46 FISHES OF FANCY. 



probably to the fact that our painted ancestors worshipped 

 the streams, and from this pagan reverence for the waters, 

 their naiad-folk, and the fishes they protected, I would 

 venture to surmise that the objection of the lower classes 

 at the present day to a fish diet has arisen. 



Sea-fishing as an industry is said to have been intro- 

 duced into Albion by St. Wilfrid, and the Anglo- 

 Saxons, then abandoning paganism, came to indiscrimi- 

 nate fish-eating. In the fourteenth century sturgeon 

 was declared a royal fish, and statutes exist (of a later 

 date) restricting the consumption of porpoises, seals, and 

 " grampus," as meats too dainty for the million. That Henry 

 I. died of a surfeit of lampreys " is one of those things that 

 every schoolboy knows ; " but the extraordinary estimation 

 in which this fish was long held is a less familiar fact. 

 Royal edicts have been published regulating the price of 

 the dainty when the cupidity of fishmongers threatened 

 to send it up beyond the purses of the rich, and King John 

 sent special agents to the Continent to purchase lampreys. 

 Gloucester city used at one time to send every Christmas 

 a lamprey-pie to the sovereign. 



Herring-pie also was once accounted a royal delicacy. 

 Yarmouth, by its charter, was pledged to furnish the king 

 annually with a hundred herrings baked in twenty-four 

 pasties, and more than one private estate on the coast was 

 held on a tenure of herring-pies. In Queen Elizabeth's 

 reign, sturgeon, " whales," and porpoises were among the 

 Pisces Regales, but it is not probable that her sister was an 

 enthusiast, inasmuch as her royal husband was of opinion 

 that fish was not proper food for human beings, " being 

 only congealed water." France had its notable ichthyo- 

 phagists in Louis XII., Francis I., Henry IV. (who kept 

 twenty-five royal fishmongers), and Louis XIV. In China 



