Marwick, Ernest W. (1991) An Orkney Anthology: The Selected Works of Ernest Walker Marwick, Vol. 1, Scottish Academic Press, p. 284

It may have been a brother of the Stronsay monster that Alec Groundwater saw one summer day in the 1830s, rising out of Scapa Flow. I'll tell you the story exactly as Alec's daughter told it to me. He was a boy at the time, she said, and was sitting on one of the high banks at the 'Binks o' Birnorvie' in Orphir. It was an afternoon of calm sunshine; the water below him was lippering gently on the rocks; when suddenly it seemed to come to boil a stone's throw from where he was sitting, and the strangest sea creature he had ever seen raised its head out of the sea and glared at him. After regarding him thus for a few seconds, it reared itself up and tried to catch hold of his bare dangling feet. It was fortunate for Alec that he was out of reach, for he was ronted to the spot by fear and surprise.<br>The creature had a broad head, and a wide mouth with large teeth or tusks, and cold baleful eyes. There was a long mane down the back of its neck that reminded Alec of a horse's mane. It made several attempts to reach him, bouncing up from the water. When at last it gave up, it plunged beneath the sea, rose once more to shake its head and mane till the water cascaded from it on all sides, then dived and disappeared.

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