poet helps mammoth tooth sleuth

When reporter Sarah Daily heard about a mammoth tooth found at Cannop Ponds she knew she was on to a story. Imagine her surprise when she discovered that far from being an ancient fossil it was actually a modern Indian elephant tooth! How did it get there? Never having a zoo or safari park, surely, there wouldn't ever have been an elephant in the Forest of Dean...would there? After an appeal on social media Coleford poet Keith Morgan was one of the people stepping forward with an answer. As Sarah's article in this week's Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Review explains, travelling circuses would often come through the Forest of Dean.  A photograph on the fascinating SunGreen website shows a local landlord offering one such visiting elephant a beer to drink. It seems this could well have been the very same elephant described to Keith years later, immortalised his poem Ivor and the Elephant.