CHRISTMAS CREATURES

As the Christmas season draws nearer, here is a survey of some of the many fascinating animal associations with this very special time of year that occur in Yuletide legend and tradition.

 

 

THE NIGHT WHEN ANIMALS SPEAK

 

In many lands, there is an age-old folk belief that from midnight on Christmas Eve until dawn breaks on Christmas Day morning, animals are blessed with the gift of human speech, in memory of the lowly stable creatures that surrounded the Holy Family in the manger. During that magical period, they are able to converse with one another, enabling them to voice their adoration of the newborn Jesus, and also to discuss how well (or otherwise) they are cared for by their human masters.

 

This belief formed the basis of a wonderful Gamma Films cartoon special entitled 'The Night The Animals Talked' (1970), which was regularly shown on television at Christmas in the UK when I was a child, but which, sadly, has not made an appearance now for many years. Bring it back, please!! (Happily, it can be viewed on YouTube.)

 

A still from 'The Night The Animals Talked'

 

Moreover, according to the same folk belief the farmyard cattle and horses kneel in prayer, turning to the east as they recall how they knelt in humble homage before the divine infant on that first Christmas of all, in a stable far away at Bethlehem. After being converted to Christianity by European missionaries, many native American Indians adopted a similar tradition to their Old World teachers, claiming that the wild deer kneel in the forests at midnight on Christmas Eve, in respect for the Great Spirit.

 

Even today, according to rural superstition in parts of Britain it is said to be extremely unlucky to observe farm animals in their stables and stalls during the early hours of Christmas morning. Not only will the animals not carry out their homage, but misfortune will plague those whose prying behaviour has prevented the creatures from doing so. By the same token, because farm animals were present at the birth of Jesus, it is a longstanding farming tradition to give their livestock extra food at Christmas - a gift in recognition of their ancestors' sacred status as witnesses during that first Christmas. Of course, in modern times this custom has been extended to pet animals too, especially dogs.

 

 

THE BEES AND THE BIRDS

 

According to a very charming folk tradition, bees awaken from sleep in Missouri at midnight on Christmas Eve and, in loud buzzing resonance, hum the Old Hundredth Psalm. In Eastern Europe, birds are said to sing throughout the night before Christmas, and even the least musical species are temporarily blessed with dulcet voices as sweet as those of the melodious nightingale, so that they can offer their own paean of praise and thanks for the birth of Jesus. Similarly, cockerels crow joyfully all night, to announce the Holy Child's arrival.

 

 

CALLING BIRDS, OR COLLY BIRDS?

Speaking of singing birds: one of the most familiar Christmas songs is 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'. Everyone has sung it, but how many people can confidently identify the species to which the four birds given on the fourth day of Christmas belong? In some modern-day versions, they are referred to, very vaguely, as calling birds. In the more popular, original version, however, they are described as colly birds - but what are colly birds?

In fact, 'colly' (also spelled 'colley') is a rural name, particularly prevalent in Somerset and Gloucestershire, for the blackbird, and translates literally as coal-black.

 

Incidentally, this should not be confused with the real colly birds or colies, which constitute an exclusively-African taxonomic order of birds also known as mousebirds, on account of their rodent-like scurrying movements and predominantly grey plumage.

 

An African colly bird, wholly unrelated to its Christmastime namesake.

 

 

THE CHRISTMAS ROBIN

 

Closely related to the blackbird is the robin, whose small, cheery, red-breasted form is nowadays synonymous with Christmas and appears on millions of Christmas cards each year. Its links with Christmas, however, like so many other current Yuletide symbols and customs, actually stem from beliefs dating back to cultures prevalent long before Christianity.

 

The robin's fiery-plumaged breast readily inspires images of flames. Accordingly, in ancient times it was deemed to be responsible for bringing fire to mankind. In Norse mythology, it was also associated with Thor, god of thunder and lightning. This symbolism was perpetuated but subtly transformed in an early Christian fable, which tells of how the small fire warming the Holy Family in the stable began to die out, until a flock of robins succeeded in rekindling it by fanning its embers with their wings. In so doing, however, their breast feathers were scorched black, but in thanks for their act of kindness the Virgin Mary rewarded them by bestowing upon their singed feathers a bright scarlet hue that would be perpetuated by their descendants forever. 

