HISTORY OF THE BARNACLE AND GOOSE 121 



time of fasting, because they are not flesh nor born of 

 flesh!" 



It is noteworthy that Giraldus does not state in 

 accordance with the tradition as reported by earlier 

 writers that there is a tree the buds of which become 

 transformed into the geese, but says merely that the 

 " small bodies of birds," clearly indicating by his 

 description groups of ship's barnacles, are " produced 

 from fir timber tossed along the sea." It is also note- 

 worthy that he calls the geese themselves " Bernacae," 

 which is the Celtic name for a shell-fish. 



Later the belief seems to have reverted to the older 

 tradition, or probably enough the complete story, includ- 

 ing the existence of the bird-producing tree, existed in 

 its original form in " seats of learning " in other parts of 

 the British Islands outside Ireland, and also in Paris and 

 other places in Western Europe. For we find that in 

 1435 the learned Sylvius, who afterwards became Pope 

 Pius II, visited King James of Scotland in order, among 

 other things, to see the wonderful tree which he had 

 heard of as growing in Scotland from the fruit of which 

 geese are born. He complains that " miracles will 

 always flee further and further," for when he had now 

 arrived in Scotland and asked to see the tree, he was 

 told that it did not grow there, but farther north, in the 

 Orkneys. And so he did not see the tree. 



In 1597, John Gerard, in the third book of his 

 " Herbal, or History of Plants," writes as follows : " There 

 are found in the north parts of Scotland and the Islands 

 adjacent called Orchades, certaine trees whereon do grow 

 certaine shell-fishes of a white colour tending to russett, 

 wherein are contained little creatures which shels in 



