PUBLISHED TODAY! – SHUKERNATURE BOOK 1: ANTLERED ELEPHANTS, LOCUST DRAGONS, AND OTHER CRYPTIC BLOG BEASTS

Hot off the press – with magnificent front-cover artwork by Anthony Wallis, here is my very first ShukerNature book! (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)

If I wish to read a blog which is *only* about the narrow, limited topics of my own interests, I'll write it myself. If I wish to read a well written, extremely well researched blog on a wide variety of suspected, imagined, claimed, portrayed creatures from the mundane to the monstrous, from the Byzantine and the bizarre to the modern and the miraculous - I'll read ShukerNature.

Richard S. White, retired museum professional and vertebrate palaeontologist 

 – Facebook, 12 August 2017

It's been a long time coming – over eight years, in fact, since I first mooted the idea of preserving my ShukerNature blog posts in permanent, hard-copy book format – but it's finally here. In what is planned to be a regular series, today, 8 April 2019, sees the official publication of ShukerNature Book 1: Antlered Elephants, Locust Dragons, and Other Cryptic Blog Beasts.

Although I first became yoked to the internet via an email account back in 1997, followed by my own official website a year later (created by the late, much-mourned American cryptozoologist Scott T. Norman), I steadfastly remained immune to the world of online blogging until as relatively recently as 2009 – 20 January 2009, to be precise, when I finally gave in to temptation.

For after the Centre of Fortean Zoology (CFZ) kindly established it for me in tandem with their own 'umbrella' of CFZ-affiliated blogs called the CFZ Bloggo, that was the fateful date upon which a short item entitled 'Wolves of the Weird' (click here to read it) became the first of what currently stands at over 600 illustrated articles of varying lengths and exceedingly varied subjects that have been researched, written, and uploaded by me onto my very own, unique blog. As its many loyal readers will confirm, ShukerNature is devoted to cryptozoology, zoomythology, anomalous animals, animal anomalies, and unnatural history of every kind, as well as some investigations and reviews of certain ostensibly zooform entities that may be of paranormal, supernatural identity rather than corporeal creatures of zoology. It has also enabled me to preview various in-progress and forthcoming books of mine from 2009 onwards, and, via its Comments section at the end of each of my articles, allows readers to post their own thoughts, opinions, and information, thereby becoming a valuable source of original ideas, news, and data.

Knowing that my blog's contents would cover such a vast diversity of subjects, and that they would all be written in my own particular style (unencumbered by the necessities to conform to any one specific style convention as is so often the case when writing for specific publishers or publications), posed an especial problem for me with regard to what my blog's name would be. How could I possibly come up with a title that would encompass all of those subjects in a succinct yet definitive manner, and also emphasise that these were my writings, penned in my style? In fact, as it turned out, I didn't come up with such a title – someone else did.

That person was fellow cryptozoologist and CFZ colleague Oll Lewis. After hearing that I was having trouble coining a suitable title for my blog, he achieved what to me seemed the impossible – suggesting a title that fulfilled every requirement, covered every subject, incorporated a direct reference to me in it, and much more besides, yet, incredibly, did all of this by way of just a single word! And that word, which did indeed become my blog's title? ShukerNature. Oll has never disclosed his inspirations for what was indeed a truly inspired suggestion; but because he and I are of similar generations, I think it likely that a certain book and also quite possibly a certain song that both achieved considerable fame during our youth may have played their part, consciously or otherwise.

The book was the bestseller Supernature, written by the late anthropologist/ethologist Dr Lyall Watson, and first published in 1973. Its self-explanatory subtitle A Natural History of the Supernatural also set the scene for many of his equally-acclaimed future books; as did its very memorable front-cover illustration by renowned American artist Jerry Pinkney, depicting a flowering plant growing out of an egg. Indeed, this eyecatching artwork became something of an icon in its own right (and may be a homage to 'Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man' - a famous painting from 1943 by the celebrated Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali, which contains a reminiscent image). And speaking of homages:

A ShukerNature homage to Dr Lyall Watson's inspirational book Supernature and to Jerry Pinkney's iconic front-cover illustration for it (© Mark North / © Jerry Pinkney - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The song, entitled 'SuperNature' and released in 1977, was a disco classic by Cerrone (aka the Italio-French disco drummer/composer/record producer Marc Cerrone). In its original format, more than 10 minutes long, this song was the title (and opening) track of Cerrone's third album; but in a shorter format, just under 4 minutes long, it hit the singles charts all around the world in 1978. Its verses' lyrics (written by an uncredited Lene Lovich) took as their unusual theme for a dance song the dangers of tampering with the environment, turning ordinary creatures into dangerous monsters, with its infuriatingly-catchy chorus simply the repeatedly-sung word 'SuperNature'.

Thus was my blog, ShukerNature, born. (Amusingly, some time afterwards, a reader wrote to me saying how he had always been puzzled by my blog's title, wondering how and where it had originated – until one day, that is, when, while he had been thinking about this mystery yet again, Cerrone's song had suddenly begun to play inside his head, and the proverbial penny duly dropped with a loud clang!)

