276 FISH IN MYTHS, SYMBOLS, DIET, MEDICINE 



we are enjoined to eat fish, of which, it must be remembered, 

 Aphrodite was a patron goddess. 



As regards Maunday Thm'sday, Robinson writes : " One 

 of the annual Church disbursements up to the end of the 

 sixteenth century was for herrings, 'red and white.' Let us 

 hope that those who in pious observation of Christian ordinances 

 thus charged themselves with phosphorus were not aware that 

 they were simply perpetuating the worship of Venus. ^ Friday, 

 again, is dies Veneris, and fish, her own symbol, is therefore 

 appropriate for the day." 



Of the making and explaining of symbols in early and 

 mediaeval times there is no end. The monkish mind, perhaps 

 owing to environment and fasting, found this a congenial and 

 pleasant pursuit. 



Among the books on this subject, Mundtis Symbolicus, 

 although, or perhaps because, published in 1681, attracts me 

 most, not merely by its fulness of information and of quotation 

 from classical. Patristic, and mediaeval literature — it is a good 

 competitor with Burton's Anatomy for Collectanea — but also 

 by the number and naivete of its lemmata, or appropriate 

 apophthegms, which appeal alike to one's ignorance and one's 

 humour. Of 737 pages of the volume before me 43 concern 

 themselves solely with fish, and provide delightful browsing. 2 



The object and practice of Picinelli, from whose // Mondo 

 Simholico Erath makes the Latin translation, is to examine 

 into the habits, real or alleged, of each fish, and deduce, as was 

 the frequent custom of books in the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries, from its delinquencies or virtues a moral lesson or 

 lessons. 



Thus the lemma, " Fallacis f nidus amor is," not inaptly 

 summarises the amatory character of the Sargus, as indicated 



* p. Robinson, International Fisheries Exhibition (London, 1883), Part III. 

 p. 43. " The representations of the Virgin in a canopy or vesica piscis are 

 supposed to have a specially Christian significance : if they have any at all, 

 it is a very heathenish one." 



2 Mimdtis Symboliciis, a rare folio, of which two editions, 1681 and 1694, 

 exist, is a translation of // Mondo Simbolico (written by Picinelli Filippi, and 

 published at Milan 1653, 1669, and 1680), made by Aug. Erath. Cf. Tresor 

 des livres rares et precieux, torn. v. (Dresde, 1859-69), p. 282. The Bodleian 

 possesses only the 1694 edition of Mundus Symbolicus, while apparently the 

 British Museum lacks both. 



