St. Columba uses the power of the Cross to stop the Loch Ness monster from eating Lugneus mocu-Min.

Scottish monks are more kick-butt than English monks, Lexie wrote, and included her translation from Latin of the Life of St. Columba below to back this up.

"Once, when the blessed man stayed a few days in the country of the Picts, he needed to cross the Loch Nesa.

When he approached the bank of this loch, he noticed some of the locals burying a poor little man, whom the gravediggers reported had been swimming a while before when a sea creature, seizing him, gobbled him up with a most severe gobbling. Though too late, some helpers fished the corpse into their boat with cast-out hooks. 

The blessed man, hearing this, in response ordered that one of his bros should, swimming, bring the boat standing on the opposite bank to him. When he heard the command of this holy and most praiseworthy man, Lugneus mocu-Min obeyed without delay, and with all his clothes cast aside except his tunic, he threw himself into the water. 

But the monster, who was not so much satisfied by her first plunder as incensed, lurked in the depths of the loch. Feeling the water disturbed by his swimming above, the beast, emerging suddenly with a huge growl and a gaping mouth, hurtled towards the man swimming in the middle of the shallows. 

The blessed man, seeing this, and with everyone who was there stricken with terror (the barbarians just as much as the bros), traced the saving sign of the cross with a holy hand in the empty air, and with the name of God invoked, he commanded the ferocious beast, saying: "You shall not pass, and you shall not touch that man. Turn around and go quickly." 

Then truly, this holy voice heard, the terrified beast fled in a swift retreat, as if it were dragged backwards with ropes, but before this it had come so close to Lugneus mocu-Min that between man and beast there was no more than the length of one pole.

Then the bros, seeing the beast retreated and their chum Lugneus returned to them safe and sound in the boat, glorified God in the blessed man with huge admiration. And even the gentile barbarians who were present, struck by the magnitude of this miracle which they themselves saw, magnified the Christian God."

Translation by Lexie.