Great Auks

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Anita Bensoussane
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Re: Great Auks

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Lucky Star wrote:The last Great Auk was killed because people thought it was a witch? :shock: Truly the truth is stranger than fiction, what an end for a species.
There's some more information below about the last sightings of the Great Auk. There were a lot of superstitions connected with seabirds and, sadly, the Great Auk that was thought to be a witch suffered a slow, painful death.

http://www.trivia-library.com/b/famous- ... k-bird.htm" target="_blank
Lucky Star wrote:I cant remember, did Jack ever discuss the Great Auk again in any of the subsequent books or was it only mentioned in Island?
I seem to recall one of the children in a later book remarking that Jack used to be obsessed with finding a Great Auk, but I don't think we ever see him looking for one again.

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Re: Great Auks

Post by Lucky Star »

Ouch that made painful reading. :x It is all very well to romanticise the old days as people often do but the world and its superstitions were a lot crueller then. I would have thought that a lot of fishermen even then would have recognised a seabird when they saw it. I suppose they thought it was possessed or something. I think that was around the time of the witch burnings though I'm not sure. Rural Scotland did go in for a lot of witch burnings at one time, motivated by religious zealotry.

The Sotheby's auctioneer's description was rather droll though, "like a penguin but a bit more stupid". The poor Great Auk obviously did'nt have a great time of it. :wink:
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Re: Great Auks

Post by dsr »

The St. Kildans, to be fair to them, were incredibly out of touch. My mother visited there a couple of years back, on a cruise, and learned quite a lot about the place. Apparently they were still singing the National Anthem as "God Save the King" for 10 years after William IV died (1837), because no-one told them we had a queen.
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Re: Great Auks

Post by Moonraker »

There's a great St Kilda Website with a section on Seabirds taboot. It's well worth a look.
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Anita Bensoussane
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Re: Great Auks

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Great stuff! It would be quite an experience to walk along that street of ruined houses.

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Re: Great Auks

Post by Moonraker »

Wouldn't it! I can definitely smell an adventure in the air...
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Re: Great Auks

Post by Lucky Star »

Perhaps you guys can stop off there when you take this boat trip of yours. :D
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Re: Great Auks

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Recent posts about the Adventure Series reminded me of this thread. Jack's yearning to find a great auk struck a chord with me when I first read The Island of Adventure, aged nine, and I longed for him to stumble upon a whole colony of them in a later book. I notice that Enid Blyton capitalises the name of that bird - "Great Auk" - yet doesn't do that for other birds in the same story: "There were plenty of big razorbills with their curiously-shaped beaks, plenty of skuas, gulls, cormorants and other birds." I always used to capitalise "Great Auk" simply because Enid Blyton did, but not all books or websites do likewise (though some do), so I now use small letters just as I would for "robin", "blue tit", etc.

I've mentioned before that there's a stuffed great auk in the Natural History Museum in London. It used to be in a section with other stuffed birds - I've seen it there a few times and would linger by it, gazing at it and thinking of The Island of Adventure. Looking at the museum's website, I see that the great auk has now been moved to a different part of the building (The Treasures, Cadogan Gallery) along with 21 other exhibits. It's possible to vote online for your favourite of the 22 treasures so I've just voted for the great auk as a tribute to Enid Blyton (and Jack Trent!) even though I like some of the other items very much too, such as the dodo skeleton, Guy the gorilla, William Smith's ammonites, The Birds of America by John James Audubon and Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/coll ... index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

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Re: Great Auks

Post by Lucky Star »

Very interesting Anita. To my mind the Great Auk looks a bit like a penguin. I didn't realise there was one in the museum. I must go and see it sometime. I too would be reminded of Jack and his love of birds if I came face to face with it.
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Re: Great Auks

Post by Daisy »

I think I'd rather meet a penguin than one of those Great Auks with a beak that size!
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Re: Great Auks

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Enid Blyton's The Island of Adventure gets a mention on the Wikipedia page devoted to the great auk:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Wikipedia page also refers to the great auk which appears in Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies - a book which we know Enid read as a child.
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

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Re: Great Auks

Post by Moonraker »

Enid introduced me to the Great Auk, and as she capitalised the name, so will I. I was amused to see you wrote Great Auk, but kept the humble penguin to small case lettering, Daisy! :wink:
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Re: Great Auks

Post by Daisy »

Goodness me - I must have been subconsciously influenced by someone or other!
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Anita Bensoussane
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Re: Great Auks

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I resolved at one point not to capitalise "great auk" any more because I don't capitalise the names of other birds, but sometimes I just have to give in to temptation and put "Great Auk"!
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

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Re: Great Auks

Post by Moonraker »

Good for you! As Del Boy would say, "You know it makes sense!"
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