Within just a couple of years from my blog's creation, I was already receiving enquiries from readers as to whether I would be producing a ShukerNature companion book, or books, at some stage, containing selections of its most popular and intriguing blog articles. And when I enquired both on the blog itself and also via my various cryptozoology-linked Facebook pages and groups (including one devoted specifically to ShukerNature) whether there was indeed an interest out there for such a project, I swiftly received a very emphatic affirmative.

An additional reason for doing so was that by converting selections of my ShukerNature articles into a hard-copy published format, they would be rendered permanently accessible in a manner that online data, so often ephemeral in status, can rarely emulate. For whereas a book, once in print, has a guaranteed existence, a website can exist online one moment and vanish the next, thereby expunging a fund of unique, irreplaceable information.

And so I began planning what at that stage I was referring to as ShukerNature: The Book, alongside various additional writings. However, as sometimes happens, life – and death – had other plans for the direction in which my future would take. Or, as my wise little Mom used to remind me gently if I railed against my dreams and ambitions faltering or falling into disarray: "Man proposes, but God disposes" (which is a translation of the Latin phrase 'Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit', from Book I, chapter 19, of The Imitation of Christ by the German cleric Thomas à Kempis).

Thus it came to pass that my blog book was set to one side, and other projects that for one reason or another needed to take precedence were duly completed and published in its stead. Notable among these were my second, long-planned, and extremely comprehensive dragons book – Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture; a wide-ranging compilation of my most notable Loch Ness monster writings – Here's Nessie!; and of course my fully-updated, massively-enlarged, biggest-ever cryptozoology volume – Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors.

My three above-mentioned books (© Dr Karl Shuker)

These are all now published, and in the meantime the very many additional blog articles that I have continued to research, write, and post each year have provided me with an immensely expanded list of possible examples to include in my eventual ShukerNature compendium.

Formulating how such a book could be prepared, however, was not an easy task, and took a long time to accomplish to my own satisfaction. Indeed, the eventual volume that resulted proved to be so sizeable that the decision was finally taken to divide it into two separate ones, of equal length, to be published sequentially. Consequently, and after much deliberation in the choosing of its specific subjects, I now have great pleasure in publicising herewith on its official date of publication, 8 April 2019, the first of those two volumes, in what I hope will be an ongoing series of ShukerNature books.

Its contents – now saved forever from the vicissitudes of the internet, available for you to read and re-read whenever and wherever you choose to do, updated and expanded when new information has come my way since the original articles were uploaded online, and unequivocally unlike any other collection of writings, whether in print or out of it - document some of the most remarkable, spellbinding entities from my blog's furthest frontiers and most shadowy hinterlands.

After all, where else, within the covers of a single 418-page book (and sumptuously illustrated throughout via spectacular full-colour and rare vintage b/w pictures), are you likely to find such exotic zoological esoterica as locust dragons, antlered elephants, North America's alligator men and Egypt's crocodile children, reptilian seals and seal dragons, king hares and giant rabbits, fan-tailed mermen and scaly bishops, flying cats and even flying elephants, green tigers and blue lions, giant oil-drinking spiders and bemusing sea-monkeys, demonic dragonflies and fury worms, marginalia snail-cats and elephant rats, pukwudgies and Pigasus, ape-man Oliver, lightbulb lizards, mini-mummies, my very own mystery animal, and how ShukerNature famously hit the cryptozoological headlines globally with a series of astonishing world-exclusives exposing the long-awaited truth about Trunko?

To find out more about all of these, and numerous other no less fascinating, equally eclectic fauna too, loiter no longer – it's time to pay a visit to the weirdly wonderful (and wonderfully weird!) world of ShukerNature. So, please come in, I've been expecting you...

And if you're wondering how can I possibly follow all of that, the answer is simple – ShukerNature Book 2: Living Gorgons, Bottled Homunculi, and Other Monstrous Blog Beasts – due out later this year. And don't forget - you read about it here first!

You lookin' at me?? (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Last – but certainly not least – of all: I wish to offer a massive, sincere vote of thanks to all of you for reading and supporting my ShukerNature blog since its launch in 2009 – without your enthusiasm and interest, it could not have survived – and I look forward to sharing with you many more exotic, entertaining, esoteric, educational, and always thoroughly extraordinary wildlife secrets, controversies, mysteries, surprises, and curiosities, as well celebrating many more ShukerNature anniversaries, both online and in book form, through the years to come!

Copies of ShukerNature Book 1 can be ordered through all good bookstores, and can be purchased online at such outlets as Amazon UK (click here), Amazon USA (click here), and Barnes & Noble (click here). For further details concerning it and also my three previous books published by Coachwhip Publications, please click here.

Full cover wrap, including back-cover blurb (click picture to expand for reading purposes), from ShukerNatureBook 1 (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)

'THE SHAPE OF WATER' - A SHUKERNATURE REVIEW

Film still featuring the Amazonian gill man from The Shape of Water (2017 - first screened on 13 February 2018 in the UK) and a publicity poster for it (© Guillermo Del Toro/TSG Entertainment/Double Dare You Productions/Fox Searchlight Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly educational, non-commercial Fair Use basis for review purposes only)

Yesterday afternoon I paid my first visit of 2018 to my local cinema, to see The Shape of Water, and what a memorable, moving, and thoroughly mesmerising movie it was.

