Fabulous Beasts of Wales
Posted by: Nick Redfern on July 15th, 2012
In a new post at his Shuker Nature, blog, Dr. Karl Shuker says: “British mythology is replete with folktales and legends of fabulous beasts, including many that feature dragons and other reptilian monsters. Surely the most remarkable of these, however, are the jewel-scaled, plume-winged wonders that were reportedly still existing in Wales as recently as the 1800s. Marie Trevelyan brought these exquisite creatures to widespread attention in her book Folk-Lore and Folk Stories of Wales (1909), and her description of them is so vibrant and uniquely detailed for such an ostensibly implausible type of beast that it deserves quoting…”
And Karl does quote that description – and much more – right here…
About Nick Redfern
Punk music fan, Tennents Super and Carlsberg Special Brew beer fan, horror film fan, chocolate fan, like to wear black clothes, like to stay up late. Work as a writer.
This makes me nostalgic…Shuker’s “Flying Toads and Snakes with Wings” was my introduction to cryptozoology, and I recently managed to reacquire the book. I have no idea what the source of this particular tale was, but I do wonder sometimes if it could have been a species of “flying” snake whose appearance was exaggerated in the telling of the story.
Funnily enough, pythons happen to have tiny leg remnants whose only purpose as far as I can tell is during mating, and these are little more than claws externally anyway. But these are vestigial rear limbs, not forelimbs.