Farouk Ibn-Ignelh: Occult Angler of Old Cthornwall

Apothecary and purveyor of occult fishing equipment to the alchymists, trawlerman and big-game anglers of Mevagissey, Farouk Ibn-Ignelh was a notorious seafront character of old Cthornwall in the first quarter of the 1900’s. Farouk’s ancestry in the county could be traced right back to the 1st century AD, when his illustrious forebear first landed on these shores as helmsman to Aramis of Josephathea, the noted Syrian perfumier and spice trader.

Originally apprenticed as a stockman and squid wrangler to Lord St Leviathan’s oceanic farm in Mound’s Bay, Farouk acquired much preternatural piscine learning and arcane mollusc law. Expert in the art of eldritch angling and sea husbandry at an early age, Farouk’s keen nose for business soon had him trading his skills independently to fishing communities the length and breadth of the Cthornish coast, eventually setting up his famed emporium in Mevagissey in 1924.

As well as selling equipment for the capture and netting of the vast range of monstrous and other-dimensional aquatic life in the county’s waters, he also became a noted specialist in the breeding of such creatures for alchymical rites and processes, as well as their preparation for medicinal and recreational purposes.

A seasoned and proficient angler in his own right he was often to be seen skilfully casting rod and line at the farthest reach of the Mevagissey harbour wall where, as an equally noted raconteur, he happily told strange and hair shrivelling tales of the deep to the village youngsters. It is believed that it was in this capacity that he was ‘rediscovered’ by the unsettling Dr Fostux, who it is likely he first encountered during their shared youthful employ in the service to Lord St Leviathan on St Michael’s Mound in the period 1907-13.

As a small historical footnote it was Farouk Ibn-Ignelh, through selective genetic crossbreeding, who first developed the notorious mind warming sea-tobacco which local fisherman came to refer to as ‘the Meva ciggy’.

Dr Fostux

(Click image for a larger view)

Mad scientist and organ recitalist extraordinaire, Dr Fostux was a figure of some intrigue, scandal and notoriety in early 1900’s Cthornwall. He was rumoured by some to be the secret lovechild of Lord St Leviathan and an unnamed other. Raised by the family of one of the Lord’s boatmen, his stepfather was a keeper of the giant squid pool at St Michael’s Mound. It was here the young Fostux developed an early fascination and aptitude for all things monstrous and scientific, working as night-porter, and then later apprentice, in Lord St Leviathan’s oceanic genetic breeding programme.

However, following an unspecified splicing disaster involving a young child from the local foundling hospital in Penzance, and a rare strain of lobster discovered in a flooded pitchblende mine, Fostux was banished from his home in extremus opprobrium , and was not heard from again for some time.

It was not until 10 years later, in 1923, that vague stories began to circulate about late night deliveries and unsettling lights observed at an old lighthouse in Restormel Bay. Along with advertisements in the St Austell Gazette of that year, requesting “reminiscence, relics and old toenail clippings (cash price paid in genuine coinage on receipt)” it became evident that Dr Fostux had returned to the county and was embarked upon a new vein of scientific enquiry.

Within months the fashion for highly addictive distilled and bottled ‘narrative essences’ began to sweep the county, causing much social malaise and domestic strife among the general population. With much of the local workforce swiftly addicted to such “chymical experience and virtual living” the Stannary Parliament of the time demanded the source of the outbreak be quickly found and cauterised. Much suspicion automatically focused upon the activities of the newly returned Dr Fostux, but only circumstantial evidence was ever uncovered, and that in the form of a discarded packing case for Bunsen burners and a sea stained receipt from the Vatican, for the purchase of fifteen shin bones of St George and a pornographic snuff box once belonging to Pope Pious IX.

Albert Cropper: Monster Stopper!

During the late1800’s in Cthornwall, the ‘bug’ hunter Albert Cropper was a familiar figure tramping the byways and cliff paths of the county, peddling his services in much the same way as itinerant knife grinders or mole catchers of the time.

His father operated a night soil collection business in Redruth . As an offshoot to this already dangerous work, Albert became the family firm’s parabiologist, specialising after a couple of grim encounters on the early morning collection round involving a Devonian tape lizard and a couple of giant stool grubs.

Seeing the potential for travel and the occasional balloon ride out to the Scilly Isles, Albert went freelance in 1879 with the aid of a sponsorship deal from Sir Richard Trevithick , the famed Cthornish inventor, mining engineer and monster trap designer.

This particular image was made as part of the 1885 Eldritch Expedition to Bodmin Moor and its interior, to which Albert was co-opted by local magistrates as Lady Elizabeth’s native tracker. It shows Albert presenting a captive grockle mite after an emergency roadside extraction from a Belgian tourist who had visited the shire without first taking the right inoculations.

Poster and print available at Red Bubble.

Mid-Life Crisis Files: Document 1

ITEM 1: 16 year old student overheard in WH Smiths last Christmas:
"Look Dad! They've got a book of Lord Of The Rings..."

ITEM 2: Conversation with 24 year old youth-worker colleague as we work with a primary school on a video of their theatre show:
ME: ...aww...it's JUST like the 'King and I'...
COLLEAGUE: What?
ME: The King and I..
COLLEAGUE: What's that?
ME: You KNOW...Julie Andrews....
COLLEAGUE: Who?
ME: Julie ANDREWS....and Yul Brynner...
COLLEAGUE: WHO??
ME: You know...Yul BRYNNER...bald guy....bit like Telly Savalas...
COLLEAGUE: WHO????
ME: ... Jeez...YOU know...Telly Savalas?..with the lollipop?..used to play Kojak on the telly.
COLLEAGUE: ...WHO....the fuck...is Kojak??
ME: Darren! If you're going to beat Emily with the video camera can you please put the cover back on so you don't get the lens all greasy?

The Countrymans Guide to Moorland Fauna by Caractacus Shroom

Sadly out of print for several years...one of the most useful guidebooks ever about the Westcountry. A couple of extracts:

Were-sheep:
No-one is completely sure of the primary origins of the were-sheep. It is presumed that isolated rural practises involving oversize wellies, something ovine and woolly, attractive enough in the tail department to resemble one's cousin, coupled with confused pagan sexuality on a baleful full moon come the end of October, are all probably implicated somewhere down the line.

Evidence is sparse for their continuing existence in these days of ever encroaching human populations. However, enough chewed and bloody carcasses of farm labourers and big wild cats are found dragged into the higher branches of trees to suppose that the genus ovis sapien is still active in the wilder and more remote moorland regions.


Pasty Spiders:
These buggers are rare but big. We're talking boulder-sized big. Not an unfair analogy considering it is under boulders and rocks (big ones mind) that the pasty spider is want to lurk.

Named for their choice of diet, the pasty spider occupies a unique position in the Cornish food chain. Early encounters were in the deep shafts and addits of medieval tin mines. They would scuttle from a side tunnel with enough speed and mass to bear a fully grown miner to the ground and make off with his crib-box. Many an unsuspecting worker at the tin-face lost his lunch, as well as the occassional eyeball and pit pony to the pastix arachnis subterraeniae.

With the decline of the tin industry the pasty spider is now increasingly rare. The few breeding pairs that are known to exist prey fairly exclusively upon lost ramblers, sheep and the occassional small dog. The disused and often unmapped addits of the mines still provide their main abode and means of travel beneath the countryside, giving access to surface food sources in the remote moorland regions.