 

NOT FROM TURKEY, BUT FROM MEXICO 

Another bird closely associated with Christmas, but for a very different reason, is the turkey. As this species is native to the New World, however, it only became known in Europe following the first great Western voyages to the Americas, particularly the expedition to Mexico led by Cortes. Until then, the most popular bird consumed at Christmas in Europe was the goose, plus, for those wealthy enough to afford them, the swan and the peacock - but the turkey's succulent flesh helped it to usurp all of these as the favourite bird for Christmas feasting. Although today's domestic version is popularly believed to derive from the wild turkeys of North America, in reality it is descended from counterparts that had already been domesticated by the Aztecs in Mexico, as discovered by Cortes.

 

The reason why it is called the turkey seems to stem from an unfortunate confusion of names. When the first turkeys reached Europe, they were mistaken by some for the African guineafowl, which at that time was known as the turkey (because it was exported from Turkey). Consequently, they acquired this same name - to the extent that, today, most people have long forgotten that the 'original' turkey was actually a species of guineafowl.

 

HOW SANTA CLAUS GAINED HIS REINDEER - AND HIS KANGAROOS! 

Perhaps the most popular of all animals in Christmas tradition are the reindeer that draw the presents-loaded sleigh of Father Christmas, alias Santa Claus. In fact, this is quite a recent addition to Yuletide lore, stemming for the most part from the fertile imagination of a languages professor from New York called Clement Moore - best-remembered today, however, for his delightful poem 'A Visit From St Nicholas'. Penned in 1822, its opening lines famously read: "'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;"

 

It was here that Santa's eight trusty reindeer, each with its own name, made their debut, but just as Santa supposedly derives from Lapland, so too, most probably, did Moore's inspiration for his antlered steeds. For according to Lapp mythology, the snow and freezing cold weather typical of northern Finland at this time of year is brought down from the mountains to the plains each winter by a herd of reindeer, driven by a suitably chilly figure known as Old Man Winter. Prior to Moore's poem, Santa was normally depicted as riding a white horse, and sometimes even a goat!

 

Last, but certainly not least, in our zoological Christmas is its most unlikely member - the kangaroo! However, in modern times it has indeed gained Yuletide associations, at least in Australia, where modern fables tell of how Santa's sleigh is drawn through the sky here not by reindeer but instead by a team of burly bull kangaroos, or boomers.

Have a great Christmas! See you next year.

 

A Christmas robin snapped just a mile or so from where I live! ((c) Tony Hisgett/Wikipedia - CC BY 2.0 licence)

STAR STEEDS AND OTHER DREAMS - A PRE-CHRISTMAS OFFER

Pre-Xmas Special: I've a few spare copies of Star Steeds and Other Dreams here, so if anyone wishes to buy one from me before Christmas I'll be happy to sign it. Send me an email at karlshuker@aol.com with details & I'll reply with payment & address info. If you already have a copy, I'll be happy to post you a Star Steed-personalised self-adhesive label signed from me to you, which you can affix inside your copy. Again, just send me an email for details.

All the best, Karl

A LAKE IS A LAKE IS A LAKE...ISN'T IT?

Taimen

Some months ago, Richard Freeman in his blog was perplexed about the location of a certain Tibetan lake said to house monsters, which I was able to resolve by revealing that for reasons still unknown to me it has been referred to by a variety of different names, of which Lake Wembo is just one.

As it happens, moreover, there is another Chinese 'monster' lake that is mystifying me for a similar reason - over the years, its name has inexplicably changed, causing some confusion at first as to whether the two names did indeed refer to the same body of water. I refer to what was originally called Lake Hanas, but which in more recent years is now repeatedly called Lake Kanasi. Has the name officially changed, or it is merely a question of a different transliteration from Chinese to English being adopted (as with Peking to Beijing, for instance)? If anyone has any info, I'd love to receive it.

Meanwhile, for anyone who may not know about the fascinating monsters of Lake Hanas/Kanasi, here is what I wrote about them in 2002 within my book The New Zoo: New and Rediscovered Animals of the Twentieth Century (which will be republished in 2011 in a new, expanded, updated edition):

"THE MONSTER FISHES OF CHINA'S LAKE HANAS

"Officially, the largest specimen of freshwater fish on record is a 15 ft European catfish Silurus glanis, caught in Russia's Dniepper River sometime prior to the mid-1800s (though this species as a whole is generally shorter than the pa beuk, officially deemed to be the world's largest freshwater fish). As a consequence, the lake-dwelling fishes reported in July 1985 by no less an authority than China's eminent biologist Prof. Xiang Lihao, from Xinjiang University, attracted appreciable scientific interest.

