Storm on top of the Table, the Quiraing, North Skye, ca. 1970 (ID: HMB-796). A 35mm slide from the Hamish Brown Mountaineering and Scottish Photography… Read More »December 3: Storm on top of the Table, the Quiraing, North Skye, ca. 1970
Tobogganing in the fields near St Andrews, ca. 1930 (ID: GMC-EC-30-c). A 5×4 ins. plate glass negative from the George M Cowie Collection. George Cowie… Read More »December 2: Tobogganing in the fields near St Andrews, ca. 1930
For our 2020 Advent Calendar, we will be sharing snowy and wintery scenes from our Photographic Collections each day leading up to Christmas. Snow covered… Read More »Advent Calendar 2020: Winter Wonderland
We hope you have enjoyed our 2019 advent calendar! Here are all of the fantastic beasts for you to enjoy.
The myth of fairies has no single origin, but stories of fairy-like creatures are common throughout folklore. These magical creatures usually have a human appearance… Read More »December 25 – Fairies
The composite Persian volume known as the Book of Wonders, deals with natural history and geography. It is made up of the ‘Seven Seas’ section… Read More »December 24 – Chimera
Two wonderfully weird illustrations from Conrad Gesner’s Historiae animalium (1551-1558), are the bishop fish and the monk fish. The bishop fish or sea bishop, with… Read More »December 23 – Monk Fish and Bishop Fish
Today, rather than featuring a specific fantastic beast, we are highlighting the gradual. The gradual or graduale was a music book used in liturgy for… Read More »December 22 – Zoomorphic initials
Werewolves are humans with the ability to change into wolves, voluntarily or not, most often on the night of a full moon. This illustration, by… Read More »December 21 – Werewolf
Last week we featured a small dragon which comes from our 15th century Rouen Book of Hours (ms38938). This devotional text includes 13 large full-page… Read More »December 20 – Drolleries
While salamanders are real creatures (lizards), within folklore they have been endowed with remarkable attributes, mainly their ability to withstand fire. The image of a… Read More »December 19 – Salamander
The kelpie, or water-horse, is a shape-shifting water spirit from Scottish legend. Included in the Robert Burns poem ‘Address to the Deil’ (1786), the kelpie… Read More »December 18 – Kelpies
