When I was quite young I began to collect stamps. I was given a random assortment by someone, maybe a freind of my grandfather? I have a memory of an elderly smiley gentleman – but for a child whose Dad was in his thirties, anyone older than him would have seemed elderly. The stamps were from before teh war, in fact some from before the First World War, and from many different countries, countries which were then colonies of European nations. The elderly lady who lived upstairs from us had a son who worked for an oil company in the Middle East and she collected stamps from his letters to her. She very kindly gave me any spares she had to put in my albums. I still have my albums, maybe I should do something with them, there are hundreds and hundreds of old stamps.
I no longer have any interest in collecting, but I still pay attention to new stamp editions which the Post Office – or should I say, Royal Mail, issue. Their latest collection really interests me as they feature mythical beasts; designed by Adam Simpson they illustrate the legendary Loch Ness Monster, Cornish piskies, Beowulf and Grendel, and Blodeuwedd from Welsh mythology. If my son were still a child, he would be thrilled to see a stamp featuring Fionn mac Cumhaill the hero of Irish legends. There are not only land based creatures appearing on these stamps but also selkies from the sea, and the grindylow which lurks in rivers to snatch unwary children. However, for me, I’m delighted to see represented, the spectral hound from my old stamping ground, Black Shuck of East Anglia.
Here is something I wrote about Black Shuck a while ago:
I come from East Anglia, my family home ground which has legends of a black dog, the black shuck. Sometimes the shuck only has one eye in the middle of his forehead, sometimes he has no head at all, but stories of his prowlings appear in Peterborough (where my grandparents lived for a while) and Littleport, (where a cousin’s family come from) and in Bungay and Blytheburgh in Suffolk, and Dereham in Norfolk.
There is also the barghest (with a variety of spellings), a mythical creature in the form of a big black dog-like animal, said to wander the streets of Whitby and York. Maybe this is where Bram Stoker got his idea from in ‘Dracula’ from. There are stories of these creatures not only in the Fens and Yorkshire but ghostly black dogs appear all across Britain. A local Devon legend of the yell or yeth hound, probably gave Conan Doyle his inspiration for The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Usually these manifestations have a particular name, such as Black Shuck in East Anglia, barghest in Yorkshire, and many different names from Lancashire including gytrash, padfoot, the grim, shag, trash, striker and skriker. Sometimes they breathe fire, sometimes they break down the doors of churches, and often they are thought of as a portent of something bad. It’s thought they originated in ancient pre-Roman times, maybe even pre-Celtic, who knows. A fear of big animals with sharp teeth and big claws, creeping invisibly in the darkness must resonate in our deepest folk memories.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0eg2evrq55o
Lois Elsden 