Some of you may be familiar with the Just So Stories of Rudyard Kipling (1902), which include "How the Leopard Got His Spots", "How the Elephant Got His Trunk", and "How the Camel Got His Hump". We like to think that Kipling, a man of letters, might have been able to draw inspiration from the British Library's collections when concocting these tales, not least when it came to his famous story of the camel.

Two camels in the Marvels of the East (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 101v).

Have you ever asked yourself what a camel looked like in medieval times? Marvellously, we have some idea, thanks to drawings found in three of the greatest Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, all at the British Library: the Beowulf-manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A XV); the Old English Hexateuch (Cotton Claudius B IV); and an illustrated miscellany from 11th-century Canterbury (Cotton Tiberius B V).

Ants and camels in the Marvels of the East (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 101v).

In the text known as the Marvels of the East is a passage describing ants the size of dogs, which live beyond the river Gorgoneus, and dig up gold from the earth. Men seeking gold are described crossing the river with their camels, leaving the young tied on their own side; the she-camels are laden with gold and return to their young, but the male camels are left behind, for the ants to devour, enabling the thieves to escape. In the Beowulf-manuscript, this scene is depicted by a large miniature (sadly damaged by fire), in which three dog-like ants attack a tethered camel on the right, while a man holds another camel bearing a saddle, and a young camel (or brontosaurus, take your pick) is tied to a tree at the bottom. In the copy of the same scene in the illustrated miscellany, a camel is attacked by ants while a man crosses the river to safety on the back of a she-camel.

The dog-sized ants and the camels (London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B V, part 1, f. 80v).

If this wasn't enough to give the male camel the hump, what else was? Well, in the Beowulf-manuscript, the next scene, describing a place where many elephants are born, is illustrated with two slightly grumpy-looking camels (shown at the beginning of this post). Presumably the camels are saying to each other, "Doesn't the artist know what an elephant looks like?" The illustrated miscellany represents the same passage (in Latin, "in his locis nascitur multitudo magna elephantorum") with a pig-like elephant standing on an island.

The elephant in an Anglo-Saxon illustrated miscellany (London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B V, part 1, f. 81r).

Of course, it's highly likely that few Anglo-Saxons had ever seen a camel in real life, and so we should not be surprised that their pictures of them are quirky, to say the least. But is this a world-first, a chorus line of dancing camels? Riverdance, anyone?

A line of camels in the Old English Hexateuch: part of Genesis, chapter 24 (London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B IV, f. 39r).

You can read more about the manuscripts of the Marvels of the East in the facsimile of the same name by Montague Rhodes James (Oxford: The Roxburghe Club, 1929). For the Hexateuch, see Benjamin C. Withers, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch: The Frontiers of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England (London: The British Library, 2007). And don't forget to look at our Digitised Manuscripts site, to see both the Beowulf-manuscript and the Hexateuch in their entirety.

It's Friday, so let's have some fun. This is one of the British Library's collection items -- can you guess which one? A clue: it can be found on our Digitised Manuscripts site.

And here is the answer: it's the binding of a 15th-century physician's folding almanac, Harley MS 937, which was recently digitised as part of our Harley Science Project.

London, British Library, MS Harley 937, f. 1r.

Thank you to everyone who attempted to identify this item, and especially to @ainoa_castro, @yorkherald and Jen Kubeck for being the first to name it correctly. Doubtless we'll play this game again -- watch this space.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, @blmedieval.

Researchers at the British Library have found sensational evidence for the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Hidden within the pages of a 12th-century manuscript is not only a description but also a
drawing of the beast known to millions as Nessie.

 

Loch Ness in Scotland, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; image of the British Library, London, from Wikipedia

Walter of Bingham (d. c. 1197) was a minor cleric from Nottinghamshire who, unable to fulfill his vow to go on the Third Crusade, made a pilgrimage to the holy sites of Scotland. William's own manuscript of Itinerarium Scotiae (The Journey Through Scotland) has been long neglected , but shows the author's fascination with Scottish history, customs and wildlife. One commentator has remarked that "Walter of Bingham is to Scotland what Marco Polo is to China". The tone of The Journey Through Scotland emulates the writings of Walter's famous mentor, Gerald of Wales, who wrote accounts of Ireland and Wales in the 1180s and 1190s.

