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A Canadian man visiting Cornwall in England found a “unicorn” skull near the alleged site of King Arthur’s Camelot castle. He couldn’t take it home so he traded it for beer. Now, it turns out, by taking the skull, he actually broke the law.
The man, John Goodwin, was staying near Tintagel when he and his family visited St. Nectan’s Glen. While they were taking a walk through the area, his daughter spotted something sticking out of a mossy bank. When he pulled the object free, he was stunned to see a skull with a horn sticking out from the middle of it.
“I pulled it out and thought it must be a deer or something at first but realized it only had one horn,” John told CornwallLive. “It was too small for a rhino but no matter what, it was unusual.
“It was real bone, heavy and looked properly old. We brought it back to the car but my gran started feeling uneasy right away. She said it didn’t feel right to take it, like we’d disturbed something meant to be left alone.”
As one does after finding a unicorn skull, Goodwin took it to the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle to see what they thought of the discovery. Was it the unicorn Merlin rode at the Battle of Badon? Sadly, the museum wasn’t impressed, so Goodwin was left without any answers.
“It was definitely there and we found it on the trail under a mossy embankment,” Goodwin said. “Whether it is a genuine unicorn, that I don’t know.”
What he did know was that it was going to be difficult to explain taking a “unicorn” skull through customs at the airport. So, when he stopped at the Stonehenge Inn pub in Salisbury and showed them the skull, they offered to give him unlimited ale in return for the strange item. He accepted. “I quite like Old Speckled Hen,” he said.
A few days after reports of the “unicorn” skull spread, another report came out which stated the skull was taken from what is referred to as a Site of Specific Scientific Interest (SSSI). Under the law, no one is allowed to take any items from an SSSI. It doesn’t matter that zooarchaeologists from Historic England who studied the skull have said it actually belonged to a horse with a cow’s horn somehow embedded into it.
While Goodwin has since left the country to continue his vacation in Greece, the skull is still there and is now in the home of one of the pub’s barmen.
“He took it home, it was freaking me out here,” the bar’s manager told The Sun. “I’m sure he’ll happily to return it.”