A lake monster is a lake-dwelling entity in folklore . The most famous example is the Loch Ness Monster . Depictions of lake monsters are often similar to those of sea monsters .
30-733: In the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature , entities classified as "lake monsters", such as the Scottish Loch Ness Monster , the American Chessie , and the Swedish Storsjöodjuret fall under B11.3.1.1. ("dragon lives in lake"). According to the Swedish naturalist and author Bengt Sjögren (1980), present-day lake monsters are variations of older legends of water kelpies . Sjögren claims that
60-653: A "cluster of motifs" constituted a "plot", influencing Russian formalists like Vladimir Propp , whose study prefigured Thompson's Motif-Index , as has been pointed out. In the book The Folktale , Thompson invokes this phrase "cluster of motifs" in several passages, as here, in connection with tales involving the dead helper: The chain of circumstances by which this helper joins the hero and certain details of his later experience are so uniform and well articulated as to form an easily recognizable motif, or rather cluster of motifs. This fact has caused some confusion to scholars who have not sufficiently distinguished between such
90-696: A firm academic footing in the United States". He organized an informal quadrennial summertime "Institute of Folklore" beginning in 1942 which lasted beyond his retirement from tenure in 1955. This brought together scholars with an interest in the field of folklore and helped to bring structure to the growing discipline. In 1962, a permanent Institute of Folklore was established at Bloomington, with Richard Dorson serving as its administrator and chief editor of its journal publication. While Thompson wrote, co-wrote, or translated numerous books and articles on folklore, he became arguably best known for his work on
120-499: A limited extent. For surveys, see Examples of related folklore studies indices include the following: Stith Thompson Stith Thompson (March 7, 1885 – January 10, 1976) was an American folklorist : he has been described as "America's most important folklorist". He is the "Thompson" of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index , which indexes folktales by type, and the author of the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature ,
150-503: A motif and the entire tale of which it forms only an important part. But in this instance, Thompson is warning that the motif cluster is rather "only a framework for the adventures of the hero", containing "at least three different tales within". Thompson also explains that a single motif may be found in numerous folktales "from all parts of the earth" (383). Many folklorists have produced extensive motif and tale-type indices for culture areas not covered by Thompson, or covered only to
180-488: A plausible whole) and naturalization over time as humanity's view of the world has changed. In many of these areas, especially around Loch Ness , Lake Champlain and the Okanagan Valley , these lake monsters have become important tourist draws. In Ben Radford and Joe Nickell 's book Lake Monster Mysteries , the authors attribute a vast number of sightings to otter misidentifications. Ed Grabianowski plotted
210-489: A resource for folklorists that indexes motifs, granular elements of folklore . Stith Thompson was born in Bloomfield , Nelson County, Kentucky , on March 7, 1885, the son of John Warden and Eliza (McClaskey). Thompson moved with his family to Indianapolis at the age of twelve and attended Butler University from 1903 to 1905 before he obtained his BA degree from University of Wisconsin in 1909 (his undergraduate thesis
240-553: Is cross-indexed, The Types of Folktale constitutes the most important reference work and research tool for comparative folk-tale analysis. Alan Dundes , who was an outspoken critic, also said substantially the same thing, without confining the application to comparative studies: "[the indices] index constitute two of the most valuable tools in the professional folklorist's arsenal of aids for analysis". Concise outlines of both indices appear in Thompson's The Folktale (1946). In
270-524: Is employed, it is always in a very loose sense, and is made to include any of the elements of narrative structure". This use of the noun motif is specialized to the field of folklore studies. According to the Oxford English Dictionary , folkloristic use of the noun motif is not summed up in the definition for literary criticism ("Motif", def. 3a), but deserves its own separate sense of this definition ("Motif", def. 3b). Similarly,
300-488: Is highly unlikely. Naish also observes that the stories are likely remnants of tales meant to keep children safely away from the water. There have been many purported sightings of lake monsters, and even some photographs, but each time these have either been shown to be deliberate deceptions, such as the Lake George Monster Hoax , or serious doubts about the veracity and verifiability have arisen, as with
