Myth of the Ship-holder. 289 



to be found. Thus Spenser, in his 'Visions of the World's 

 Vanity,' i. p. 108, writes : — 



(i Looking far forth into the ocean wide, 

 A goodly ship, with banners bravely diglit, 



Through the main sea making her merrie flight. 



All suddenly there clave unto her keel 



A little fish that men call llemora, 



Which stopt her course, and held her by the heel, 



That wind nor tide could move her thence away." 



And Ben Jonson says (' Poetaster, III. 1) : — 



" I say a reruora, 

 For it will stay a ship that's under sail." 



And again, in his Act III. Scene 1, he makes Horace say to 

 Fuscus Aristius of Crispinus, a great bore, who had nearly 

 talked him to death : — 



" Aristius. What ails't thou man ? 

 Horace. 'Death, I am seized on here, 



By a land remora : I cannot stir, 

 Nor move but as he pleases." 



Maundrell, in his ' Aleppo to Jerusalem ' (p. 46) writes : — 

 " We had his promise to stay for us, but the i emoras and 

 disappointments we met with in the Road had put ns back- 

 ward in our journey." 



And again, Jeremy-Taylor quaintly says : — " A gentle 

 answer is an excellent remora to the progresses of anger, 

 whether in thyself or others." 



Before leaving this part of the subject, the following story 

 may be added as of interest. In David Livingstone's 

 ' Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa ' (New 

 York, 1858), on page 556, in writing of the Barotse valley 

 on the Leeba River, one of the headwaters of the Zambesi, 

 he says : — "The Barotse [people or tribe] believe that at 

 certain parts of the river a tremendous monster lies hid and 

 that it will catch a canoe, and hold it fast and motionless, in 

 spite of the utmost exertions of the paddlers." 



In the Indian Ocean around Zanzibar the Remora abounds 

 in great numbers, and is used, as I shall show in another 

 paper, for the purpose of catching turtles by virtue of its 

 propensity for clamping itself fast to any floating object. 

 At first 1 was inclined to think that the Barotse myth was a 



Ann. i& Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 9. Vol. ii. 22 



