GUEST BLOGGER RICHARD HOLLAND: On a roll

Once again we hand you over to guest blogger Richard Holland, editor of Paranormal Magazine, and all round good bloke. He is a regular visitor tho these pages, and I am sure that you will all agree with me that this is jolly good news for all of us..

A motif one regularly sees in illuminated manuscripts and bestiaries is that of the ‘rolling stoat’, that is to say a stoat or weasel with its tail clasped in its jaws and apparently wheeling along in a novel manner.

My local parish church, that of St Mary’s in Mold, Flintshire, has an unusual feature, an amusing frieze of animals which runs in an unbroken line round the building. It is contemporary with the church itself, which was completed in 1501. Among the cats, dogs, cattle, dragons and imaginative hybrids represented in this frieze there are two stoats or weasels cheerfully rolling along ouroborus-style.

I’d always assumed this was just a bit of fun, a medieval jest, but a snippet I found in ‘Bye-gones’ – that old journal I spent several years picking apart – has made me ponder. I refer to an entry, dated October 12, 1904. A correspondent, Mr W H Bickerton, wrote in response to a letter submitted by another reader the previous week about an unusual stoat that was caught near Shrewsbury. This specimen was described as being ‘entirely without forelegs’, which had raised the question, ‘how the animal so bereft could move about?’. Now we come to Mr Bickerton’s contribution:

‘A woodman employed on a large estate in South Oxen [sic] once told me that on the previous day he had seen a stoat robbing a pheasant’s nest, and carrying the eggs to a wood stack a short distance off. The means adopted were as follows:- The stoat first clasped an egg with his fore paws against his chest, resting his head upon them, and then rolling himself up into a complete ball, with impetus from the hind legs rolled over and over until he reached the store-house.

‘If a stoat with his full complement of legs could carry a pheasant’s egg, I think he could manage personal locomotion when short of two. The woodman broke up the wood stack and found eighteen pheasant eggs stored away.’

So, maybe not so fanciful, then?

Incidentally, apropos of absolutely nothing other than that I’ve just remembered it, I wonder if you know what the country folk of Monmouthshire and Gwent called a mole? According to local historian and author the late Fred Hando, a mole was known in those parts as a ‘Woompa’. So, guess what they called a mole-hill? A Woompa Tump. Isn’t that great?

Richard Holland, Editor of Paranormal Magazine (www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk) and Uncanny UK (www.uncannyuk.com).