 

 

Walter’s encounter with Nessie came one summer evening, as he approached the banks of the River Ness. Students of the Loch Ness Monster will be aware that in the earliest account, found in Adomnán’s Life of St Columba (written around AD 700), Nessie was seen not in the loch but in the neighbouring river; and this is corroborated by Walter’s story. Seeking safe passage across the river, Walter of Bingham asked a group of fishermen mending their nets, but they rejected his request with terror in their eyes. Next, walking downstream, Walter encountered a young boy dragging his coracle along the shore. Hesitating at first, the boy agreed to row Walter of Bingham across in return for a silver coin. They crossed without mishap, much to Walter’s displeasure, for he was self-confessedly thrifty; but as he watched the coracle heading back to the other shore, a great beast with fire sparking from its eyes suddenly erupted from below the waters, uttered an almighty roar, and then dragged the coracle and its unhappy occupant beneath the waves.

 

The Loch Ness Monster, and the boy in the overturned coracle, as seen with the naked eye (London, British Library, MS Cotton Hilarius A. XV, f. 104r). The page is now exceedingly faded, but the image can be recovered using RZS©.

Walter of Bingham’s account provides firm proof of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster in the 12th century. But what is perhaps more remarkable is the drawing of Nessie which accompanies the text, now severely faded and barely visible with the naked eye. The drawing’s significance was first recognized by an international team of imaging scientists, cryptozoologists and manuscript experts, who for the past year have been analysing the British Library’s pictures of mythical beasts. Using a pioneering technique known as Re-Zoom Spectroscopy (RZS), the scientists took multiple photographs of the page in question, which were overlaid and processed using a “Guggenheim manipulator”. The resulting image demonstrates that Walter of Bingham made a careful depiction of Nessie, and can now be revealed as the earliest known picture of the Loch Ness Monster.

 

The Loch Ness Monster, as recovered using RZS©. Walter of Bingham is depicted on the right (an early example of a self-portrait), with the wretched occupant of the coracle about to be tossed into the water.

The shape of Nessie as recorded by Walter is hugely significant. Traditionally, the Loch Ness Monster is depicted in serpentine form, often with long humps protruding above the waves. The beast seen by Walter of Bingham most closely resembles a gigantic bear, and experts suggest that it may have been an enormous cousin of the modern-day Grizzly Bear or Kodiak Bear, now restricted to North America, or perhaps a descendant of the extinct Cave Bear. To judge by the survival of animal bones, the presence of a massive bear in remote, 12th-century Scotland is not entirely unexpected, and its behaviour indicates that, when observed by Walter of Bingham, it may have been defending its territory or guarding its young. But this is the first occasion that Nessie has received plausible identification as a bear: perhaps a relict population of bears survived in the vicinity of Loch Ness for many years, giving rise to the legend which surrounds it.

 

Could this be the oldest picture of Nessie? (recovered using RZS©).

Angus McFadden, a veteran monster watcher, believes that Loch Ness still holds many secrets. As he recently declared, “If you don’t see what you don’t see, and you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you know what you don’t see?”

We are extremely grateful to Professor Otto Haas (Osnabrück), Dr Ida Winchester (Delaware) and their team for sharing their research with us. A full account of the discovery will be published in the Journal of Applied Cryptozoology, but for regular updates subscribe to our Twitter feed, @blmedieval.

 

An artist's reconstruction of the Loch Ness Monster, restoring what are believed to be the original colours, based on detailed study of the pigments used in comparable western European drawings (Sarah J Biggs, 2013).

Recently we asked our readers how they have been using our public domain images. And we're extremely gratified by the many responses we have received, via Twitter (@blmedieval) and in the comments section at the end of the original blogpost. Here is a selection of your comments:

I do medieval recreation/reenactment, and I like to use the BL images as inspiration for my illuminated/calligraphed texts.

I recently published an article on medieval wood pasture management and was excited to be able to use manuscript images from the BL Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts as part of the analysis. An acknowledgement of the BL's service in providing the image was included in the endnote for each figure. Thanks so much for providing this service to scholars!

Detail of a miniature of men beating down acorns to feed their pigs, on a calendar page for November (London, British Library, MS Royal 2 B VII, f. 81v).

I'm teaching a course on Arthurian literature, art and film from the Middle Ages to the present in October, and am using the image of Arthur from Royal 20 A. II, f. 4 as the course image. It's wonderful to have this readily available representation of Arthur from a medieval manuscript, and hopefully will serve to inspire my students not only in terms of an interest in Arthurian studies, but also manuscript studies too!

I have used your images from the Queen Mary Psalter and your interface to make a point about mediated networks.

Yes (with attribution), on a poster for a Middle English poetry reading.