A fantasy drama directed by Guillermo del Toro, which earned for him a greatly-deserved BAFTA award for Best Director last Sunday, it is based upon a story co-written by him and Vanessa Taylor, and pays homage to a favourite monster movie from his childhood – the classic b/w 1950s film The Creature From the Black Lagoon. However, it also readily recalls one of his own earlier movies, Pan's Labyrinth (click here to read my mini-review of this equally spellbinding film after watching it last year), which is another dark fantasy by him imbued with the same fundamental message proffered now in The Shape of Water - namely, that love knows no boundaries, that love really can conquer all.

Film still featuring the gill man (played on land by Ben Chapman) and Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams) in The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954); and photograph of Ricou Browning, the uncredited actor who played the gill man in underwater scenes, with the gill man's head costume (© Jack Arnold/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly educational, non-commercial Fair Use basis for review purposes only / public domain)

The Shape of Water is a deftly-fused mash-up of the intrinsic themes present in Charles Perrault's timeless fairy tale Beauty and the Beast (self-explanatory) and Victor Hugo's immortal novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame (who is the monster, and who is the man?), and depicts both components brilliantly. For 'creature feature' aficionados and cryptozoologists alike, the film's visual focus is an Amazonian gill man (bearing a notable resemblance, as it does, to certain amphibious humanoid entities allegedly encountered in reality - click here to read a ShukerNature article by me concerning them), who had been worshipped as a living god by the local native tribes before being captured alive by sadistic military man Colonel Richard Strickland (played with tangible malevolence by Michael Shannon) and hauled back by him to a top-secret aerospace research facility in Baltimore, USA. Here he plans for this astonishing being, capable of breathing both on land and underwater, to be vivisected in order to learn how it functions physiologically, as a means of determining how humans could be modified or at least assisted in the future to live in Space, and thereby placing the USA far ahead of competing Russian technology during this early 1960s Cold War-set time period.

Played by Doug Jones in a truly stunning, breathtaking performance, this freshwater bipedal merman is an absolute triumph of seamless acting skill, costume creation, and overlain CGI, who conveys an incredible diversity of emotions, from savage survival to tender love, without speaking a single word. And so too does the heroine, Elisa Esposito, played with BAFTA- and Academy Award-nominated genius by Sally Hawkins, a young woman working as a cleaner at the research facility who for reasons darkly hinted at but never confirmed has been mute since her earliest days, when she was rescued from a river as an abandoned orphan with unexplained scars on her neck, but she can hear normally and is able to communicate far more eloquently than most people who are gifted with speech.

Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water: Creating a Fairy Tale for Troubled Times by Gina McIntyre, foreword by Guillermo del Toro – gorgeous large-format book published in December 2017, documenting the making of the film and its associated art (© Gina McIntyre and Guillermo del Toro – reproduced here on a strictly educational, non-commercial Fair Use basis for review purposes only)

It contains one truly gory but mercifully brief scene, in which one of their allies is hideously tortured by the vengeful Strickland after Elisa rescues and flees with the gill man just before it is due to be vivisected, but otherwise this magical, totally captivating film is required, unmissable viewing for lovers of sci-fi, fantasy, cryptozoology, period drama, and yes, romance too.

The period settings were superb, especially Elisa's apartment and that of her artist friend Giles (played by Richard Jenkins) down the hall, and so too were the evocative songs from the 1940s (an era beloved by Giles) – including a particular favourite of mine from that bygone age, 'I Know Why (And So Do You)', which served as a recurrent, unofficial theme (click here to view and listen to the version utilised, featuring Paula Kelly & The Modernaires with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, which originally appeared in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade). However, the vibrant magnetism between Elisa and the gill man, communicated wordlessly throughout but with palpable, ever-increasing intensity, is the beating heart of this extraordinary film.

A scene from Pan's Labyrinth, featuring the faun and the young heroine Ofelia (© Guillermo del Toro/Telecinco Cinema/Estudios Picasso/Tequila Gang/Esperanto Filmoj/Sententia Entertainment/Warner Bros - reproduced here on a strictly educational, non-commercial Fair Use basis for review purposes only)

Without giving anything away, the sublime ending of this movie and of Pan's Labyrinth are very similar in theme and execution, but given the nature of their stories there could have been no other option - any other conclusion would have cheated the audience and made a mockery of these films' raison d'être. If you see no other movie on the big screen this year, do go and see The Shape of Water, which is definitely afforded a significant additional dimension by a cinematic presentation. It has justifiably been nominated for no fewer than 13 Academy Awards, and, for a couple of hours, enables us to enter another world, one of fantasy, terror, pathos, and, above all, love - in all of its strange, hypnotic, unfathomable, indefinable, but life-empowering potency and glory. And if after having read my review, you still don't believe me, be sure to click here to view a tempting taster of a trailer for this movie currently accessible on YouTube.