"In July, the professor and a party of students arrived at a large but remote body of water called Lake Hanas, situated in northwestern China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region, in order to examine its potential as the site of a future nature reserve. On 24 July, one of the students observing the lake from a watchtower built two years earlier noticed several huge reddish-coloured objects moving at the water's surface. When the professor and students scrutinised them closely through binoculars, they discovered to their astonishment that they were enormous salmon-like fishes, whose heads, tails, and spiny dorsal rays could all be clearly discerned. Just how enormous they were, however, was not revealed until the next day.

"That morning, while again being observed through binoculars by Xiang Lihao, one of the fishes very obligingly aligned itself in parallel with a stretch of the bank extending between two trees. Armed not only with binoculars this time but also with a camera, the professor took some photos, then measured the distance between the trees. Using this measurement, he was able to calculate from the photos that the fish was at least 33 ft long!

"A large salmon known as the taimen Hucho taimen is indeed known from several rivers in northern China, but this species' maximum recorded length is a mere 6.5 ft - far short of the Lake Hanas monsters. Worth noting is that giant red fishes in this lake have been reported for decades by local villagers, but as the lake had not previously attracted scientific attention such reports had not been widely circulated. Now, with an eyewitness of Prof. Xiang Lihao's scientific standing, there should be no question concerning their existence or authenticity as giant fishes. So unless they are abnormally huge taimen, the Lake Hanas fishes must surely comprise a spectacular new species, requiring formal description and study."

An updated account of these creatures will appear in my new, updated New Zoo.

FIELDS OF REMEMBRANCE

I'm happy to say that my poetry book, Star Steeds and Other Dreams, is now in print and can be purchased from Amazon, directly from its publisher CFZ Press, and by order via all good bookshops. Consequently, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Jon very sincerely for enabling this long-held hope of mine - to see my poetry published one day - to come true.

As my book contains some cryptozoologically-relevant poems, normally I would have included one here, to launch it. Reading through its contents, however, I was reminded that there was a far more relevant poem - bearing in mind that this forthcoming weekend sees Remembrance Sunday. Consequently, although this blog is typically devoted to mystery beasts and the like, I hope that you will forgive my deviating from the norm, just this once, in order to pay my respects to all of the brave men and women in England and elsewhere throughout the world during wartime who have sacrificed so much:

The symbolic association of the poppy with the remembrance of those who fought and fell during wartime is very potent, and is one that I sought to capture and honour in the following poem – my own tribute to those brave heroes who gave their lives so that we could live ours. May we never forget them, and the sacrifice that they made for all of us.

FIELDS OF REMEMBRANCE

Far through the countryside’s languorous dreaming
Strolled I one morning in summertime past,
Wondering why this enrapturing vista
Couldn’t unchanging forever more last.

And as I gazed o’er its velvet-gowned valleys,
There lay a poppy field, burnished and bright;
Scarlet heads tossing on stems green and slender,
Swaying round ever to meet the sun’s light.

Crimson and fiery as dancing infernos,
Eyes filled with darkness like eveningtide’s shades,
Peering through petals emblazoned with ruby,
Outwards forever to sunlight displayed.

And as I stood there, their message came softly,
Brought by the zephyr on swift wings of Love;
For, as I listened, their spirits drew nearer,
Borne ’neath the cloudbanks of Heaven above.

E’en though they spoke without words, without voices,
Eyes sparkling brightly from tall fiery heads,
Theirs was a message more real, yet more distant,
Stranger than any before – for they said:

“We are the spirits of those who for Freedom
Gave up their lives in the struggle of War.
We are reborn in the world they created,
Shedding the tears and the ills that they bore.”

And as I watched them, their petals drooped downwards,
Burdened with dewdrops, each tender and clear,
Capturing memories borne through all ages,
Living again in each poppy-shed tear.

Theirs was a love more intense, more consuming,
Than could be ever disrupted by War;
Peace was their dream and their only ambition,
This was their goal – this is what they died for.

And as I left, still their beauty burnt brighter,
Bright as the sun scorching upwards and higher;
Ne’er would their courage and hope be forgotten,
Cherished fore’er in the poppies’ bright fire,

Burning fore’er in the hearts of all mankind
Living in peace after violence and War.
Freedom has come to this fair English country:
This was their dream – this is what they fought for.

A PERFECT PICTURE OF MYSTERY - A POSITIVE OUTLOOK?

Following the query in my previous blog about what the enigmatic Canzanella mystery beasts painting, which looks very like a photo-negative with black background and ghostly white-furred animals, might look like if it were converted to a photo-positive version by colour-inverting it to yield a white background and colour-furred animals, I have duly done this. So here is the original version (top pic). And here's the very thought-provoking colour-inverted version (bottom pic). What do you think? Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice may well have said!

