‘Skelton’s writings possess an aura of enchantment, even as they address the plight of animal disappearance’.
Paul Sheehan
Ferae Naturae (2015)
Inaugural publication of the Notional Research Group for Cultural Artefacts (NRGCA). Ferae Naturae examines manuscript fragments discovered in the Collingwood Archive at Abbot Hall Art Gallery.
The fragments contained a number of annotations written in pen and ink referencing ‘ritual overkill’ in bog bodies, the fox as a psychopomp, the horned deities Cernunnos and Belatucadrus, animal worship among late-Medieval ‘plague cults’, and an esoteric St. Bega tradition in which her armilla is reimagined as an animal collar, and her cult aligned with that of the Irish saint, Ciarán mac Luaigne.
The manuscripts contained many instances of what appear to be Middle English religious lyrics, as well as references to the customary persecution of animal life in old Cumberland and Westmorland. During 2014 the NRGCA undertook an examination of the pen and ink annotations in order to identify their sources. The results of these findings are presented in Ferae Naturae.