Finally, and on a very personal note, in the last few seconds of the film the artist character Giles, who opened the film with a few words of introduction, ends it now with a few more, this time including a quote from a poem that I wasn't previously familiar with, but whose words, for reasons that those of you who know me and my own story well will fully understand, resonated within not only my heart but also my very soul, so that for several minutes after the film had ended and the credits were rolling by, I just sat there, alone, in the darkness, and remembered...

Unable to perceive the shape of you,

I find you all around me.

Your presence fills my eyes with your love,

It humbles my heart,

For you are everywhere.

   Attributed to Hakim Sanai, a 12^th-Century Persian poet

My mother Mary Shuker and I, holding my two models of the gill man from The Creature From the Black Lagoon movie, which was Guillermo del Toro's inspiration for The Shape of Water (© Dr Karl Shuker)

UPDATE: 5 March 2018

I'm delighted to announce that The Shape of Water won 4 Academy Awards at the 90th Academy Awards ceremony, held on 4 March 2018, the most won by any individual film at this year's Academy Awards ceremony. Its awards were for Best Film, Best Director (Guillermo del Toro), Best Original Score (Alexandre Desplat), and Best Production Design (Paul Denham), Many congratulations to all concerned, and very greatly deserved.

FROM BARGUEST AND BOOBRIE TO BLUE MEN OF THE MINCH - A SHUKERNATURE SELECTION OF ESOTERIC ENTITIES FROM THE BRITISH ISLES

A Blue Man of the Minch (I found this image online some time ago, unsourced and uncredited, but it looks like it may be a modified version – by person(s) unknown – of a picture from highly-acclaimed London-based photographer Chris Parkes's spectacular 'All that Glitter is Green' series; if so, © Chris Parkes, and thus used here on a strictly non-commercial, Fair Use basis only; also, please click here to visit Chris Parkes's website and see some of his wonderful photographs)

The British Isles are said to contain more ghosts than anywhere else in the world. Less well-known is that a remarkable diversity of monsters, mythological creatures, and mystery beasts have also been reported from these ancient lands, as will be seen here in this exclusive ShukerNature selection of some notably esoteric entities from my homeland. The trick, however, is trying to decide which category each of them belongs to - fact or fable, legend or reality, the natural world or the supernatural realm - a perilous choice that I will leave, gentle reader, to you!

BAISTE-NA-SCOGHAIGH

It is not widely known that Britain can lay claim to its very own indigenous species of unicorn. Yet according to Hebridean folklore, the lochs on the Inner Hebrides island of Skye are home to just such a creature, called the baiste-na-Scoghaigh (aka biasd na Srogaig). Despite its long legs, however, its bulky, lumbering form renders it more akin to a rhinoceros than to the elegant unicorn of classical legend; and as it can assume human form, this deceptive creature is technically a were-unicorn. See also here for more details.

Is this what the baiste-na-Scoghaigh looks like? (public domain)

BARGUEST

One of England's most dreadful bogey-beasts, the barguest is able to assume several different guises, but its most common form is as a huge, shaggy-furred black dog with enormous fiery eyes, and sometimes even a pair of horns. According to tradition, this spectral hound haunts lonely areas of wasteland in Yorkshire, but especially between Wreghorn and Headingley Hill, near Leeds. Its appearance is widely believed to foretell an impending death, usually of some important figure living locally, and is often accompanied by fearful howling, baying, and sometimes the sound of rattling chains.

Beware of the barguest! (© Jane Cooper)

BLUE MEN OF THE MINCH

The Minch is a strait separating the largest Outer Hebridean island, Lewis-and-Harris, from the Scottish mainland. According to local maritime tradition, it is also home to a fierce race of mermen, distinguished from other fish-tailed folk by their vivid blue skin. Happily, however, their fondness for attacking sailors can be readily countered, simply by berating them exclusively in rhyme!

BOOBRIE

Scottish Highland lore describes the boobrie as a black lake-dwelling bird with white marks upon its neck and breast, resembling the great northern diver Gavia immer but very much bigger, and deadlier. For whereas divers (or loons, as these birds are referred to in North America) are content to feed upon fishes, the boobrie will allegedly seize any sheep or cow that dares venture near this monstrous bird's aquatic abode, and haul it beneath the water, thereafter to feed upon its drowned carcase.

HAIRLESS BLUE HORSE

During 1868, a very unusual horse was exhibited at London's famous Crystal Palace. Not only was it completely hairless, but its skin was blue, so that it looked as if it had been sculpted from some rare form of oriental blue marble. This singular steed had been captured on the plains of South Africa by a merchant called Lashmar in 1860, and had been associating with a herd of those now-extinct, incompletely-striped zebras known as quaggas. The fate of the hairless blue horse after its Crystal Palace days is unknown - as is its identity. Could it have been a freak quagga, rather than merely a freak domestic horse run wild? See also here for more details.

