Dave McKean’s Mythical Creatures Stamps
This is a series of stamps for the Royal mail that depict the Isle of Britain’s mythical creatures by artist Dave McKean. The US gets Bigfoot and Hogzilla. The UK gets faeries, giants, mermaids and pixies. Check ’em out:
Neil Gaiman, the author of the Epic Sandman Chronicles and the mind behind the awesome Coraline movie, was tasked to write the textual descriptions of the stamps. You can find that info here from the Times. An excerpt about Mermaids:
She keeps the souls of the drowned in lobster pots that she finds on the seabed.
They sing, the captive souls, and they light her way home beneath the grey Atlantic.
She had sisters once, but long ago they shed their tails and scales and stepped gingerly ashore to live with fishermen in their dry-land cottages. Now she is lonely, and not even the souls of the dead are company.
Walk the sea’s edge in winter and you may see her, too far away, waving to you. Wave back and she will take you down to her world, deep below the waves, and show you cold wonders, and teach you the songs of the merfolk, and the lonely ways beneath the sea.
