MORE AS TO THE BARNACLE AND GOOSE 139 



prevalence or origin of this story in Java, and hope that 

 some one who reads this page may be able to help me. 



Before leaving the story of the goose and the 

 barnacle, the explanation of the myth given by Prof. 

 Max Muller in his lectures on the science of language 

 nearly fifty years ago, should be cited. It is an excellent 

 example of the misuse of hypothesis in investigation, 

 and the attempt to explain something which we cannot 

 get at and examine by making a supposition which it is 

 even more difficult to examine and test. 



Max Muller made use of the observation — a perfectly 

 true and interesting one — that a whole people or folk 

 will be led to a wrong conclusion, or to a belief in some 

 strange and marvellous occurrence, by the misunder- 

 standing of a single word, attributing to that word a 

 sense which now fits the sound, but one quite different 

 from that with which the word was originally used in the 

 tradition or history concerned. Words are, in fact, mis- 

 interpreted after a lapse of time, or when imported from 

 distant lands, just as we have seen that pictures and 

 sculpture often have been. For instance, Richard 

 Whittington, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1398 

 and other later years, did business in French goods, which 

 was spoken of in the city as " achat," and pronounced 

 " akat." Hence in later centuries, when the prevalence 

 of Norman French was forgotten, it was stated (in a play 

 produced in 1605) that Whittington owed his fortune to 

 " a cat," and the story of the wonderful cat and its deeds 

 was built up " line upon line " or " lie upon lie," Max 

 Muller suggested that the story of the barnacle and the 

 goose could be similarly explained. The brant or brent 

 goose which frequents the Irish shore was, he supposes, 

 called " berniculus " by the Latin-speaking clergy as a 

 diminutive of Hibernicus, meaning " Irish." There is 



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