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Cormorants rising from the ashes.... (1 Viewer)

Jos Stratford

Eastern Exile
Staff member
United Kingdom
Ai, what happened to our beloved Cormorants? Why pull the plug? Look at the last two posts:

+282 Wow! I spent this morning reading this entire thread, as well as the cited reference sites. What a stimulating and passionate dialogue!

+283 Admin: NO MORE! This Thread is done!

Doesn't this say topic is still interesting to some?

Agreed when I saw the original post +283 which you deleted, I did cringe and thought 'here we go again', but you could just delete that post, some useful stuff was surfacing in the last days ...in amongst all the personal abuse between two of our honourable friends :)

Sorry Andy, Cormorants are up and about :) PS do they still roost in the trees on the River Wye in Monmouth by the dual carriageway?
 
Jos Stratford said:
Sorry Andy, Cormorants are up and about :) PS do they still roost in the trees on the River Wye in Monmouth by the dual carriageway?

Yes they do Jos, though I haven't seen as many lately....

Andy.
 
Whatever the outcome, I hope someone explains the situation to the newcomer, TexasFlyway, who posted an (unusually) interesting opinion on the matter.
 
Well,I suppose these threads must end sometime,but I for one did find this particular thread very informative.Lots of research had been undertaken by the posters on the thread,and reasons for and agains't carefully and explicitly explained.So thankyou to all who did go into the details re the Cormorants and the effect on the rivers etc,you all did a great job.I think it could go around in circles for ever,but there was some interesting info to be found.
 
Speaking of rising from the ashes... anyone notice the resemblance between these 18ft beauties...

http://www.sjsfiles.btinternet.co.uk/img19401c.jpg
http://www.ukstudentlife.com/Travel/Tours/England/Liverpool/ClockTower.jpg

and Phalacrocorax?

Actually they are Laver birds (now Liverbirds)... laver being seaweed... semi-mythical and based on Cormorants...





Has the thread really been deleted.. that's real a shame, there was a lot of useful inormation buried in all the vitriol and hyperbole....I avoided the latter with judicious use of the ignore button.

Edit.. the thread is there.. just closed.
 
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Jane Turner said:
Speaking of rising from the ashes... anyone notice the resemblance between these 18ft beauties...

http://www.sjsfiles.btinternet.co.uk/img19401c.jpg
http://www.ukstudentlife.com/Travel/Tours/England/Liverpool/ClockTower.jpg

and Phalacrocorax?

Actually they are Laver birds (now Liverbirds)... laver being seaweed... semi-mythical and based on Cormorants...

Wow!
What exactly is a Liverbird and it's mythos, please? Just a modern kind of fun town mascot or really the town named after a mythic bird?

We have near here some bird deities or effigys or what ever you may dupe them, anyway they where found in an archeological dig in the bog near a town one hour north of where I live and they are very lifelike cormorant heads of iron to put on a pole from times when human working with iron tools was very new and iron most precious here (aproximately 100 BC). They are used as the logo of the archeological museum there now. (Left upper corner of the page http://www.federseemuseum.de is alas the best pic online of this kind of thing). Considering the celtic people from the pole villages in the swamps here lived of fishing as their mainstay, the notion of a venerated cormorant spirit in their culture is very interesting.

Sonja
 
Botaurus said:
Wow!
What exactly is a Liverbird and it's mythos, please? Just a modern kind of fun town mascot or really the town named after a mythic bird?

We have near here some bird deities or effigys or what ever you may dupe them, anyway they where found in an archeological dig in the bog near a town one hour north of where I live and they are very lifelike cormorant heads of iron to put on a pole from times when human working with iron tools was very new and iron most precious here (aproximately 100 BC). They are used as the logo of the archeological museum there now. (Left upper corner of the page http://www.federseemuseum.de is alas the best pic online of this kind of thing). Considering the celtic people from the pole villages in the swamps here lived of fishing as their mainstay, the notion of a venerated cormorant spirit in their culture is very interesting.

