FORUM The Drewstown mystery
RICHARD FREEMAN wades into the murky waters of the giant eel debate with some intriguing cases from Ireland
With the recent discovery of extensive eel DNA in Loch Ness, there has been talk of the possibility that the famous monster is not some plesiosaur-like prehistoric survival but a giant eel (see FT385:25). Well, there are certainly some cryptozoological precedents for such an identification.
From the many loughs of Ireland come reports of serpentine monsters known locally as ‘horse eels’ or peistes. They are said to resemble eels with a horse-like mane running along their backs. They range from 10 to 30ft (3 to 9m) in length and are capable of crawling across land. The most famous sighting occurred in 1954 at Lough Fadda in Connemara, County Galway, when Georgina Carberry, a librarian from Clifden, and her friends saw a 30ft-long, eel-like beast with jaws like a shark. The creature, which she described as ‘wormy’, terrified her so much that she had nightmares about it for years and would never return to the lough alone or at night. The earliest reports reach back to the Book of Lismore, a mediaeval Irish manuscript of 1408-11, and have continued into the modern age.
The last proper investigations were carried out by Captain Lionel Leslie and author FW Holliday in the late 1960s. Captain Leslie used dynamite in an attempt to force the creatures to the surface. He reported seeing one thrashing about in the lough after a blast had been set off.
The Lough Fadda monsters could be a gigantic, mutant strain of the common eel. The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) lives in fresh water, but when it is ready to breed it swims out into the Sargasso Sea. The eels breed and die here and the young swim back to the waters inhabited by their ancestors. However, there is a theory that some eels never develop sexually. These ‘eunuch eels’, as they are known, remain in fresh water and nobody knows just how long they live or how big they get. It is believed that these mutations arise on occasion within a normal population of eels. So while there is no known population of giant monster eels, there are freak individuals. In 2004, Canadian tourists reported a 25ft (7.6m) eel in the shallows of Loch Ness.
Unlike most other cryptids, two specimens of horse eel may actually have been killed and photographed. In his book A Life on the Boyne author Jim Reynolds recounts a story told to him by a Major McVeigh. The Major lived at Drewstown House, County Meath, and told Reynolds how the workers on the estate would never go near the two lakes on the Drewstown estate as they believed that they were inhabited by monsters. Once, in 1907, when he was a young officer, McVeigh was on leave from India. On returning to the estate he heard that the shepherd had poisoned some dogs that had been worrying the sheep. He had been too busy to bury them and had left the carcasses down by one of the lakes.
The next morning, two huge eels were found dead on the surface of the lake. One was 12ft (3.6m) long and 25in (64cm) around; the other was 10ft (3m) long and 19in (48cm) around. The eels had died after eating the poisoned bodies of the dead dogs. Major McVeigh photographed the monster eels, surrounded by his family and staff. The creatures were apparently draped down the pillars of the house. McVeigh showed the framed picture to Reynolds and others who had doubted his story.
Today, Drewstown House is a Christian centre and the McVeigh family have apparently emigrated to Australia. I contacted Drewstown House on the off chance that the photograph was still there. The gentleman I spoke to, John Bailie, had heard the story of the monster eels, but told me that the photo was no longer at the house and there was no archive that he knew of.
I am trying to trace living members of the McVeigh family, just in case one of them still has the photograph. It’s a long shot, but if the elusive picture still exists it would be invaluable to science. My next line of enquiry will be local newspapers and museums.
Does anybody out there know anything about the photograph, its whereabouts, or the McVeigh family? Perhaps the picture is languishing in somebody’s attic or cellar…
Workers on the estate would never go near the two lakes
1 The Centre for Fortean Zoology is currently negotiating the rights to print Leslie’s unpublished book about his search for Irish lake monsters.
2 See http://drewstown.com and Drewstown House Christian Centre on Facebook.
2 RICHARD FREEMAN isa cryptozoologist, author, zoological journalist, and zoological director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology.