I really love this story about the boggins. It's a story I've had in my head for a very long time, the foundations of which actually began as a child and spending a lot of my childhood at my grandparents' farm. To see this book in print would be a dream for me.
Here is an excerpt from the book:
Up in her room, with the
door firmly shut, Agnes took The Origin, Expansion and Demise of Plant Species
out of her school bag and lay it gently down on her bed. She looked at the
shriveled cuttings lying next to her on the bedside table and started to leaf
through the book, page by page. It smelled old and fusty and slightly of
violets. Chapter after chapter of intense botanical facts, much of it she
didn’t even bother to read and if she was totally honest, couldn't make head nor
tail of anyway.
Finally she reached the
section about extinct plants. Pages filled with columns of colourful drawings
of plants no longer in existence, long gone, forgotten; their place on earth
now just a distant memory. Agnes studied each plant and read the words that
accompanied each illustration until her weary, tired eyes started to ache. She
blinked and yawned and contemplated going to sleep but decided to turn just one
more page.
And there it was. The
little plant with yellow flowers and heart-shaped seed pods. The plant the
world thought was no more but still grew on the banks of her muddy, old dyke.
She gasped and closed her
eyes, hardly daring to open them again for fear she may have been dreaming. But
this was no dream. It was her plant. The magic plant! Right in front of her
eyes. She read the words in the column alongside the drawing.
Bot Parsley (remedium petroselinium) Origin: Scandinavia.
This extinct plant was used by the Norse tribes of
Northern Europe as a healing herb. It was introduced to Britain after the
Viking invasion of AD793. The Anglo Saxons adopted the herb as their own and
used it widely to heal and cure many ailments from headaches and insomnia to
stomach disorders and sleeping sickness. The last possible sighting of the
plant was in 1826 by Reverend William Parsons of Gedney Hill (née Isle of
Gaeda) in Lincolnshire. Rev. Parsons attempted to cultivate it, knowing of its’
superior healing properties, but failed.
Goosebumps prickled her
skin as she realised she had finally found it. A wave of elation rushed through
her body and she leapt to her feet and bounced up and down on the bed with joy.
She couldn’t believe it! She was a GENIUS! She had found the needle in the
haystack! Exhausted, she flopped down onto the disheveled duvet and gazed at
the pretty illustration and then at the cutting lying in the palm of her hand.
This was her plant! Bot
Parsley. All the facts matched perfectly. Every single one! Bot Parsley was an
ancient magical healing plant, it hadn’t been seen for almost two hundred years
and the last place it was seen was where the story began.
The Isle of Gaeda.
