354 THE PRACTICAL TTSHERMAN. 



Then simmer weel, 

 With oil of eel, 

 Three spoonfuls to a dose ; 

 You soon will find, 

 With naught unkind, 

 Your nerves they will compose. 



-W.S., 1702. 

 Another is against " cramp " : 



Around the shin, 

 Tie the skin 

 Of full from river eel, 

 And every sprain, 

 And cramp and pain. 

 Will fly unto the de'il. 



This is much believed in yet in the north, and I have heard of ladies' 

 garters being made wholly or in part of the skin of an eel for the pur- 

 pose described. 



Tet another cure for colic : 



For wynd and ventosite, that men callis Collica passio, and this es proved ; tak and make 

 the a girdle of eels' skyn, and while the weras hit aboute thi body thou sal nought have 

 Collica pamonem. (MS. of the 14th century, British Museum.) 



With the exception of Scotchmen and Jews, the eel as a food fish is 

 pretty generally liked. Why Scotchmen do not eat them I know not, 

 unless it be because the snake-like form reminds them of the supposed 

 progenitor of the Original Sin, but Jews proscribed them their tables 

 because of an idea that they were scaleless, and hence unclean. The eel 

 was known and worshipped in Egypt, and by the Grecian and Roman 

 epicure made a sort of belly god. Aristophanes, a Greek gourmet, says, 

 " Your idol is my idol too, but in a different way^: you Egyptians worship 

 the eel as a deity, I adore him in a dish." " If," says Thais to her 

 lover, " If I prefer any stranger to you, my love, may I be turned into 

 an eel, with Callixenus by my side to devour me." The Macedonians 

 were proud of the fish ; Sicily boasted of hers ; Syracuse could furnish 

 of the best sort, and Bceotia was famed, especially lake Copais. What 

 says Lysistria, after breathing out his anathema on Bcaotia and its 

 inhabitants ? Naught but this exception " except the eels." 



England fro m very early times has been famed for the fish, and from 

 early times, therefore, one finds chronicles of the productiveness of the 

 eel fishery. 



During the mediaeval ages this fish was evidently of very high repute . 

 and, indeed, it appears to have been in some cases the almost sole article 

 of diet amongst the poorer classes. Thus Bede tells us, concerning the 

 people of Sussex, "The Bishop (Wilfrid) when he came into this province, 

 and found so great a misery of famine, taught them to get their food by 

 fishing. Their sea and rivers abounded in fish, yet the people had no 

 .skill to take them, except only eels. The bishop's men having gathered 