Photoshopped image of a horse resembling the Crystal Palace-exhibited curiosity described here (© Daisiem worth1000 – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

LOUGH DUBH MONSTER

One day in March 1962, schoolteacher Alphonsus Mullaney and his son went fishing to Lough Dubh ('Black Lake') in County Galway, Ireland...and caught a monster instead. Suddenly, their line became taut, and when they attempted to reel in their catch, they saw to their horror that they were hauling up an incredible water beast like nothing ever reported before - or since. The size of a cow, it had short thick legs, small ears, dark grey skin covered in short bristles, and a large hippopotamus-like face - with a sharp rhinoceros-like horn on the end of its snout! Not surprisingly, the two anglers fled away, but when they returned with a posse of local men, the lake's mysterious monster had vanished again. See also here for further details.

Artistic representation of the Lough Dubh monster (© Orbis Publishing - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

LYMINSTER KNUCKER

An unexpectedly loquacious English dragon, the knucker lived in a deep pool near the church at Lyminster, close to Arundel, in Sussex. Unfortunately, however, it developed a great liking (in the gastronomic sense!) for sheep, pigs, and even the odd farmer or two...until a local youth called Jim Puttock came along. After deliberately over-feeding the knucker with a heavy pudding that gave it severe indigestion, Puttock promised to provide a remedy for curing its stomach ache. The remedy in question, albeit decidedly unorthodox, was also undeniably effective - after engaging it in seemingly innocent conversation, Puttock abruptly wielded his trusty sword and chopped off the knucker's head!

MINIATURE WOLVES OF ACHILL ISLAND

According to Irish tradition, County Mayo's Achill Island was home to a type of small wolf-like beast long after true wolves had died out elsewhere in the British Isles. They were said to resemble normal wolves in overall appearance except for their relatively small stature. No such creatures have been reported here in recent times, however, so even if they really did once exist they have now presumably died out.

ORKNEY BOAR-WHALE

According to Swedish archbishop Olaus Magnus (1490-1557), an extraordinary sea monster resembling a hybrid of whale and wild boar was sighted in the sea north of Scotland's Orkney Islands in 1537. In bestiary compiler Conrad Gesner's tome, Nomenclator Aquatilium Animantium... (1560), this Orcadian boar-whale was depicted with the head and body of a boar but with scales instead of fur, flippers instead of feet, and a fish-like tail. Not surprisingly, it has never been identified.

The Orkney boar-whale as depicted in Gesner's tome (public domain)

RENWICK COCKATRICE

During the demolition of an old church at Renwick in Cumbria, northern England, during 1733, workmen were terrified when a huge winged apparition rose up out of the foundations, for in appearance it closely resembled a cockatrice. According to legend, this was a lethal dragonesque monster combining reptilian scales,  leathery bat-like wings, and a snake-like tail with the feathered body and also the wattled, coxcomb-surmounted head of a farmyard rooster, and which was hatched by a toad from a shell-less egg laid by a cockerel! As this hideous creature sallied forth, the Renwick villagers fled in all directions - except for one brave man named John Tallantine. Armed with a lance hewn from the rowan tree, which is famed for its reputed power in warding off evil, Tallantine pursued the cockatrice into the churchyard, and after a fierce battle he succeeded in slaying it. As a reward, the grateful people of Renwick decreed that for ever afterwards Tallantine's descendants would be exempt from paying tithes. A copy of an account describing this alleged occurrence is preserved in Renwick's current church.

Cockatrice, depicted by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1600s (public domain)

ST SEONAN'S MONSTER

Like an amphibious cyclops, this maned water monster had a single eye gleaming brightly in the centre of its forehead. It also had a whale's fluked tail, and a mighty chest that sounded like a pair of huge bellows when it exhaled its scorching breath. It frequented the island of Iniscathy (aka Inis Cathaigh), located in Ireland's Shannon Estuary, and whenever it sharpened its razor-sharp iron talons, sparks of fire would dance upon the island's rocky surface. Eventually, however, it was allegedly banished by St Seonan.

SCREAMING WHITE RABBIT

Reputedly, an eerie spectral rabbit, pure white in colour and emitting a hideous screaming cry, has been encountered spasmodically in an area of Cobridge in northern Staffordshire, England, that is known locally as The Grove. It is claimed that this white rabbit is the restless ghost of teenager John Holdcroft, who was strangled to death by fellow teenager Charles Shaw one day in August 1833 after Shaw had accused him of cheating at a game of pitch and toss. Terrified by what he had done, Shaw hung a noose around his friend's neck and tried to pretend that he had committed suicide, but he later confessed to the murder and was sentenced to transportation. As for the rabbit, its eldritch shrieks are supposedly John Holdcroft's death screams.

WINGED FEATHERED SNAKES

Remarkably, until as recently as the early 1800s some local inhabitants believed that creatures apparently resembling winged feathered snakes congregated in large numbers within the wooded vales of Penllyne and Penmark in Glamorgan. Extraordinarily beautiful, they had shimmering bodies whose scales sparkled like multicoloured jewels, rainbow-hued crests, and outspread plumed wings. Despite their flamboyant finery, however, Glamorgan's feathered flying snakes were reputedly slaughtered like common vermin by farmers, on account of their taste for the farmers' poultry, until at last they were completely exterminated. See also here for more details.

