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| Subtitle | A Book of Beasts - Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century |
| First Written | 1150 |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Origin | UK |
| Publisher | Capricorn |
| My Copy | old paperback |
| First Read | May 16, 2023 |
The Bestiary
It's chock-full of delightfully wrong animal facts! So far in the first few pages:
- Antelopes stuff themselves, go to sleep for three days, and then produce a belch so loud and sweet-smelling it attracts animals from everywhere around
- Elephants have no joints in their legs and rest against trees standing up. So to hunt one, just saw a tree partway through and wait for an elephant to lean against it. Crash! Now go stab that elephant.
- Bears deliver whelps that are just formless masses of flesh and are 'licked into shape' by their mothers
- SO many more!
Noted on May 16, 2023
Delightful translation - with lots of drawings! - of a 12th c bestiary, annotated and translated by TH White, weirdo homeboy who wrote The Once and Future King and The Goshawk. Apparently it was republished in later editions as 'The Book of Beasts.' I stumbled upon this in The Last Bookstore in LA!
Noted on May 16, 2023
The crocodile is named after the crocus hence its orange color. “It’s dung provided an ointment with which old and wrinkled whores anoint their figures and are made beautiful, until the flowing sweat of their efforts washes it away.”
Quoted on May 16, 2023