loo SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



troubled the priesthood of more than one creed as to the 

 instructions they should give to the laity concerning the use 

 of them as food. The Jews — all those, at least, who 

 maintain a strict observance of the Hebrew Law — eat no 

 meat but that of animals which have been slaughtered in a 

 certain prescribed manner ; and a doubt arose amongst 

 them at the period we refer to, whether these geese should 

 be killed as flesh or as fish. Professor Max Miiller cites 

 Mordechai,* as asking whether these birds are fruits, fish, 

 or flesh ; that is, whether they must be killed in the Jewish 

 way, as if they were flesh. Mordechai describes them as 

 birds which grow on trees, and says, "the Rabbi Jehuda, of 

 Worms (who died 12 16) used to say that he had heard from 

 his father. Rabbi Samuel, of Speyer (about 1 1 50), that 

 Rabbi Jacob Tham, of Ramerii (who died 1171), the grand- 

 son of the great Rabbi Rashi (about 1 140), had decided that 

 they must be killed as flesh." 



Pope Innocent III. took the same view; for at the 

 Lateran Council, in 12 15, he prohibited the eating of 

 Barnacle geese during Lent. In 1277, Rabbi Izaak, of 

 Corbeil, determined to be on the safe side, forbade altogether 

 the eating of these birds by the Jews, " because they were 

 neither flesh nor fish." 



Michael Bernhard Valentine,t quoting Wormius, says 

 that this question caused much perplexity and disputation 

 amongst the doctors of the Sorbonne ; but that they passed 

 an ordinance that these geese should be classed as fishes, 

 and not as birds ; and he adds, that in consequence of this 

 decision large numbers of these birds were annually sent to 

 Paris from England and Scotland, for consumption in 



* Riva, 1559, leaf 142*, 



f ' Historia Simplicium,' lib. iii. p. 327. 



