The Little Book of Great Britain

A watch of nightingales
A tiding of magpies
A hastiness of cooks
A husk of hares
A bevy of quail
A lamentation of swans
A file of civil servants
A gaggle of geese
A grist of bees
A murder of crows
A mischief of rats
A parliament of rooks
A skulk of foxes
A blush of boys
A bench of Bishops
A glaring of cats
A trunkload of clowns

Lammas Day, the Festival of the Gule of August, once celebrated across the land (1 August).
Shrewsbury Flower Show, Shropshire – the world’s longest-running flower show.
Worthing International Birdman, Sussex. Competitors create contraptions to assist flight from the end of the pier.
The Burryman – Queensferry, Lothian – A local man is covered in burrs and walked around a 7-mile route. It can take many hours to complete.
The Cowal Highland Gathering (Highland Games), Dunoon.
Grasmere Sports, Cumbria. Includes fell running and Cumberland wrestling.
Burning of Bartle, West Witton, Yorkshire (Saturday nearest 24 Au

Britain’s tallest tree is believed to be a 211ft grand fir planted in the 1870s beside Loch Fyne in Argyll.

Modern interest in the Loch Ness ‘Monster’ was sparked when reports were published in the Inverness Courier in August 1933 of a sighting of a strange creature seen crossing the road towards Loch Ness by Mr and Mrs George Spicer. They described the creature as having a large body about 4ft high and 25ft long with a long, narrow neck, slightly thicker than an elephant’s trunk with undulations along it. They estimated the neck stretched across the width of the road – 10–12ft. National newspapers picked up the story and it became a sensation fuelled by further sightings followed by the notorious ‘Surgeon’s Photograph’ allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, taken by London gynaecologist Robert Kenneth Wilson and published in the Daily Mail in April 1934. Hunts and investigations to capture, confirm or disprove the existence of the monster have been staged sporadically ever since but the mystery remains unsolved.

Stories of ‘little folk’ or fairies can be found down the years across Great Britain but the greatest stir of all occurred when two young girls, cousins Elsie Wright (16) and Frances Griffiths (10) of Cottingley near Bradford, took five photographs of each other with what appeared to be fairies in 1917. No lesser a man than the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, saw the photographs as proof of psychic phenomena and used them to illustrate an article he wrote for the Christmas edition of The Strand Magazine in 1920. It was a sensation and was revisited again and again over the years until 1983 when Elsie and Francis, by then elderly ladies, admitted that the photographs had been faked … but both still maintained that they really had seen fairies.

One of the most ancient and recurrent figures in British myths, legends and folklore is the Black Dog. It is a manifestation that has never been taken lightly; for some it represents a demon of the ancients who no longer receives his supplication and veneration and now lopes along the lanes in the teeth of fierce storms and chime hours to claim souls in retribution. For much of East Anglia the great, shaggy, black devil dog, known by a variety of names such as Old Shuck, Shock, the Shuck Dog and the most popular, Black Shuck, is a terrifying and often malevolent creature associated with storm, tempest, wrath, vengeance, witchcraft, demons and death. The origin of this name is suggested by some as a derivation of Shuggy or Shaggy, a regional variation of ‘scruffy’ while others suggest the Anglo-Saxon word, Scucca, meaning devil or demon. In the north of England, in Northumberland, Durham and especially in Yorkshire, accounts can be found of Padfoot and, most notoriously, the Bargest that assumes the form of a large black dog with flaming eyes and is said to frequent a remote gorge named Troller’s Gill. There is also a story of a Bargest occasionally entering the city of York, where, according to legend, it preys on lone travellers in the city’s narrow Snickelways. On the death of any local worthy in the neighbourhood of Leeds the Bargest was said to come forth, causing all the dogs in the locality to bay and howl. In Lancashire their black dog is known as a Gytrash, Trash or Shriker, while in Wales the black dog is the Gwyllgi, the Dog of Darkness, a frightful apparition of a mastiff with baleful breath and blazing red eyes. The Gurt Dog of Somerset and the Black Dog of Lincolnshire are rare examples of the creature with a benevolent nature. It was said that mothers would allow their children to play unsupervised because they believed that the dog would protect them. It would also be known to accompany lone travellers, acting as a protector and guide.