Thank you, yes! Lady Jane Grey 1  and Lady Jane Grey 2

Text page with coloured initials and line-fillers, and a portion of a message written in the margin by Lady Jane Grey to her father, the Duke of Suffolk: '… youre gracys humble daughter Jane Duddley.' (London, British Library, MS Harley 2342, f. 80r). 

Yep, in my tumblr (but I mentioned it!). By the way, you're doing a very very great job, thanks! 

Just in time for prepping my 13th/14th c Northern Painting class.

Repeatedly in my blogposts, but more importantly (to me, anyway) on the front page of my MA thesis on the Confessor.

I've used bits for my site banner images.

And from one of our regular contributors came this: Well done. This is precisely the sort of thing that the national collection should be doing; enriching the culture of the nation of today by means of images from the public treasury of manuscripts.

Historiated initial (London, British Library, MS Arundel 91, f. 26v).

We've been asked to clarify a couple of issues raised by some of our users. At present, the British Library's policy on the re-use of images in the public domain applies (in the case of our medieval manuscripts) to images downloaded from our Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts and from this blog. Readers who commission or purchase publication-quality images from our Imaging Services should note that they still need permission to reproduce them. Likewise, users should note that the technology behind our Digitised Manuscripts site currently precludes the downloading of images from that resource. This applies to all the manuscripts published as part of our Greek manuscripts, Harley Science and Royal digitisation projects.

Meanwhile, we hope that you continue to find new ways to use our images, so that together we can promote new research and gain new insights into our medieval and early modern heritage. 

Fire is a constant hazard in libraries, and most collections of historic manuscripts have some burnt parchment. Certainly the British Library has its share, including parts of the Cotton collection. Most older manuscripts were written on parchment which, being animal skin, does not respond to heat and water like paper but becomes crisp and wavy, looking somewhat like a poppadom. When a manuscript reaches this stage, there is little conservators can do except house it carefully.

Royal MS 9 C X. One Royal manuscript has deliberately been left unconserved since the Ashburnham House fire (1731) to show the damage done to the collections housed there.

Fortunately, our ancestors knew how to preserve books. Many medieval manuscripts were originally bound in thick oak boards with clasps. When it became customary to store books upright, they were packed close on hardwood shelves. In these conditions, air circulation is limited (denying oxygen to the fire) and the dense materials diffuse heat. Surface charring inhibits the release of volatile gases, delaying combustion. Today we also rely on low oxygen systems to prevent fires.

Cotton Fragments XXXII. Boxes of fragments remain from the 1731 fire; some attributable to specific manuscripts, others found loose in the containers that held the damaged manuscripts.

If parchment has been well made, most of the fats will have been removed from the skin by scraping, leaving a dense mat of collagen fibres which are then stretched flat to dry. When heated, collagen shows little change at first; then the fibres contract swiftly and irreversibly over a small temperature range of just a degree or two (called the shrinkage temperature).

Additional MS 22750. Parchment leaf inlaid in paper. The contrast between the apparently undamaged area and the severely degraded part is very clear, showing the boundary of irreversible changes.

As fire takes hold in a library, a temperature gradient builds across the text-blocks, the centres remaining cooler. This explains the typical pattern of a leaf from a burnt book, the edges shrunken but the centre merely cockled (a response to uneven stresses, like gathering the edges of a piece of fabric). The transition marks the point at which the shrinkage temperature was reached

Cotton Tiberius D V. The text suddenly gets smaller, showing that the parchment has shrunk. The cuts were made during early repairs, so that the leaf could be flattened.

At the leaf edges, which are most exposed to heat, the collagen can be denatured to gelatine, becoming hard and brittle and sometimes forming a glassy exudation which seals the text-block. 

Cotton Otho A XIII. Gelatinised parchment. The strips holding the fragment have caused staining and cover part of the text.

Of course, water was used to extinguish historic fires and this causes further damage to parchment. Too much moisture causes reversion to the memory of being animal skin and, unless it is dried under tension again, the parchment swells and cockles. Many books, undamaged by heat, were air-dried after the fire and show this kind of damage. Those that were not dried quickly enough may also be weakened and stained by mould.

Cotton Julius A II. This manuscript has only slight water damage (and possibly not from the fire), though there are indications that the margins were trimmed before rebinding. This was sometimes a “quick fix” to remove blackened edges where text was not compromised.

