FISHES IN RELIGION. 37 



It has but one eye and half a head. Looking at it on one side you 

 would deem it dead, but the other side is perfect in all its parts. The 

 people consider it as a good augury, and the Jews pay a large sum for 

 it and carry it away to distant places." 



The Koran allows the faithful to fish in the sea when on 

 pilgrimage (but not to hunt game by the way), and sea-fish 

 were specially permitted as food. At first they were un- 

 lawful, as the name of Allah frequently could not be pro- 

 nounced over them before they died ; but, to remedy this, 

 Mahomed, blessing a knife, cast it into the sea, whereby 

 all the fish were blessed, and had their throats cut before 

 they were brought on shore. " The large openings behind 

 the gills are the wounds thus miraculously made without 

 killing the fish." Another legend on the same subject says 

 that Abraham, having sacrificed the ram instead of Isaac, 

 threw away the knife into the stream that flowed near the 

 altar, and accidentally struck a fish. " Fishes therefore are 

 the only animals eaten by Mahomedans without previously 

 having their throats cut," 



By the Christian religion the consumption of fish is 

 directly encouraged, for, apart from the general prece- 

 dent afforded by the miracles in Holy Writ, the Church 

 specially enjoins the diet ; and this, too, on such a scale 

 that in the time of Queen Elizabeth, the annual "fish 

 days " * were 145 in number. Among the annual Church 



* The chief were the forty days of Lent ; the Ember-days at 

 the four seasons, being the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after 

 the first Sunday in Lent; the feast of Pentecost (Whitsuntide); 

 September 14 ; December 13 ; the three Rogation-days, being the 

 Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Holy Thursday ; and all 

 the Fridays in the year, except Christmas-day when it falls on a 

 Friday. Even after the Reformation the number of fish-days con- 

 tinued large, about 1596-7 those observed by the household of (^uccn 

 Elizabeth being only some thirty-seven days short of half the year. 



