A Cornish Bestiary

A Cornish Bestiary brings together Cornwall’s reported, imagined and traditional creatures from natural history, folklore, ballads, journalism, literature and hoaxes. Luke Thompson places familiar modern legends such as the Owlman of Mawnan Smith and the Beast of Bodmin Moor alongside sea serpents, bear-dogs, giant birds, bigfoots, devil-fish and sea ghosts.

The collection also ranges through local stories including Camborne’s Frog King, Ladock’s feathered fiend and shoals of Holy fish. Animal lore appears in practical as well as monstrous forms, with accounts of slugs used against warts, spiders associated with whooping cough, rhymes for curing adder bites and the custom of feeding pasties to snails.