No sign at all. Someone had better tell the Abbot, perhaps he's been taken to hospital."
Armed with as much detail as possible I rang the police, they had heard of no accident; then the hospital, they had heard nothing either; nor had the fire brigade so I headed over to the monastery where it was time for afternoon tea, so I knew where I would find the Abbot.
Sure enough, there was the Abbot in the calefactory*, deep in a noisy conversation with, guess who, Father Andrew (picture of the calefactory at the top of the page).
I looked at Andrew and he seemed none the worse for wear. I walked up to them and asked where Father Andew's car was.
"Oh, yes," said Andrew. "I need to get it towed out of a bog. I slipped off the road near Loch Tarff."
"Are you OK?" I asked. "How did you get back?"
"Oh it was nothing, just swerved off the road slightly. Got out, walked back to the road and hitched it** home."
It wasn't until later that I managed to tell the Abbot how far Andrew had flown through the air. To this day I wish I could have seen that.
An older story relevant to Fort Augustus took place in the middle ages.
In the eleventh century Northern Ireland was still known as Scotia and so anyone coming from there was considered to be Scottish.
Monks from Scotia had set up a monastery in Ratisbon in Germany. From that point on postulants from Ireland went to Ratisbon and the monastery became very successful. The earliest written Gaelic in Scotland today was written by one of those monks in the margins of a manuscript which is, today, in the National Library of Scotland. Known as the Marianus Scotus, this manuscript had, until Abbot Dilworth was elected, been kept unprotected on a shelf in the monks' library (below) in the Fort Augustus monastery, yet it was valued at over a quarter of a million pounds.
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Returning to the story, in the middle ages some Scottish monks from the Scotland we know today, were journeying south through Germany and were delighted when they arrived at the monastery in Ratisbon*** and saw the inscription Monastery of the Scots over the main entrance.
Pleased to have discovered friends so far from home, they knocked on the door and were horrified to find that all the monks were Irish.
Whether or not they received hospitality is unknown, but we do know that they continued on their journey and were granted audience with the Pope.
They complained that Irish monks had taken over the Monastery of the Scots and the Pope immediately decreed that the monastery should be handed over to these Scottish monks. When they returned to Ratisbon, the Irish monks were evicted and from that point on it was a Scottish monastery of Scots from Scotland.
What an injustice!
In the nineteenth century the German government closed the monastery and the last surviving monk, Fr. Anselm, came back to Scotland and, with a certain Fr. Jerome of the famous Catholic Vaughn family, convinced Lord Lovat to give them his shooting lodge at Fort Augustus to let them establish a monastery in the Highlands. When Fr. Anselm was evicted from Ratisbon he brought with him the Marianus Scotus and other important works including a prayer book owned and signed by Mary of Guise****.
* So named as it was the only room in the monastery to be heated in ancient times.
** Hitch hiked. Everyone knew Father Andrew so the first local person along would have picked him up and returned him to the Abbey.
