“Here Haggy, Haggy. Here Haggy, Haggy.”

The discordant words aroused me from a deep sleep. As I eased into wakefulness I told myself that I understood ‘here Kitty, Kitty; here Kitty, Kitty,’ but ‘here Haggy, Haggy; here Haggy, Haggy,’ wasn’t sonorous and had no ring to it. The voices making the call were youthful and, as I listened, I realized that it was the sweet voices of my grand-daughters. For a few more minutes I lay listening and wondering whether the ‘Haggy’ was Rubeus Hagrid the half-giant friend of Harry Potter’s, and the words, part of a game played between my two grand-daughters. This didn’t entirely make sense for who, in their right mind, would give a giant a diminutive name such as ‘Haggy?’

I glanced at my battery operated alarm clock and saw that it was eight-thirty. The girls had probably breakfasted, with their parents, on a Scottish specialty of porridge and were now outside playing. I am normally an early riser, but this morning I lay trying to sleep off the effects of a restless night, in which I had spent several hours on the front porch enjoying the rain and catching glimpses of the full moon. The beauty of the scene had brought Alfred Noye’s epic poem ‘Highway man’ to mind. The words echoed in my mind. I had called it up on my I-pad and read the self-illuminated screen aloud; casting the lyrics into the wild wind-driven rain:

‘The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.’

I don’t remember dressing but soon I was fully clad, in new Shetland cable-knit sweater, resplendent white with its beautiful knitted pattern, and blue jeans, ready to go outside. When I opened the door I paused, struck by the beauty of the scene before me. The Scottish highlands are always grand but today the storm had left Loch Ness shrouded in a light mist. The air was clean and fresh and the light had a magical quality, the mystical clarity that you get with dawn in the aftermath of a storm. I took a sip of hot coffee, I don’t recall but I must have stopped in the kitchen to get a mug full. I could sense the warm liquid slipping down my throat and luxuriated in the warmth which spread out over my whole body. I couldn’t see my grand-daughters and everything was uncannily quiet; not even an errant ‘Here Haggy, Haggy,’ to alert me where they were.

We were doing a mini self-guided tour of the Scottish highlands and had taken this tiny croft on Lock Ness for a two-day stay to cater to the girl’s fantasy that they might spot the Lock Ness monster or Nessie. So far Nessie had not obliged and I didn’t think that the mist this morning would help; you couldn’t even see the water.

The previous night, before the storm, we had listened to the wind howling and sat and talked about Nessie at length. The sense of isolation given by the noise of the wind and the smallness of our quarters tipped us into imagining mystics and strange beasties including Nessie. One thing had led to another and we had speculated about the veracity of the claim, by some Scots, that the Haggis is a small, almost extinct, highland creature. We had looked at images on line. Most pictures showed a small, pig-faced animal with long tufts of hair in the vicinity of the ears. My reaction was skeptic, although I did think about the first reports, from Australia, of the Duck-billed platypus. The English of 1798 thought that the description of; an egg-laying, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal with venomous hind foot spur; to be pure fantasy. Rumor has it that when the first pelt was shipped back to England they had experts examine it to detect the place where the various parts had been sewn together! To our discerning eyes the on-line images of the haggis were as weird as the duck-billed platypus must have been to the English at the end of the eighteenth century. By the way the jury is out on the plural of haggis, most suggest haggis is the same in singular and plural; as in one sheep, two sheep; one haggis, two haggis; although I like one haggis, two haggi; or maybe two haggises. On line, most assert that you should never need to consider the plural of haggis as one is enough! As I sipped my coffee I now wondered whether, ‘here Haggy, Haggy’ had been inspired by our discussion of the previous night.

By now the haze over the waters was beginning to burn off and there was every indication that we were in for a glorious, if unusual, sunny day in the highlands. My youngest grand-daughter came running up from the direction of the lake emerging like a spirit from the mist. When she saw me she waved and exclaimed in excitement: “Grammy, come quick the haggis is getting away.”

I put my mug down and ran toward her. “A haggis, are you sure?” I patted my jean pocket but my mobile phone was not there. For a brief moment I considered going back for it but my grand-daughter was moving fast and I didn’t want to lose her. I hoped that there would be time for photographs later. At the bottom of the garden, almost on the shore of the loch, the vapor parted and I saw the ‘haggis’ and my oldest grand-daughter, beyond them I could now see the waters of Loch Ness. My grand-daughter held out her hand in which she held a carrot, “Here Haggy, Haggy.” The creature was about the size of a small cat and had a long neck, small head, proportionately short legs, and a long tail. When I got closer I saw that it had a very short fur coat. For all intents and purposes it looked, with the exception of the otter-like fur, like a model of a diplodocus; the sort of model that they sell in museum gift shops.

“Where did you find him?” I asked.

“We think that it is a ‘she,” corrected both girls. “And her name is Haggis, Haggy for short.” I watched as they petted the creature. It mewed in, what I took to be appreciation, and then, suddenly raised its head and gave a shrill squeal. They were both crouched down beside their Haggy and so they didn’t see, what I, and it, saw rising out of the mist. At first it was, what appeared to be, a head on along neck, some twelve to fifteen feet long. As it got closer and become more distinct I realized, with wonder, that it looked like a very large version of our Haggy, a museum-quality, moving, live diplodocus. The form loomed ever larger as it approached.

“Run, girls, run, NOW,” I yelled, “Leave Haggy, her mama is coming and she looks angry. It’s the monster, the Lock Ness monster.”

They both turned and then began to run toward the residence. I was behind. I ran. My feet felt like lead, they were tangled in something, like a blanket, which curtailed movement. I ran as best I could but the creature caught up with me and touched me. It shook my whole body. I panicked and flailed my arms. “No Haggy, no.” I yelled.

Words broke through to me, “Grammy, wake-up, wake-up, you’re talking in your sleep.” I opened my eyes to see both my grand-daughters standing by my bed, shaking me, and talking in unison. They held out a mewing animal toward me, “Grammy, may we keep her? See the lovely kitten which we found on the porch.”

© September, 2014. Jane Stansfeld