HISTORY OF THE BARNACLE AND GOOSE 119 



that this identification was due to the exercise of a little 

 authority on the part of the clergy in both France and 

 Britain, who were thus enabled to claim the abundant 

 " barnacle goose " as a fish in its nature and origin 

 rather than a fowl, and so to use it as food on the fast- 

 days of the Church. Pope Innocent III (to whom the 

 matter was referred) considered it necessary in 1 2 1 5 to 

 prohibit the eating of " barnacle geese " in Lent, since 

 although he admitted that they are not generated in the 

 ordinary way, he yet maintained (very reasonably) that 

 they live and feed like ducks, and cannot be regarded 

 as differing in nature from other birds. 



Thus we see that in early and even later days a 

 good deal hung on the truth of this story of the 

 generation of barnacle geese. The story was popularly 

 discussed by the devout and by sceptics, and appears to 

 have been known in France as " l'histoire du canard." 

 At last in the seventeenth century it was finally dis- 

 credited, owing to the account given by some Dutch 

 explorers of the eggs and young of the barnacle goose — 

 like those of any other goose — and its breeding-place in 

 the far north on the coast of Greenland. The discredited 

 and hoary legend now became the type and exemplar of 

 a marvellous story which is destitute of foundation, and 

 so the term " un canard " (short for histoire d'un canard), 

 commonly applied in French to such stories, receives its 

 explanation. Our own term for such stories, in use as 

 long since as 1640, namely, " a cock-and-bull story," has 

 not been traced to its historical source. 1 



That the story of the goose or duck and the 



1 Probably it means " a silly story told by a cock to a bull ! " as 

 suggested by the French word coq-cl-Pane, which means a story 

 told or fit to be told by a cock to an ass ! 