Depiction of one of the winged feathered snakes that appeared on the front cover of the original 1997 American edition of my book From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings (© Dr Karl Shuker/Llewellyn Publications)

YELPING BEAST OF MANY COLOURS

Finally, but staying with extraordinarily beautiful creatures: Loosely connected to the Arthurian corpus of legends and originally composed anonymously in French during the 1300s, Perceforest is a 6-volume prose romance presenting a fictionalised origin of Great Britain. One memorable scene from it features Maronex the Gilded Knight, magnificently bedecked in brilliant golden armour, encountering a huge and equally dazzling, rainbow-hued creature that gave voice to ear-splitting yelping cries when it was pursued by him after it seized a stag in its jaws. Hence it is generally referred to as the Yelping Beast or the Beast of Many Colours. After dropping the deer as it fled headlong through the forest, the Yelping Beast finally reached its lair, a dense thicket in the midst of a deep marsh, and successfully eluded Maronex when his horse became enmired up to its belly in the marsh's black mud. Although Maronex was eventually able to free his horse, he conceded that it would be perilous in the extreme to attempt any further pursuit of the Yelping Beast through such treacherous, potentially lethal terrain, so he reluctantly turned back, his multicoloured quarry far beyond his reach by now. The creature's penchant for exceedingly loud yelping cries, incidentally, readily calls to mind comparable behaviour described for the snake-headed, leopard-bodied, hart-footed Questing Beast in traditional Arthurian legend.

The Yelping Beast of Many Colours and Maronex the Gilded Knight, from Royal 19 E II mss, Perceforest, Anciennes croniques Dangleterre, faictz et gestes du roy Perceforest, et des chevaliers du Franc Palais, version transcribed by David Aubert in late 1400s, Holland (public domain)

FAN-TAILED MERMEN AND SCALY SEA BISHOPS

The version of the Russian merman-depicting lubok that was sent to me by Robert Schneck (public domain)

On 18 August 2015, Facebook friend Robert Schneck kindly brought to my attention on my FB timeline a fascinating illustration that I had never seen before, and which opens this current ShukerNature blog article. As far as I am aware, it has not previously attracted any notable cryptozoological attention, so I've been conducting some investigations into it, whose findings I am now presenting here as follows.

The illustration is a Russian lubok, which, to quote from the Wikipedia entry for such images, is:

"…a Russian popular print, characterized by simple graphics and narratives derived from literature, religious stories and popular tales. Lubki prints were used as decoration in houses and inns. Early examples from the late 17th and early 18th centuries were woodcuts, then engravings or etchings were typical, and from the mid-19th century lithography…Folklorist Dmitri Rovinsky is known for his work with categorizing lubok. His system is very detailed and extensive, and his main categories are as follows: "icons and Gospel illustrations; the virtues and evils of women; teaching, alphabets, and numbers; calendars and almanacs; light reading; novels, folktales, and hero legends; stories of the Passion of Christ, the Last Judgement, and sufferings of the martyrs; popular recreation including Maslenitsa festivities, puppet comedies, drunkenness, music, dancing, and theatricals; jokes and satires related to Ivan the Terrible and Peter I; satires adopted from foreign sources; folk prayers; and government sponsored pictorial information sheets, including proclamations and news items". Jewish examples exist as well, mostly from Ukraine. Many luboks can be classified into multiple categories."

The lubok under discussion here shows what appears to be some form of merman-like entity (though with hind limbs instead of a single fish-tail) that had been netted at sea, but no doubt some details concerning this case were contained in the Cyrillic-script text included above the lubok's image. Seeking a translation of this text online, I came upon a very extensive one on professional artist Aeron Alfrey's Monster Brains blog (click here).

It stated that the merman lubok's text did indeed describe a strange aquatic humanoid, one which had been caught in Spain, and that the image had been created by an anonymous folk artist in 1739. What was particularly interesting, however, was that this blog then provided not just a translation of the text, but also a version of the merman lubok that contained additional Cyrillic text underneath the image – text that was not present in the version that Robert had found and sent to me – thus explaining why the translation was so lengthy. So here is this more detailed version of the merman lubok:

The version of the merman lubok containing additional text (public domain)

Incidentally, the source of both the lubok with additional text and the translation of it as presented on Monster Brains was given by this latter blog as http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/Lubok/lubnews.html– but this page can no longer be found online. Meanwhile, here is the translation of the full text as provided by the Monster Brains blog:

"A copy [of the news] from the Spanish town of Vigo from the 6th of April. The fishermen of the village of Fustin (Enfesta?) caught a sea monster or the so-called water man and with great difficulty dragged him by force in the net ashore. This amazing and rarely seen monstrum or sea wonder is from head to foot about 6 feet tall. Its head resembles a stake and is so smooth that it does not have even one hair on the top, only at the bottom it has a beard with long strands. The skin on its head and on the whole body is black and in some places covered with thin hair. The neck of this water old man is extremely long and the body unusually long and thick but in many respects it resembles the human body. The forearms and arms are very short, the palms are quite short, while the fingers are very long and up to the first joint, like a goose's feet, they are grown together and from there they go like human fingers. Its extraordinarily long nails resemble animals' and even though this monstrosity has low hanging breasts, it is, by all indications, of masculine gender. Its loins are short and grown together to the knees, and the shins are not very long either, but they are separated. Even though its feet are quite similar to human, the large toes hang quite close to each other like duck's feet. On its heels it has fish's scales, and on the skin of its back at the very bottom a bone has grown. A fin sticking out from it is just like a woman's fan, about 12 inches long, and when it opens it reaches even more than 12 inches. This was excerpted from the printed St. Petersburg News, received on the 20th of May of this, 1739, year, and the above news were reported in the No. 41."

