The Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Scottish Borders

“The Mystery Animals of the British Isles” is a major series from the publishing arm of the world’s largest mystery animals research organization.

The series covers Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland mostly on a county-by-county basis, describing the mystery animals of the entire island group”.

 

THE AUTHOR WRITES:

I’ve lived nearly a third of my adult life in the Scottish Borders. Some of my ancestors lived here for hundreds of years before emigrating to Canada and America. Traditionally, ‘Borders’ has meant the border with the English counties of Cumbria/Cumberland and Northumbria/Northumberland, where my English forebears also go back for centuries. It comprises the current area of the Scottish Borders Council: Berwickshire, Peeblesshire,  Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire. The traditional Borders also covered areas of South Lanarkshire, Midlothian and Ayrshire but chiefly, this book includes the area governed now by Dumfries and Galloway, comprising Dumfries (shire) Kirkcudbrightshire, Wigtownshire and Galloway.

In the east there is a small sea coast with Eyemouth as its gateway. In the west, the Solway Firth and Irish Sea offer a much more extensive seascape.

This book is thus chiefly limited to those counties bordering England, with only the occasional ‘liberty’ taken with the fluctuating boundaries!

The Borders has a rich history: Thomas the Rhymer, the Ballads, Sir Walter Scott,  and James Hogg.  Many songs and legends tell of the Reivers (Mosstroopers), those bold men who rode out from both sides of the Border, existing by cattle raiding and martial codes of both honour and expedience.

I am neither a zoologist or animal specialist, though have written and researched as an amateur with a keen interest in all wildlife, particularly fishes and insects. I am also a published poet and writer who finds in the Borders a perfect blend of fact and fiction, and of truth and imagination. This book deals mostly with vertebrate animals because that’s what I know best: both real and imaginary. When Jonathan Downes suggested a book for his series I thought it was a book I wanted to do and could do.

Tom Bryan

 

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