Cornish Bestiary

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A01=Luke Thompson
A12=Ele Marr
animal stories
Author_Ele Marr
Author_Luke Thompson
ballads
beast of bodmin moore
bestiary
cambornes frog king
Category=AGNA
Category=FN
Category=FXE
Category=GBD
Category=JBGB
Category=WN
Category=WQH
cornish animals
cornish book
cornish gift
cornish nature
cornwall
cornwall book
cornwall gift
cures
curious creatures
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
folklore
forthcoming
gunwalloe
ladock
natural history
news reports
owlman of mawnan smith
redruth
remedies

Product details

  • ISBN 9781837052813
  • Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
  • Publication Date: 01 Oct 2026
  • Publisher: The History Press Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
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Did you hear about the Redruth girl who vomited snails? Or how the saint of Gunwalloe saved his sister’s eye from a goose? Can you cure warts with a slug, or whooping cough with spiders?

Sea serpents and bear-dogs, giant birds and bigfoots, devil-fish and sea ghosts – these are the beasts that haunt the landscape of Cornwall. In this book of bizarre beasts you’ll find familiar faunal favourites like the red-eyed Owlman of Mawnan Smith and the Beast of Bodmin Moor as well as Camborne’s Frog King and Ladock’s feathered fiend, plagues of flies and octopuses and shoals of Holy fish. You’ll find beavers and boars, rhymes for curing adder bites and the reason we feed pasties to snails.

This compendium of Cornwall’s most curious creatures brings together stories from natural history and folklore, broadside ballads and news reports, celebrating the wonderful stories we share with the animals around us.

LUKE THOMPSON is a writer, publisher and academic from Cornwall, whose work focuses on the relationships between people and other animals, as well as on the literature of Cornwall. His work has been shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Prize and has won a Holyer an Gof award. He has also made some playful performative works, including a Phonetic Ouija Board and Psychic Test Cards, which have been performed across the UK. He teaches at Falmouth University and has a BA in Philosophy, an MA in Writing, Nature and Place, and an archive-based PhD on the Cornish poet Jack Clemo.

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