Species: ‘Swallow’ (Hirunda sp.); ‘Sea-swallow’ (=tern, Sterna sp.)
Source: ‘Culhwch ac Olwen’, the earliest Welsh prose tale.
Date: c.1100 A.D., but from the oldest-seeing part of a story with a known ninth century version.
Highlights: Our story pauses mid-way through to admire the figure of Culhwch, boy-hero. He’s so fly, even the mud off his horse’s hooves come out like swallows, and his hounds are as agile as terns.
Common tern (Stena hirundo) photographed by Tony Hisgett.
Species: The 35 most popular types of bird.
Source: ‘The Parliament of Fowls’ by Geoffrey Chaucer.
Date: c.1380-82.
Highlights: Considering Chaucer had no idea what he was talking about, his categorisation of birds into four categories was perhaps the best we could hope for.
Public domain woodcut from another text (‘The Woody Choristers’).
Part of the Vaughan coat-of-arms at Tretower Court, Brecon Beacons, south-east Wales.
Species: Generic snakey-snake, called an adder (Vipera berus) but has prey constricting habit like smooth snake (Coronella austriaca).
Source: The Vaughan family coat-of-arms and its descriptions (not as boring as it sounds, I promise!)
Date: c.1450 A.D.
Highlights: The Vaughan coat-of-arms shows three boys being strangled by snakes. This was inspired by the legend of a family member being born with a snake around his neck. Boring folklorists c.1900 interpreted this as an #IHateSnakes moment. They are wrong, it was originally the opposite. The writings of Lewis Glyn Cothi suggest comparing someone to a snake was a compliment. Continue reading
Posted in Amphibians and Reptiles, English, Welsh
Tagged adder, art history, artwork, battlefield, breconshire, coat-of-arms, eco-sensitive reading, figurative, folkloric approach, garden, harmony with nature, heroes as animals, history text, home, llys tre-twr, moreithig warwyn, nature is a pest, persecution, smooth snake, tretower, vaughan, vaughan family
Least weasel (M. nivalis) photographed by Medien-gbr and licensed for use under CC-BY-SA-3.0.
In one of Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, the main character Alisoun is described as a weasel. Most scholars have taken this as a parody of courtly love, a sign of Alisoun’s promiscuity or the character’s weakness. Could this actually be a complement?
Species: A ‘wesele’. The term was generic in the medieval period but most probably referred to Mustela nivalis, M. erminia or M. putorius.
Source: ‘The Miller’s Tale’, Chaucer’s most adult and therefore most well-known story.
Date: c.1380-1400.
Highlights: Alisoun, the main female character is compared to a weasel in her introduction. How could Chaucer say that about the poor innocent girl? Oh I remember. She’s a right weasel.
The portrait of St. Mark in the Lichfield (St Chad) Gospel.
In 2013 I had an academic paper accepted by the Journal of Late Antique Religion and Culture (JLARC). The journal is open access and you can read it here (link to pdf in the right hand column). I found that the manuscript animals were copied from manuscript to manuscript by closeted scribes, and were not based on real animals (e.g. lynxes, cats, wolves).
Species: The manuscript images were all derivative and made up a coherent, although unrealistic tradition of depicting lions (Panthera leo) not lynxes (Lynx lynx), wolves (Canis lupus) or cats (Felis catus; Felis sylvestris).
Source: Some of the oldest manuscripts in Britain: The illuminated gospels.
Date: 650-1000 A.D.
Highlights: One lion, that from the Lichfield (St Chad) Gospel (above) provoked a great deal of interest. It only had the stub of a tail and the scribe’s style made its body looked speckled. However in every other respect the lion was drawn in a derivative way to the mainstream tradition, and the answer is probably that the scribe simply forgot to paint the rest of the lion’s tail.
Brown bear photographed by Makeen Osman, licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0. Great spotted woodpecker photographed by Maarten Visser and licensed under CC-BY-SA-2.0. Compilation created by Lee Raye, and hereby released under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Species Mentioned: Possibly one bee-wolf (?Ursus Arctos? Dendrocopus Major?)
Source: ‘Beowulf’ the most famous Old English story.
Date: Uh-oh, best not to ask. The version we have probably somewhere c.700-1050.
Highlights: Beowulf is the all-star hero of his story, so his name must mean something, right? It quite nicely breaks down to beo-wulf (=bee-wolf). But what could a bee-wolf be?
Sea Eagle photographed by GerardM, licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0. Sea eagles (=white-tailed eagles; fish-eagles) often nest in lowland trees.
Species Mentioned: Most importantly the sea eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla).
Source: ‘Anogaeth i Rys ap Rhydderch o’r Tywyn’ a praise poem justifying why Rhys should take the lordship of his father.
Date: c.1485-1500.
Highlights: This text contains what is almost certainly a reference to a sea eagle, and may be therefore one of the last references to a sea eagle in Wales for centuries. However the sea eagle is identified in an old phrase and the continued use of this phrase might post-date the extinction of the eagle.
Photograph of a toad (B. bufo) by JKL-Foto, Licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0. Is this water clean or dirty?
Species mentioned: toads (?B. bufo; E. calamita?) snakes (?N. natrix?) and newts (?T. cristatus, L. vulgaris, L. helveticus?).
Source: ‘A Bawd’, a mock-sermon discussing bawdy (rude) people.
Date: 1630. Late for this blog but still centuries ahead of its time.
Highlights: John Taylor does not describe toads, newts and snakes as polluting the water they are in but rather as only being found in clean water. It is centuries before this fact is generally accepted, and even longer before the significance of amphibians and reptiles as bio-indicators is appreciated.
A sick European hedgehog out in daylight. Hereby released under CC-BY-SA.2.0 by Lee Raye.
Species mentioned: One curled-up hedgehog (E. europaeus). Not aggressive.
Source: ‘Passio Sancti Eadmundi’ (The Passion of Saint Edmund) and its Old English translation.
Date of source: 985-7 A.D. Translated shortly afterwards.
Highlights: King Edmund is compared to a hedgehog. That would be an insult to most kings but Edmund was a terrible king anyway, so the author of the text tries to make him a saint instead.
Posted in English, Latin, Mammals
Tagged figurative, heroes as animals, historical approach, holy species, literary approach, passion, saint's life
Lee Raye
Natural History 