BLEMYAHS

According to Pliny the Elder, the Blemyahs or Blemmyes were a race of humanoid beings who lived in Ethiopia. They had eyes and a mouth in their chests, but no heads at all. These extraordinary folk appeared again in the medieval Romance of Alexander in which they became golden giants whose lower limbs were so covered with profuse hair that they appeared like torsos arising from undergrowth! Sir John Mandeville said that Blemyahs still existed in the Libyan desert. The children’s writer William Mayne gave them a new lease of life in his Blemyah Tales.