It's a Sign: Forest Safari
Created | Updated Mar 12, 2023
It's a Sign: Forest Safari
This is a sign found in the New Forest, a National Park in Hampshire just across the Solent from the Isle of Wight and famed for being somewhere God committed regicide. The New Forest dates from 1079 when King William the Bastard decided he wanted a new forest, with 'forest' meaning then meaning 'hunting ground' (usually royal), though of course most hunting was done in woodland. William the Bastard was a genocidal tyrant who loved slaughtering, so hunting was high up on his to do list after killing off about 75% population of Yorkshire (in a campaign called the Harrowing of the North, as seeing all your friends and family either massacred or slowly starve to death is quite harrowing). William was so bloodthirsty that he even took time to kill several Londoners during his coronation and set Westminster Abbey alight during the service. After his death his body burst open during his funeral and stank the place out too. But he knew the value of good PR and appointed friends and family to powerful positions within the church to pray for his soul and also tell everyone what a good guy he was. His PR was so effective that he's been renamed William the Conqueror and people widely start dating the royal family from him, despite the far more remarkable rulers who came before.
After William the Bastard came William Rufus, who tried to get power back from the bishops, which the powerful churchmen of the time disliked. He also liked the New Forest, went hunting there one day and got shot by an arrow, which all the Churchmen he'd annoyed declared an Act of God. After his funeral the cathedral he'd been buried in fell down on top of his coffin, so maybe God disliked him after all.
This sign, though, proves that the New Forest isn't all old history in an attempt to get down with the kids and prove that as recently as 1848 things have been happening there. In 1848 much of the world was aflame, with war, violence and revolutions in what is now Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Hungary, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Canada, New Granada, the Mexican-American War and even usually neutral Switzerland joined in, while in the New Forest as you can see they were concerned about misplaced cattle.
And elephants. For the more I look at this sign, the more I think it shows a zebra on the left, that's definitely an elephant by the bank with two tusks, and an ear above his trunk, and over the bank is Father Christmas with his hands in the air with his sack of toys on the bank. But what do YOU see? There are no wrong answers!