I subsequently found this same translation and version of the merman lubok on another site, The Hermitage (click here), which is artist Rina Staines's Tumblr blog. She credits the translation to the same no-longer-available page source as Aeron's Monster Brains did, but additionally names the translator himself as one Alexander Boguslawski, and dates his translation as being from the year 1999. (Incidentally, call me paranoid, but in view of the highly mysterious nature of the entity depicted in this particular lubok, I do wish that the translator's surname had not included 'Bogus' in it!)

As can be readily seen, both the verbal description and the visual depiction of this entity reveal an exceedingly bizarre being – one so bizarre, in fact, that it is difficult to know how to assess it. Could it be some grossly-deformed human, perhaps? Or might it be a sea creature of known species but whose form has been distorted out of all recognition by some woefully-inaccurate verbal description spawned by the Chinese whispers syndrome from source to documentation, and illustrated by someone who did not see the creature itself but was instead entirely reliant upon the mutilated verbal account resulting from the Chinese whispers syndrome? Or is it possible that it truly was some extraordinary entity of a type still unknown to science – a veritable merbeing?

Regarding the option of this alleged merman being a severely deformed human: its cone-shaped head might have been an indication of microcephaly, as exhibited by certain individuals on record who have been dubbed 'pinheads'; its scaly skin may have been a possible allusion to ichthyosis; and its conjoined loins to the knees is a trait of sirenomelia, the so-called mermaid syndrome. However, it would surely be very unlikely (as well as exceedingly unlucky and unfortunate) for any one person to exhibit all of these very different, congenitally unrelated, and morphologically extreme conditions.

In any case, the single most outstanding morphological feature described for this entity is without doubt its apparent tail fin, depicted as a very large, multi-coloured, fan-like structure and described in similar vein too. If that feature is genuine, and could indeed open and close as claimed in the description, then we can evidently eliminate a teratological human from further consideration, because I cannot envisage how any congenital condition, however extreme, could create a structure even vaguely reminiscent of this fin.

Another scaly merman-like entity with hind limbs, as documented in The Animal Book, written by famous Italian humanist and Renaissance author Pietro Candido Decembrio (1399-1477), commissioned by Ludovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, and published in 1460, with its illustrations added during the next century – click here for more anomalous entities featured in this book (public domain)

Could the lubok have resulted from a much-distorted description of some known (but possibly not overly familiar?) sea beast? There is no doubt that the medieval and Renaissance bestiaries are full of grotesque illustrations of beasts known to modern-day science but not so familiar to layman observers back then. Yet even if so, it would surely require a truly massive stretch of the imagination and all but entirely unrestrained, unlimited powers of mis-description to yield a bipedal humanoid being with a conical cranium, four limbs, and a huge caudal tail fin from anything as zoologically mundane as a pinniped, cetacean, sirenian, or shark, for instance.

As for it constituting a bona fide merman: I have documented elsewhere on ShukerNature (click here) some very intriguing cases of mysterious carcases that have been put forward at one time or another as evidence for the reality of merfolk, and which, if the descriptions of such carcases were accurate (none of them, tragically, was retained or scientifically examined), cannot be readily identified with any known marine life-forms. Consequently, although I freely admit that the reality of such entities is very remote, I am loathe to discount entirely the possible existence of some kind of specialised sea-dwelling mammal that bears a superficial resemblance to the fabled mermaids and mermen of classical legend.

Of course, there is also a fourth possible explanation, and which may well be the most plausible – namely, that the entire report was a journalistic hoax, or at the very least merely a relocated rehash of some earlier account from the annals of early natural history. In relation to this latter prospect, when he sent me the abridged version of the merman lubok Robert mentioned that the entity's pointed head reminded him of the sea bishop.

Lovers of bestiaries will be very familiar with this latter creature and its scaly-skinned image, which, in the tradition of bestiary and proto-encyclopaedia compilers for many centuries, has been reproduced with minor variations in numerous works dating from the mid-1500s onwards.

As far as I can tell, the sea bishop's earliest documentation was in French naturalist French Belon's work De Aquatilibus (1553), followed a year later by French marine biological researcher Guillaume Rondelet in his own tome Libri de Piscibus Marinis (1554), where he recorded a sighting of it from 1531 in the Baltic Sea off Poland by physician Gisbertus Germanus. Rondelet's work also contained an illustration of this sea bishop, but perhaps the most famous depiction of it appeared in 1558, as an engraving in the fourth volume of Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner's monumental multi-volume, 4500-page Historia Animalium (1553-1558):

Engraving of the sea bishop, from Conrad Gesner's Historia Animalium (public domain)

This extraordinary sea monster was portrayed as a highly anthropomorphic humanoid-fish composite, and its sighting in 1531 was during Gesner's own lifetime (1516-1565). However, there is some confusion as to the creature's subsequent fate (not documented by Gesner).