Sonja

I can't find out if the Liverbirds are responsible for the name Liverpool... the city is actually quite a recent one...built as a port to replace Chester which was silting up.

I do know that the two birds are said to be male and female. The female is set looking out to sea and is supposed to be waiting for men to return from the sea...the male on the other hand looks over the city and is supposed to be looking out for drinking establishements...
 
"I can't find out if the Liverbirds are responsible for the name Liverpool... the city is actually quite a recent one...built as a port to replace Chester which was silting up."


It would be hard to imagine Liverpool without the Liverbird. What would replace the city's emblem on our footballer's shirts, on numerous council and higher education buildings and on countless litter bins and bollards city wide? This omnipresent fowl of uncertain ornithological merit, has in fact got a very proven pedigree. When King John decided to favour Liverpool with a royal charter in 1207 the city, as we know it today, was little more than a fishing village. Originally the bird in question was probably the eagle of St. John, the apostle. When the seal was destroyed in a fire in 1387, a crude copy gave birth to the bird we know today, the Liverbird, born out of fire like another mythical bird, the phoenix.

A wee bit more for Jane

AD 1331, Lyrepole, The earliest-known appearance of Liverpool on the map, in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, from the time of Edward III (1327-77), in whose reign Liverpool (having been founded by King John's Royal Charter in 1207) began to flourish.



1572 :- Lerpoole, (map of). A 19th century reconstruction from "ancient sources" not specified in the original. Owners of land in and around the town are shown a common practice in old maps. Liverpool at this time of only a few principal streets, running roughly in the shape of an H whose upper half diverges outwards. This basic H-plan has survived to the present day. Other salient points are St Nicholas's church, the pool of Liverpool (later partly filled in to become Liverpool's first dock), the stone quarry (later St James's Cemetery, now the site of the Anglican Cathedral), the road to Prescot - an important turnpike - the lone straight line of Parliament Street (once the city boundary, now boundary of a huge Toxteth area) and the Road to the Park - i.e. Toxteth Park which covers the entire southern half of Liverpool and has given rise to the absurdly misnamed and misused, mythical newsman's district "Toxteth". The road is now Park Lane.



1598 Lerpoole Haven, (map of), Drawn by William Smith in the second half of the 16th century (British Museum) and shows the Hundred of West Derby, or which Liverpool was at that time merely a "berewick" - the ancient name for a homestead or village, a "Hundred" being a sub-division of a County or Shire having its own court. Liverpool does not appear on the 1086 Doomsday Survey, although Crosebi, Fonebi, Liderlant, Torboc, Stochestede (Tosteth) and Spec (Speke) were all important enough for inclusion(see the scouse press packet "Prehistoric and Roman Merseyside" as well as Saxon and Norman Merseyside in preparation). Notice the names of land owners: Norris of Speke, and the Blundells, Molineux, Hesketh etc. Toxteth (also Tockseath) was still an enclosed deer-park, though it was soon to be "disparked" for farming and leased to the earl of Derby and Sefton, and later acquired by Liverpool Corporation: see also the corresponding pair of maps of 18th century modern Toxteth.
(Extract from Tony McKenna)

Regards

Malky
 
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Thanks. This was very enlightening (a bit disapointing there is no old celtic stuff behind those Liverbirds linking them to our Hallstadt-people cormorant effigys tho', but fact is fact...).

Now as we are at myths and fables: The bird vs. fish debate, as annoying it is, seems extremely old, as old as mankind indeed.

I found this summerian text from 4000 years ago about fishes and birds, clad in form of a discussion giving the generic animals human voices and having them bring the issue before a divine judge... a bit longwinded at first and not fully complete as those cuneiform tablets got obviously crumbly, but still an interesting read...

http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcslmac.cgi?text=t.5.3.5#

Sonja
 
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