The Beast of Dean is a

folkloric Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging fro ...

animal said to live, or to have once lived, in the

Forest of Dean The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the county of Gloucestershire, England. It forms a roughly triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and northwest, Herefordshire to the n ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

.Nanson, A. (2011). Gloucestershire Folk Tales. United Kingdom: History Press. Despite several attempts to encounter, capture, or kill the beast in the early 19th century, there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of the Beast of Dean or any similar creature in the Forest of Dean.

History

Folktales alleging the existence of the beast have their apparent origins in the 18th or earth 19th century. Farmers from the village of

Parkend Parkend is a village, located at the foot of the Cannop Valley, in the Royal Forest of Dean, West Gloucestershire, England, and has a history dating back to the early 17th century. During the 19th century it was a busy industrial village with se ...

undertook an expedition to capture and kill the creature in 1802, but found nothing. The animal they were hunting was reported to be a

boar The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The species is no ...

large enough to fell trees and hedges. Large numbers of boars in the forest are reported from other 19th century accounts, and "vast droves" of them were apparently allowed into the forest in autumn to forage around this time.Nicholls, H. G. (1858). The Forest of Dean: an historical and descriptive account. J. Murray. Wild boar can still be found in the Forest of Dean to this day, but many 20th and early 21st Century references to the creature are made by "

cryptozoologists Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that searches for and studies unknown, legendary, or extinct animals whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated, particularly those popular in folklore, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness M ...

", who presume the beast to be a real animal that was unknown (or new) to science. In 2007, the science-fiction television series ''

Primeval Primeval may refer to: * Primeval forest, an area of forest that has attained great age * Primeval number, a positive integer satisfying certain conditions * Primeval history, name given by biblical scholars to the first eleven chapters of the Bo ...

'', re-imagined the Beast of Dean as a living

gorgonops ''Gorgonops'' (from el, Γοργών 'Gorgon' and 'eye, face', literally 'Gorgon eye' or 'Gorgon face') is an extinct genus of gorgonopsian therapsids, of which it is the type genus, having lived during the Late Permian (Wuchiapingian), about ...

id that arrived in the present day through a wormhole leading to the

Permian Period The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.9 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleozo ...

References

External links

* * English legendary creatures Gloucestershire folklore Mythological pigs Cryptids Germanic legendary creatures {{folklore-stub