A PERFECT PICTURE OF MYSTERY

As I've often noted, mystery animals can turn up in the most unlikely places - and back in 2002 one of these just so happened to be the American version of ebay, the online auction house.

From 16 to 26 September 2002, a most extraordinary painting was offered there, as Item #907237942, by a seller from Old Town, Florida, using the name ectopistes@webtv.net and requiring an undisclosed reserve price. According to the seller's description of this painting, it was an original unframed water-colour, measuring 22" by 30", bearing the signature Canzanella, and it depicted a pair of very odd-looking mammals - see above photo.

The one in the foreground was described by the seller as white with a very slight pinkish hue (as the seller's video-camera photo of the painting had made it seem yellow). The seller had owned the painting for roughly 28 years after paying a thousand dollars for it, but had no information as to what the animals in it were. Emphasising their curious appearance, he/she had entitled the item 'Strange Cryptozoology Animal Painting'.

Certainly, the creatures depicted are decidedly unusual, even sinister, and I cannot readily identify them with any known species. There are certain similarities to badgers (though the portrayed animals' legs seem too long for all but perhaps the Asian hog badger Arctonyx collaris), and others to various viverrids. The pink-hued white fur of the foreground specimen may indicate albinism.

In any event, the painting is reproduced here, and I'd welcome any opinions or information concerning the mystifying animals depicted, and the equally mysterious artist responsible for depicting them.

FINDING OUT ABOUT 'FINDING OUT'!

Naga king, from Finding Out (Angus McBride)

Scottish cryptozoologist Alan Pringle has brought to my attention a very intriguing mystery of the cryptozoologically-related kind. Back in 1970 or 1971, at a friend's home, he saw a complete set of a magazine partwork series containing at least 30-40 issues, on an encyclopaedic or scientific theme (possibly aimed at children), and entitled Finding Out.

However, it was not their contents, but their covers, that attracted his particular interest and attention, because each issue's back cover featured an animal or entity from the myths and legends of the world, including a number that have cryptozoological relevance. A very dramatic, full-colour illustration of the creature occupied one half of the cover's page, with accompanying text occupying the other half.

The creatures that Alan can definitely remember appearing in this set of covers included the western dragon, eastern dragon, siren, tokoloshe, leshy, thunderbird, Midgard serpent, Assyrian winged bull, minotaur, centaur, bunyip, Egyptian ammut (soul eater), sphinx, and harpy. Others that he thinks may have been present include the werewolf, vampire, unicorn, cyclops, zombie, and banshee.

Alan has never seen this partwork again (and has long since lost contact with the friend who owned it), but he can still vividly recall some of the back covers due to their very eyecatching nature. I have certainly never seen them, and despite their dramatic appeal they do not seem to have been reproduced in any other publication. Moreover, in a letter to me from Phil Hide of Aylesbury, I learned that he actually owns most issues of this partwork up to volume 11, and that it was published by Purnell & Sons. Unfortunately, none of those particular issues' covers has any cryptozoology painting!

Happily, however, I have also received a letter from Alex Lamprey of Cardiff, who owns seven issues from volumes 16 and 17, and each of these issues' covers does depict a mystery beast or legendary entity. These are: sea serpents, bunyips, the cailleach-bheur, morrigan, gnomes, the Little People, and lamassu. Obviously, therefore, this series of illustrations did not begin until sometime after volume 11. The artist responsible for them was Angus McBride.

If there is anyone else out there who has seen this partwork (or, better still, owns an edition of it ior at least a run of those issues with cryptozoological back covers), or can offer any extra details, I'd love to hear from you.

STOP PRESS: 20 February 2011.

I'm delighted - and extremely grateful - to say that Alex Lamprey has very kindly donated to me his above-mentioned seven copies of Finding Out. They arrived this weekend, and their Angus McBride back-cover illustrations are every bit as spectacular as I'd hoped for! Needless to say, these near-legendary magazines (at least in my eyes!) now constitute a greatly-treasured addition to my library and images archive, and I shall be keeping a sharp lookout for the remaining 23 issues with McBride zoomythological back covers in order to complete my collection. Meanwhile, a massive THANK YOU!! to Alex for fulfilling a long-held ambition of mine to own at least some of them.


STOP PRESS: 3 March 2011.

Click here to read the fully-illustrated version of my ShukerNature blog post containing today's very exciting news! Thanks to the kindness of correspondent Ivan Waldock, who owns all 36 issues of Finding Out that possess cryptozoological/mythological back cover illustrations, and has sent me a scan of every one of them, I have been able at long last to provide the full set here online!