284 THE RIVER-SIDE NATURALIST. 



weighed 350 Ibs.^we will leave our readers to believe or 

 not, as it pleases them. 



It is said of Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, that he 

 owed his position to this circumstance : " His mother, 

 the wife of a weaver living at Guildford, during her preg- 

 nancy dreamed that if she could eat a pike her child 

 would be a son, and arrive at great preferment. The 

 pike came miraculously to hand, for she caught it while 

 dipping her pail into the river. The story of the dream 

 was circulated. The child was a son, was befriended 

 and put to school, and eventually became Primate of all 

 England." 



It has been generally supposed that the pike is an 

 imported fish, and came to be cultivated in England about 

 the time of Henry VIII., but that they existed here in 

 Edward III.'s time is certain. Chaucer, in his Prologue 

 to his " Canterbury Tales," says : 



" Full many a fair partrich hadde he in mewe, 

 And many a Breme and many a luce in stew." 



An ancient MS. exists, written about 1250, in which 

 Lupus aquaticas sive Luceos is amongst the fish which the 

 fishmongers were to have in their shops. 



Three lucies were the arms of the Lucy family in the 

 time of Henry III. See note in Pickering's edition of 

 " Walton," p. 206. 



Pike generally go by the name of jack till they are 

 twenty-four inches long. The old name was Lucy or 

 Luce. There are many provincial names Gullet in 

 Northumberland ; in Cambridgeshire a large pike is called 

 a Haked, in Scotland a Gedd ; in France it is Brocket, 

 Lanceron, and Becquet. 



Holinshed, " Chronicles of England," vol. i., says : 

 " Also how the Pike as he ageth receiveth divers names, 

 as from a Fire to a Gilthed to a Pod, from a Pod to a 

 Jacke, from a Jacke to a Pickerell, from a Pickerell to a 

 Pike, and last of all to a Luce." 



The term " pike " is supposed to come from the Saxon 

 word piik, sharp-pointed. 



