LATEST INSTANCE OF A BROUGHTON BRUIN
Eurasian brown bears were not uncommon across Scotland in the past, and had a reputation for fierceness which encouraged Roman entrepreneurs to export them home as participants in bloody entertainments.
Martial, writing in AD 80, described one such amusement at the inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre.
Laureolus, a criminal, was centre-stage:
In the same way that Prometheus, when bound to the rock in Scythia, fed a ravening bird with his ever available flesh, so Laureolus, hanging on a genuine cross, gave his bare flesh to a Caledonian bear. His torn members lived on, dripping blood, till not a scrap of his body remained.
'Ye'll have had yer tea, then?' seems not to have cut the mustard.
Gone but not forgotten
Quite when bears died out in Scotland is a matter for conjecture. Their presence was noted in the fifth century AD, and there are suggestions that they might have survived in Perthshire until the tenth, but nobody knows for sure.
Most experts agree that they were probably hunted to extinction by Man.
Here in Broughton, though, a few remain.
The Broughton bears
In 2012 we recorded an example on Eyre Place.
In 2013 the sight of a polar version on N.W. Circus Place prompted us to ask some awkward questions.
And in 2015 Paul Henni photographed a Polish returnee, heavily disguised, travelling up Dundas Street.
Then, yesterday, Spurtle reader Gavin Gillespie spotted yet another ursine inteloper, this time lurking in the shadows of a New Town tenement. You have to look closely, but he's definitely there ….
If you spot bears or any other unusual forms of wildlife in the neighbourhood, please get in touch.
Contact us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk or @theSpurtle or Facebook
[Image top-right: Wikipedia, Creative Commons.]