Early treatment was simply to soak the parchment in water to make it flexible and then stretch and press it. The heat-contracted edges which would not expand were often slashed between lines of text to allow flattening. Sir Humphry Davy (d. 1829) improved on this by suggesting a mixture of “spirits of wine” (alcohol) and water, and such azeotropic mixtures continued in use till very recently, as they allow a controlled application of moisture to rehydrate dry parchment. However, even this is now thought damaging, and cockled parchment will just be allowed to relax in a slightly humid atmosphere, before pressing. Other experiments to try to make the texts more readable have added to the parchment’s degradation.

Cotton Tiberius E VI. An extreme example of cutting into a fragment of a Cotton manuscript in order to flatten it so it could be inlaid. It is also possible to see that the paper frame is starting to cockle as stresses readjust in the parchment fragment.

Typical fire damage leaves the text in the centre of the page readable, but the weak edges are easily broken by handling and it is imperative to protect them to prevent fragments becoming detached. It is estimated that the Beowulf text (Cotton Vitellius A XV) lost some 3000 letters before 1817. It and many other manuscripts were eventually treated by inlaying each leaf in paper, but the strips used to secure the parchment themselves covered more text. The adhesive seems to have been paste, which left stains and is now becoming brittle; the paper frames are degrading too, and often cockling under the pull of the parchment. Other early repair techniques used parchment infills, silk gauze or goldbeater’s skin.

Egerton 2745, f. 165r. Lamination is holding the fragments together and maintaining the relationship of the lines of text, but making it difficult to read. Retreatment is not an option because removing the laminate would cause further damage and the leaf is currently stable.

These methods helped to preserve the fire-damaged manuscripts, but the materials used are now aging. We have become much more cautious when treating parchment since realising that it may be far more degraded than it looks. Moisture can cause gelatinisation; too strong repair materials can pull on and split the weaker skin, adhesives must remain flexible. No wonder that our current emphasis is on sympathetic housing, to slow deterioration and give support to damaged leaves without the dangers of re-treatment.

Cotton Otho A XII. An extremely damaged fragment, now housed in a melinex sleeve.

We are fortunate that fire-damaged parchment manuscripts can now be made available to readers through digitisation, avoiding the risks of further handling. Safe in controlled conditions, we are confident that even after heat, water and incautious early treatments, they will long survive.

Ann Tomalak, Conservation Officer, The British Library

Over the past few years, we've had great pleasure in making many of our books available to view in their entirety on our Digitised Manuscripts site. Periodic announcements have been made on this blog, relating notably to the digitisation of our Greek and Royal manuscripts and to our Harley Science Project. But nothing quite compares to the new treasures now added to Digitised Manuscripts, encompassing the fields of art, literature and science.

And when we say "treasures", we really mean it! The six books in question are none other than (drumroll, please) the Harley Golden Gospels, the Silos Apocalypse, the Golf Book, the Petit Livre d'Amour ... and, um, two others. What were they again? Oh yes, remember now. Only Beowulf and Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook. How could we forget?

The Harley Golden Gospels (London, British Library, MS Harley 2788, f. 71v).

Each of these six manuscripts is a true splendour, and has immense significance in its respective field, whether that be Anglo-Saxon literature, Carolingian or Flemish art, or Renaissance science and learning. On Digitised Manuscripts you'll be able to view every page in full and in colour, and to see the finer details using the deep zoom facility. You can read more about the chosen six in a special feature in the Financial Times Weekend magazine, published on 9 February 2013.

Harley Golden Gospels (Harley MS 2788): this beautiful gospelbook was made in early-9th-century Germany, perhaps at Aachen. The text is written entirely in gold ink, which even today glistens in the light; the sheer wealth of its decoration lends this manuscript its association with the Carolingian royal court.

Beowulf (Cotton MS Vitellius A XV): contains the longest epic poem in Old English, and arguably one of the greatest works of world literature. The manuscript was made around the year AD 1000, and escaped destruction by fire in 1731: the scorch marks are still visible on its pages.

Beowulf (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV. f. 132r).

Silos Apocalypse (Additional MS 11695): this commentary on the Apocalypse was made by monks at the Spanish abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos, being started in AD 1091 and completed in 1109. The decoration leaps out from every page, remaining as vivid as the day it was painted.

The Silos Apocalypse (London, British Library, MS Additional 11695, f. 5v).

Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook (Arundel MS 263): compiled between the years c. 1478 and 1518, this notebook deals with many of the subjects close to Leonardo's heart: mechanics, geometry, hydraulics, optics, astronomy and architecture. Written in his characteristic mirror script, one scholar has described Leonardo's book as an "explosion of ideas".

Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook ("Codex Arundel") (London, British Library, MS Arundel 263, ff. 84v + 88r).

