#22 – Brown Willy, Rough

Or: Carl and Sigmund Have a Field Day

The Beast of Bodmin Moor is the most recent of the monsters I’ve been given for this challenge. However, since it predates the heights of internet-born mythological fecundity but doesn’t have the cultural weight of centuries behind it, every entry I’ve sourced on it is curiously short, and as bare-boned as the moors themselves: there were wild cats, there may be still. A myth that’s younger than me is odd to encapsulate. I was in a dry mood when I wrote this, clearly…


They say that there’s a Creature on the moor.
They say Luke’s uncle’s mate saw it at dusk.
They say that he was absolutely sure.
They laid on brandy for this trembling husk.

The nameless experts nod and stroke their chins.
They say that they believe it to be so.
I trawl through ugly sites and turn to sin;
Laugh, marvelling: this was so short ago!

Three pumas freed in 1978,
Exotic rug abandoned in a stream;
These opened up and propped that deep-down gate
That lets us populate the mists with dreams.

We’ll always need these beasts of our creation
So pour them now credulity’s libation.

– FR

COULD THIS BE IT?! scream the online article captions...

#2 – Sasquatch

Sasquatch: noun, anglicisation of the Halq̓eméylem (Stó:lõ dialect) term sásq'ets, meaning “wild man”. Source: Wikipedia and The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

It’s said that there are those who claimed us hoax,
And those who only wanted to believe,
Despite the hopes, the fears, the jeers, the jokes;
It seems the sightings caused soft hearts to grieve.

Some praised our strangeness, labelled us benign;
Some called us elders come back from the dead.
But others warned we were not so divine –
We’d steal incautious children from their beds.

We shook the trees, took salmon from their nets;
We poisoned ground and toppled holy art.
We stripped the land, flipped treaties into threats,
And proved ourselves the wilder men at heart.

As well believe the Bigfoot to be real,
As trust a white man’s promise on a deal.

– FR

Purported Ancient First Nations art depicting Bigfoot, though I can’t find out where it’s from originally...

Predominantly reported in the Pacific North-West, the name Bigfoot is relatively recent (mid-20th Century). They have many names among First Nations People in the region, and their legend ranges from gentle, through to whistling child-snatchers who must not be named. In 1940, Indian Agent J. W. Burns, republishing his tales from the 1920s as collected from the people of the region, borrowed the term Sasquatch from the Halq̓eméylem sásq'ets (IPA: [ˈsæsqʼəts]) and used it in his articles to describe a hypothetical single type of creature portrayed in the local stories. There are a frankly astonishing number of websites dedicated to researching and preserving the notion of a real-life creature.