GANNETS AS FOOD 457 



insipid.* The squab of the Cormorant was too rank, but 

 half-fledged Black-headed Gulls were accounted a deHcacy, 

 and were caught in nets.f Young Gannets were partaken 

 of principally in the neighbourhood of the Bass Rock, 

 and in a less degree at Ailsa Craig. At one time they were 

 gathered at the Skelligs and brought in barrels to the 

 mainland,^ but there is no record of their being eaten in 

 modern times on Lundy Island, or ever brought from 

 Grassholm for that purpose. 



At the Bass Rock documents do not go back far enough 

 to tell us when the systematic harvesting of the young 

 Gannets began. We hear of the great value of their grease 

 in 1493, but the Charter of 1316 does not mention them, 

 and we are left without any particulars until the six- 

 teenth century. That sea-fowl are the oldest inhabitants 

 of the Bass, no one doubts, or that young Gannets were 

 a part of the sustenance of Saint Baldred the hermit, 

 who died there A.D. 606. But it was not uiitil 1521 that 

 we learn anything about this feathered harvest being 

 thought worth the lifting, although we note that ten years 

 before that, young Gannets had been considered desirable 



* " St. Kilda," by J. Wiglesworth, pp. 20, (ifl. 



t "Tlie Natural History of Staffordshire," by R. Plot. 



J "The Fowler in Ireland" (1882, p. 202) and "Natural History of 

 Ireland " (Birds III., p. 26-1:). 