330-435: Is visible in the bottom right portion of the screen, swimming behind a boat containing the two lead actors in the film. The boat was 142 inches from the tip of the bow to the stern and 50.5 inches at the widest point and the alleged plesiosaur appears bigger than the boat. One of the co-writers, Kelly Tabor, believes it to be a foundational piece of evidence for Champ. The second co-writer, Richard Rossi , referred to himself as
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#1732772579923360-629: The University of Texas , Austin from 1914 to 1918, teaching composition. In 1921, Thompson was appointed associate professor at the English Department of the Indiana University Bloomington , which also had the responsibility of overseeing its composition program. Within a year he began offering courses in folklore: these were among the first courses in the field taught in the United States. His commitment to
390-575: The " Doubting Thomas ," and he shared the entire five minutes of footage with a conclave of scientists with earned doctorates in science for further study of the Tabor-Rossi footage. Well-known lake monsters include: Motif-Index of Folk-Literature The Motif-Index of Folk-Literature is a six volume catalogue of motifs , granular elements of folklore , composed by American folklorist Stith Thompson (1932–1936, revised and expanded 1955–1958). Often referred to as Thompson's motif-index ,
420-650: The American Folklore Society between 1937 and 1939 and was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1947. He received a number of Honorary Degrees from universities including University of North Carolina (1946), Indiana Central College (1953) and University of Kentucky (1958). Thompson's 1954 article for The Filson Club History Quarterly entitled "The Beauchamp Family" continues in use by genealogists as of 2011 . In this article Thompson states that he
450-534: The Folktale in 1928, creating a catalogue of folktale types , that included tales from Europe and Asia. Thompson used this classification in his Tales of the North American Indians published in 1929. Building upon this, Thompson published his "landmark work" The Motif-Index of Folk-Literature in six volumes between 1932 and 1936. The Motif-Index organised thousands of motifs drawn from
480-661: The accounts of lake-monsters have changed during history, as do others. Older reports often talk about horse-like appearances, but more modern reports often have more reptile and dinosaur-like appearances; he concludes that the legendary kelpies have evolved into the present day saurian lake-monsters since the discovery of dinosaurs and giant aquatic reptiles and the popularization of them in both scientific and fictional writings and art. The stories cut across cultures, existing in some variation in many countries. and have undergone what Michel Meurger calls concretizing (The process of turning items, drawings, general beliefs and stories into
510-474: The catalogue has been extensively used in folklore studies , where folklorists commonly use it in tandem with the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATU), an index used for folktale type analysis. The motif-index and the ATU indices are regarded as standard tools in the study of folklore. For example, folklorist Mary Beth Stein said that, "Together with Thompson's six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature , with which it
540-679: The classification of motifs in folk tales. His six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955–1958) is considered the international key to traditional material. In the 1920s, Thompson began collecting and archiving traditional ballads, tales, proverbs, aphorisms, riddles, etc. At around this time, the study of the parallels and worldwide distributions of folktales were being studied in new ways by European scholars (particularly Antti Aarne in Finland). Thompson had developed an understanding of these new techniques through travel and research and published an expanded translation of Aarne's The Types of
570-555: The compound noun motif index is used in cultural anthropology to denote "an index of standard motifs, esp. those found in folk tales". Thompson discusses composing the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature in his autobiography, A Folklorist's Progress: Reflection of a Scholar's Life . In producing the motif-index, Thompson built upon the research of Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne , who in 1910 published an index of European tale-types. Thompson himself had revised this in 1928 to cover
