The sturgeon is Britain's biggest native fish. It's extinct in our rivers today, but once upon a time it was a regular visitor, possibly returning here to breed. Here's a thread with some of the wild stories which were told when it was still found here. #envhist #animalhist 🧵🐟

Looking at it again, the Derbyshire one is from the Peak District so upland. The Warwickshire one is a mistake (sorry, embarrassing!) but the Anglesey (Holyhead) one and Northamptonshire ones are both breeding records. Here's the Northants one which the author admits is unusual 😁🐦

Here are all the early modern records I have of the ring ouzel, an upland bird like a blackbird but with a white breast. There aren't enough records to get a full picture of its distribution, but from the bird seems to have been more widespread in England and Ireland than it is today. #envhist 💟🪶📗

I'm in Glasgow this week, researching a 300 year old annotated list of wildlife. My current theory is it might have been compiled by Robert Simson, an 18th century maths professor! Excited to find out more. Thanks so much @glasgownathist.bsky.social for the funding!!

Today the wheatear is a less well known bird of upland walls and little islands, but 250-500 years ago, people knew it very well as the delicious little bird that lived in the inland rabbit warrens of south and central England! Love an inter-species alliance! 🐦🐇🤍 #AtlasofEarlyModernWildlife

A proof copy of my new book Creatures of Story and Song has just arrived! Excited! 🥳💚

The salmon is the best recorded fish in early modern historical sources. 🐟 There are oh so many records (disproportionate!) from Scotland, Wales, Connacht & SW England but few in the South & Midlands of England - salmon may have become rarer here in the medieval period. #AtlasofEarlyModernWildlife

But here's a story which a thousand years older! When Aeneas first came to Italy in the Aeneid, he came upon the wild white Laurentian Sow, nursing piglets. The God of the Tiber came out and told him this was a sign that Italy was offering itself the refugees from Troy for the founding of Rome. 🐗🏛️

In the Middle Welsh Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, Gwydion found his nephew Lleu Llaw Gyffes when he followed a domestic sow to find it grazing under a tree where Lleu was perched, shedding rotting flesh in the form of an eagle. 🦅🩸🐗

The stories basically go like this... Once upon a time St Kentigern was looking for a place to found an abbey. Suddenly he found a holy wild boar, all white. He followed it and it brought them to Llanelwy, where he went on to found St Asaph. 😱⛪

Do you know the medieval trope of the white pig? It is sometimes thought of as this fragment of pure Celtic folklore, related to the white breed of park cattle, or the hounds of Annwn. But I think that might be wrong... (Sneak peak thread from my new book! 🧵🐗)

250-500 years ago the huge jewelled sturgeon was an uncommon but well known fish in British & Irish rivers, especially in the Thames, the Severn and the Mersey. Now functionally extinct except for escaped stock - European populations are recovering and may recolonise! 🦈💙 #atlasofearlymodernwildlife

Here's my 21st century interpretation of 'Pais Dinogad'. It's a Middle Welsh elegy, perhaps originally written centuries earlier in Rheged. It describes Dinogad's father, a hunter in the Lake District. He used to catch 'llewyn' which we can argue to be a word for big cats. 🐯

Welsh borrowed some words twice from Latin, like 'draco' to 'draig' and 'dragon'. I think the same happened with 'leo' to 'llew' and 'llewon'. I think that 'llewyn' is a plural of 'llewon', like 'esgob'>'esgyb'. (sorry conservation people, this has got a bit nerdy 🤓🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿)

I think the foxes translation is wrong. We don't 'correct' manuscript lines that make sense already and something like this word does appear elsewhere! Most famously in 'Pa Gur', the Old Welsh Arthurian poem. Here Cath Palug, a monstrous cat (not a fox) is called a 'lleuon' (Middle Welsh 'llewon').

Lastly, what about the lynx? Some scholars have actually questioned the lynx too, because the word used for the lynx 'llewyn' looks like a mistake for a word for foxes 'llewyrn'. Though we have another word for foxes on the same line already so 'foxes and vixens'? 'hogs and pigs'. 🦊🦊

We can also argue that the original version of 'Pais Dinogad' may be very old because the place name 'Rhaeadr Derwennydd' seems to belong to Lodore Falls in the modern Lake District, and they haven't spoken Brittonic (the ancestor of Welsh) there since the fall of Rheged in the early 8th century. 🛶

In terms of language, the surviving version of 'Pais Dinogad' is not in Cumbric. It is in Middle Welsh. It has sometimes been argued to show influence of Cumbric dialect but this is debatable. 🐏🐑

A better way to imagine 'Pais Dinogad' is to follow the theory of R.L. Thomson - the use of the past tense in the verse suggests this might be an (unusual) elegy verse for adults, like the rest of the Gododdin poem which surrounds it. 😔🚣‍♂️

I don't think 'Pais Dinogad' can be a lullaby. There are comparable medieval cradle songs featuring mothers nursing babies. But songs like this are generally written for adults, not children. 👩‍🎤👶

I don't think 'Pais Dinogad' can be about a great lady making clothes for an infant. Early medieval elites in Britain who lived with enslaved people did not need to make clothes, they had people for that, or could commission outfits. 👸🪡

Here's where I'm coming from... I don't think 'Pais Dinogad' can be about a wealthy lady nursing her infant son. Early medieval British ladies did not raise their own children, they fostered them out. 👸👩‍🍼

'Pais Dinogad' is traditionally described as a 7th century Cumbric lullaby: a song sung by a wife about her husband's provider skills as she sews clothes for their baby. 👩‍🍼 We might call this the 'trad-wife' interpretation for short. You will not be shocked to learn it is outdated.😅

THE LYNX - it's a native species in Britain. How do we know? Our top textual evidence is from 'Pais Dinogad' (Dinogad's Smock). 📑 The trouble is, everyone gets this poem wrong! We need to push our theories about into the 21st century! Let's look at it again... (thread 🧵) (Art by Valériane Leblond 🐱)

Getting negging emails from the AI overlords about my book before it is even out 😭

Bruce also refers to an Old English list of signs edited in 1991 by Debby Banham! Very excited - I've ordered a copy and I'm really excited to read it now - perhaps I'll talk more about it next year if I can find some animal stuff to talk about 🐱💚

There is an amazing study of the sign language of Cluny Abbey by Scott G. Bruce called Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism. Bruce describes how the sign language was localised - so for example when they came to Canterbury the Cluniacs had signs for shellfish not needed in France! 🦪

Going back even further, Cluny Abbey in France was known to have a sophisticated set of signs. I've found this 12th century list of signs edited in De Antiquis Monachorum Ritibus (1690). 👵 archive.org/details/ita-...

Bridgettine monks and nuns in 14th century St Syon (London) used sign language to avoid sinful speech and had a list of approved signs described at the end of their canon! This list was edited by G.J. Aungier in The history and antiquities of Syon monastery (1840). 👍 Wow! archive.org/details/hist...

THE BESTIARY Most medievalists know that in the popular British second family of the Latin Bestiary, beavers are known for biting off their own testicles and throwing them at hunters to avoid being killed!