Some sources state that it was captured alive and taken to the King of Poland, who wished to keep it, and was also shown to a group of Catholic bishops, to whom it gestured, appealing to be released, whereupon the bishops granted its wish and the creature in return made the sign of the Cross before disappearing back into the sea. (If nothing else, this is an interesting example not merely of ecclesiastical solidarity but also of the popular belief dating back as far as the time of Plato, 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC, that everything on land has a counterpart in the sea.) Other sources, conversely, document a sadder, less familiar end for the sea bishop, claiming it was actually caught off Germany, not Poland, and died in captivity three days later after refusing to eat (but I wonder if this story's differing location may originate from some confusion involving the name of its eyewitness, Gisbertus Germanus?).

Another well known version of the classic sea bishop illustration appeared in Johann Zahn's Specula Physico-Mathematico-Historica Notabilium ac Mirabilium Sciendorum (1696):

The sea bishop as depicted in Zahn's tome (public domain)

There is no doubt that the Spanish merman portrayed in the Russian lubok is reminiscent of the Baltic sea bishop, especially if the latter's billowing fin-like cloak is equated with the merman's fan-like caudal fin:

Spanish merman compared with Baltic sea bishop (public domain)

So if the sea bishop may provide a precedent of sorts, or possibly even a direct source or inspiration, for the Spanish merman, what might the sea bishop itself have been?

In his magnum opus, Gesner had also included an engraving and description of another mysterious 'human fish', the so-called sea monk. Again, this had been previously documented by Rondelet in his Libri de Piscibus Marinis, and by Belon in De Aquatilibus, but it was Gesner's coverage of it that first brought this creature to widespread attention. Here is Gesner's engraving:

Engraving of the sea monk, from Conrad Gesner's Historia Animalium (public domain)

This marine monster had allegedly been caught off Norway according to Gesner (or in the Øresund, the strait separating Sweden from the eastern coast of the large Danish island of Zealand, according to some other sources) in 1546, once again during Gesner's own lifetime, but its carcase was not retained; instead it was swiftly buried as an abomination on the orders of the Danish king, Christian IIII. In subsequent centuries, however, it has attracted (and still attracts today) considerable interest and controversy as to what it may have been.

Japetus Steenstrup's comparison of two versions of the sea monk engraving with, at centre, a giant squid (public domain)

Identities that have been proffered by various researchers include a giant squid (by 19^th-Century Danish zoologist Japetus Steenstrup and more recently by giant squid chronicler Richard Ellis), an angel shark Squatina squatina (a large, dorsoventrally flattened species commonly dubbed a monkfish after its superficially monk-like form, proposed in 2005 by St Andrews University ecologist/mathematician Dr Charles Paxton and co-researcher Dr Robert Holland from the Freshwater Biological Association), a walrus (by veteran cryptozoologist Dr Bernard Heuvelmans), and various species of phocid seal.

Yet whereas I can see points in favour for each of the above creatures as identity contenders for the sea monk, I can see none for any of them as identity contenders for the sea bishop.

The angel shark or monkfish Squatina squatina, vintage illustration from 1877 (public domain)

As with the sea monk, I have encountered various attempts to reconcile the sea bishop with some form of squid. Yet even if we equate the sea bishop's markedly pointed head with the pointed rear portion of a squid's body, its two hefty-thighed legs are a poor substitute for the ten long slender arms and tentacles of a squid – unless we can envisage a squid whose eight shorter arms are united and obscured within some form of web-like interconnecting membrane, thereby explaining the bishop's cloak, with the latter's two legs being the longer prey-capturing tentacles of the squid?

Alternatively, bearing in mind that it was meant to be a sea bishop, might this creature's very pointed head have simply been an exaggerated (or even a completely fabricated) description, in order to provide it with an equivalent of sorts to a real bishop's mitre? It's all very tenuous, to say the least, and offers even less likelihood as a reasonable explanation for the Spanish merman with its caudal fanned fin.

In an interesting Folklore journal paper from 1975, W.M.S. Russell and F.S. Russell proposed that the sea bishop may actually have been a skilfully executed gaff along the lines of the Jenny Haniver. In their paper, they revealed how they had actually created a couple of Jenny Hanivers in the form of sea bishops, using two small alcohol-preserved specimens of the thornback skate Raja clavata.

A much-reproduced engraving of a Jenny Haniver, from Ulisee Aldrovandi's tome Monstrorum Historia (1642) (public domain)

For now, however, in the absence of any tangible evidence for their identities, both the sea bishop engraving and the Russian lubok's Spanish merman remain pictorial enigmas, which may bear little if any resemblance to the original creature(s) that they depict – always assuming of course that any such creature ever existed to begin with!

I plan to pursue the Spanish merman now via a different route, investigating whether other, preferably Spanish reports of its alleged capture exist – any discoveries will be included here as updates.

My sincere thanks to Robert Schneck for kindly bringing the Russsian merman lubok to my attention.

Sea monk and sea bishop sharing a page in Conrad Gesner's Historia Animalium (public domain)