600-468: The context of the index, Thompson has defined motif as follows: "A motif is the smallest element in a tale having a power to persist in tradition. In order to have this power it must have something unusual and striking about it". But in the Motif-index itself, Thompson had also provided a more "cautious" definition: "[a]nything that goes to make up a traditional narrative ... When the term motif
630-624: The dissertation "European Borrowings and Parallels in North American Indian Tales," and earning his Ph.D. (The revised thesis was later published in 1919). This grew out of Kittredge's assignment, whose theme was investigating a certain tale called "The Blue Band", collected from the Chipewyan tribe in Saskatchewan may derive from contact with an analogous Scandinavian tale. Thompson was an English instructor at
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#1732772579923660-484: The distribution of North American lake monster sightings and then overlaid this with the distribution of the common otter and found a near perfect match. It turns out that three or four otters swimming in a line look remarkably like a serpentine, humped creature undulating through the water, very easy to mistake for a single creature if you see them from a distance. "This isn't speculation. I'm not making this up," Nickell said. "I've spoken to people who saw what they thought
690-583: The famous Mansi photograph of Champ . The most recent lake monster sighting to get widespread attention occurred during post-production of the Champ movie Lucy and the Lake Monster . The filmmakers reviewed their drone footage from production on August 2, 2024, and noticed what appears to be a large creature swimming just below the surface of the water, in Bulwagga Bay. The alleged plesiosaur image
720-477: The folktale types he had catalogued in The Types of the Folktale. By introducing these techniques to American folklorists, Thompson has been described as having a "marked influence on the direction of American folklore scholarship in the 20th century". For nearly twenty years after his retirement, Thompson continued to work on his Motif-Index and The Types of the Folktale - he published revised editions of
750-532: The promotion of academic research in folklore resulted in the creation of the PhD programme in folklore at Indiana in 1949 - the first of its kind in the United States. The first doctorate was awarded (to Warren E. Roberts) in 1953. For this - along with the establishment of folklore courses elsewhere in US academia by his former students - Thompson has been claimed to have been "largely responsible for establishing folklore on
780-579: The region from Europe to Asia: this is known as the Aarne-Thompson tale type index . In his Motif-Index , Thompson then compiled, classified, and numbered the traditional motifs of the mostly European folktale types in the tale-type index. Thompson's motif-index organizes thousands of motifs. Entries are first organized by an umbrella topic (for example, category S is "Unnatural Cruelty"). Entries are then divided into more specific subcategories. For example, entry S50 "Cruel relatives-in-law" contains
810-527: The sub-entry S51.1 "Cruel mother-in-law plans death of daughter-in-law". Thompson's The Folktale includes the following overview of the motif-index: The idea has been expressed that a combined set of motifs (in the motif-index) may constitute a folktale narrative (cf. the description of the Motif-Index as "a huge catalogue of folk narrative elements that may variously combine to form whole folk narratives" by Jan Harold Brunvand ). This idea had already been anticipated by Alexander Veselovsky who wrote that
840-476: The volumes of the Motif-Index between 1955 and 1958. During this Thompson also collaborated on projects with other folklorists such as Jonah Balys' The Oral Tales of India and Warren Roberts' Types of Indic Folktales . He even produced an anthology at the age of 83, One Hundred Favorite Folktales . In 1976, Thompson died of heart failure at his home in Columbus, Indiana . Thompson served as President of
870-402: Was a lake monster, got closer and discovered it was actually a line of otters. That really happens." Of course, not every supposed lake monster sighting can be attributed to otters, but it is an excellent example of how our perceptions can be fooled. Paul Barrett and Darren Naish note that the existence of any large animals in isolation (i.e., in a situation where no breeding population exists)
900-858: Was titled, 'The Return from the Dead in Popular Tales and Ballads'). For the next two years he taught at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon , during which time he learned Norwegian from lumberjacks. He earned his master's degree in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley in 1912, where his dissertation was titled "The Idea of the Soul in Teutonic Popular Tales and Ballads". He studied at Harvard University from 1912 to 1914 under George Lyman Kittredge , writing
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