Going the whole ’hog

Honest Truth

Best-selling author Sally Coulthard has been writing about houses, gardens and the outdoors for more than 20 years. Here, she tells Tracey Bryce about how she came to write The Hedgehog Handbook in response to the rapid decline of the spiky creatures

Where did hedgehogs get their name?

The English like to think they invented the hedgehog. And, in a funny way, they did.

Travel back 600 years to the Middle Ages, and you find the first recorded instance of the word – hygehoge – a simple marriage of “hyge” (hedge) and “hoge” (pig). It was a straightforward, no-nonsense name – did exactly what it said on the tin – and described the creature perfectly: a snuffling, grunting, hog-snouted beastie that liked nothing better than hanging around hedgerows.

Is it true people used to think they were witches?

Night-roaming animals have long suffered from strange folk beliefs and superstitions – bats, owls, cats and even hedgehogs have been linked to witchcraft for hundreds of years, probably because their night-time habits were so ill understood.

Even as late as the end of the 19th Century, some people thought that hedgehogs were either “familiars” or witches in animal form. It’s interesting that one of the old names for a hedgehog was a “hotchiwitch”.

How many spikes does a hedgehog have?

Between 5,000 and 7,000 on the average adult.