Patrick

Gef, the Talking Mongoose of Dalby

From 1931 the Irving family lived at the lonely farm of Cashen's Gap above Dalby on the Isle of Man with a creature that called itself Gef: not a spirit, an earthbound animal with clever hands, the eighth wonder of the world. It spoke from behind the wooden panelling, knew the gossip of neighbouring villages, sang and threw stones. Harry Price and Richard Lambert came and never saw Gef, but they were given tufts of his fur. Julian Huxley passed them to the Zoological Society, where F. Martin Duncan reported that the hair was a dog's — almost certainly the Irvings' sheepdog Mona. The voice, by every account of it, belonged to the farmer's daughter Voirrey.