Petit Livre d'Amour (Stowe MS 955): Pierre Sala (d. 1529), a valet de chambre of Louis XII of France, made his "Little Book of Love" for his mistress (and subsequently wife) Marguerite Builloud. Who could not have been bowled over by such a gift? The manuscript is still preserved in its original carrying case, inscribed with the letters P and M.

Petit Livre d'Amour (London, British Library, MS Stowe 955, f. 17r).

Golf Book (Additional MS 24098): famous for its depiction of a game resembling golf, this Book of Hours contains a series of miniatures attributable to Simon Bening (d. 1561), one of the greatest Flemish artists.

The Golf Book (London, British Library, MS Additional 24098, f. 20v).

We are delighted to be able to share these six glorious manuscripts with our readers around the world; and we hope in turn that you share them with your friends too. You can also currently see Beowulf, the Harley Golden Gospels and select pages from Leonardo da Vinci's notebook in the British Library's Sir John Ritblat Gallery.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter @blmedieval.

While some of our high-grade manuscripts are temporarily unavailable, please take the opportunity to use our Digitised Manuscripts site. We have already uploaded hundreds of manuscripts, digitised in their entirety, including many of our medieval Greek books; some of our scientific manuscripts; and dozens of volumes featured in the British Library's Royal exhibition. Check out some of our greatest medieval books, including one of our most recent acquisitions, the St Cuthbert Gospel. And don't forget to use the deep-zoom facility, which enables users to view the manuscripts as never before!

The late-7th-century St Cuthbert Gospel (Additional MS 89000): note the lack of white gloves!

We are very happy to be able to share our wonderful manuscripts with you -- please pass on the good news, and share them with others.

Detail of a miniature of a hedgehog; from Jean de Wavrin, Recueil des croniques d'Engleterre, vol. 1, Netherlands (Bruges), 1471-1483, Royal MS 15 E. iv, f. 180r.

The hedgehog is one of the English language's more picturesquely named animals: the word comes from the hedge where it lives, and from the appearance of its supposedly hoglike snout.  But this term is a relatively recent coinage in the history of the language – the first recorded uses date only to the mid-15th century.  This is not to say that the common hedgehog was unknown in the Middle Ages, however.  For much of the medieval period it was called an 'urchin', a term still favoured in some dialects, but most commonly associated today with the spiky little sea urchin: literally a 'sea hedgehog'.  Even urchins came over with the Norman invaders, however, ultimately derived from the Latin 'ericius': before the Conquest, the Anglo-Saxons knew the animal as the Germanic 'igl'.

Detail of a miniature of hedgehogs sticking fallen fruit to their quills and carrying it back to their burrow; from the Rochester Bestiary, England (Rochester?), c. 1230, Royal MS 12 F. xiii, f. 45r.

Hedgehogs, however they were named, were familiar animals, finding their place in the standard medieval bestiary between the mole and the ant.  Such mundane company does not mean, however, that their story was not exotic and strange.  Hedgehogs were said to creep into vineyards when the grapes were ripe, to climb the vines and shake the fruit down to the ground.  Then, rather than eating this bounty on the spot, they would turn onto their backs and roll around, impaling the grapes with their sharp quills.  They could then trundle off back to their burrows, carrying the grapes on their spines, as a meal for their young.  The bestiary writers allegorized this as a warning of the clever stratagems of the devil in stealing man's spiritual fruits.

Detail of a miniature of the hedgehog reproaching the goat for his vanity; from Ulrich von Pottenstein, Spiegel der Weisheit, Austria (Salzburg), c. 1430, Egerton MS 1121, f. 44v.

Despite this unflattering association with the infernal, hedgehogs were more often depicted favourably than not.  The Speculum sapientiae, or Mirror of Wisdom, was a Latin text that included a large number of beast fables.  In one of the fables, a goat came upon its own reflection in a pond.  The goat, seeing the horns on his head and his long goat beard, thought himself very handsome indeed, and began to bleat, boasting of his horny 'crown' and hairy 'necklace'.  A passing hedgehog, however, was less than impressed.  If the goat had impressive horns and beard, he also had an unsightly tail and a foul temper.  A profound humility, the hedgehog reproached, not vain boasting, was what made an animal truly noble.  The hedgehog here is chosen as a symbol not of diabolical trickery, but of an appropriate Christian modesty.

Miniatures of (above) a dormouse and (below) hedgehogs, collecting fruit on their quills; from a bestiary, England (Salisbury?), 2nd quarter of the 13th century, Harley MS 4751, f. 31v.

Nicole Eddy