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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Saturday, April 17, 2010

MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES:SOME NOTES ON THE MERMAID PART TWO

Hello again!

Today I`m continuing my extracts from The Deep Deep Ocean concerning knowledge of animals thought to be related to the mermaid. Unless you are a believer in the mermaid, this gives a view of the distribution of seals and dugongs (?) or other similar animals around the British Isles several hundred years ago.

'Two years later [than 1556, see Part One of this blog] there is another printed notice of “a moste true and marvellous strange wonder, the lyke hathe seldom been seene, of xvii monstrous fishes, taken in Suffulke, at Downham Brydge, within a myle of Ipswiche, the xi daye of October,in the yeare of our Lorde God 1568 [I love this olde worlde language! Anyone for a Facebook Group? Let uss revivee olde worlde English?] Stow, in his “Annales,” gives a particular description of this “wondrous draught of fishes” some of them being “eight and twentie foote in length at least”.'

Woolfe, in 1586, printed a broadside containing an account of a monster fish found in the stomach of a horse! The registers of the Stationers` Company contain an entry in 1604 of 'a strange reporte of a monstrous fish that appeared in the form of a woman from the waist upwards, seene in the sea.'

Even in 1822 a so-called mermaid was publicly exhibited in London, and continued to be shown to the curious in these matters for many months. But the monster was found to have been constructed of the members of various animals, dexterously put together. Some amusing lines appeared at the period, which I will transcribe:

There then appear 5 verses, I will mention the first and last below:

'Come, mistress mermaid, tell us, for you`ve seen
The deeps and things proud Science pines to see;
Be kind, and say if you have ever been
In worlds the poets deck with imagery.
Say, as you floated on the green sea`s billow,
Didst e`er see Neptune`s car, or Amphitrite`s pillow?...

'Farewell, dumb thing! perhaps the next we find
So long a time may not require to woo,
`T will speak, perchance, and haply prove most kind,
And tell us all we`ve useless sought of you-
Rare information yielding on the morning
She`s clapped within the glass case you`re adorning.'
(1)

1. W.Jones The Broad Broad Ocean p.266-267

Talking Heads Air

Air…Air
Hit me in the face
I run faster,
Faster into the air
(I say to myself)
What is happening to my skin?
Where is that protection that I needed?
Air can hurt you too
Air can hurt you too
Some people say not to worry about the air
Some people never had experience with….

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