ST. MARTHA & the TARASQUE

SOME FOLKS SAY that this tale is about the same woman who was visited by Jesus in her home near Jerusalem, the sister of Lazarus. Other accounts place this story several centuries later, featuring a young local maiden whose only association with the biblical woman was to share the same name. Either way, this legend is rooted in the southern coast of France, near the Mediterranean Sea.

As the story begins, the King of Nerluc presided over a countryside being terrorized by a dragon called the Tarasque. This infamous creature was described as having six short legs, teeth as sharp as swords and a scaly tail. The King sent his bravest knights to attack the beast, yet none could prevail against this hideous monster.

Enter Martha. It is said that she first encountered the Tarasque while it was still in the process of eating a man. She threw holy water on the dragon and held up a cross, charming the beast with hymns and prayers. According to the legend, the vicious monster was instantly rendered docile and submissive as Martha tied her belt around its neck and led the creature back to the villagers. The townsfolk were frightened by the sight of the approaching monster and killed it, although the dragon is said to have offered no resistance. Saint Martha preached her message of Christianity to the people of the village, who were so moved by her message and her conquering their adversary that they renamed their village Tarascon.

Martha stayed in Tarascon, living a life of Christian piety and prayerful devotion, and was buried there. Her crypt lies in the Eglise Collégiale Ste Marthe ("St. Martha's Collegiate Church"), a local destination for tourists and pilgrims. The town holds an annual festival every June commemorating St. Martha's victory over the Tarasque.

This story of St. Martha is one of many popular tales included in the Golden Legend which was published around A.D.1260 and was something of a medieval bestseller. The storyline, the otherwise-unconquerable evil beast subdued by a woman, is a familiar plot from the ancient Mesopotamian stories of Enkidu to the modern tale of King Kong.

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Monsters in the Lake

SOME FOLKS SAY that the most famous of all sea serpents is the Loch Ness Monster. In 1933, a London resident named George Spicer told a reporter from the Inverness Courier that he had been driving around the lake when he and his wife saw “a dragon or pre-historic animal” crossing the road with an animal in its mouth. When the story appeared in the Courier, other accounts began to appear about the “monster fish,” or “sea serpent” or “dragon” in the lake. The most famous photo of the head and neck of the Loch Ness Monster (shown right) was published the following year in 1934.

The earliest recorded references to a monstrous creature in the Scottish lake, however, pre-date these events. The life of St. Columba in the 7th century contains a miraculous tale of a confrontation with a predatory lake monster in Loch Ness. Sightings and skeptics continue to fuel the debate, and the tourist trade, in the Scottish Highlands to this day.

But Loch Ness is not the only lake that claims a resident monster. Lake Champlain lies between the states of New York and Vermont. Local sightings of a lake monster, similar in description to the Loch Ness Monster, have been reported since Samuel Champlain and the early explorers came to the region. Once called the Monster of Lake Champlain, the creature is now popularly referred to as “Champ” and a successful tourist trade has grown up in Port Henry, New York where local merchants offer coffee mugs and t-shirts celebrating their most unusual and legendary resident.

Although skeptics would be inclined to dismiss “Champ” as an imitation to capitalize on the commercial success of the Loch Ness Monster, this rationalization does not explain the historic accounts of the sightings of a great creature emerging from the deep waters, including an attack on a boat of fishermen in 1939 near Rouses Point.

The Native Americans in the region, the Ojibwa and Algonquin, also have tales of a great monster within the waters. Called Missipissy, or Mishipizhiw (sometimes Mitchipissy), the creature in these tales is described as a great sea serpent that guards the sturgeons as they hibernate through the winter in the Great Lakes.

A similar sea-serpent type of creature is Ogopogo, who is reported to live in the Okanagan Lake area of British Columbia. There are underground caverns near Rattlesnake Island that are considered to be the home of Ogopogo. Similar tales of a vast lake monster in the British Columbia region call the beast Naitaka. It is not clear if there are two names for a single monster, or two monsters.

While skeptics continue to seek to discredit individual sightings, the widespread reports between disparate cultures and regions in different times suggest that the phenomenon probably has (or had) some natural basis fueling these legends of monsters. All of these tales are centered on cold water lakes - a pesky fact which discourages the theory that these are plesiosaurs that somehow escaped extinction, since plesiosaurs inhabited warm, tropical waters. Even today, efforts to prove or disprove the existence of these creatures (as well as attempts to explain, describe or categorize them) often end with the conclusions the researchers held at the start.

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