BARNACLE GEESE GOOSE BARNACLES. 287 



the title, was a vigorous and zealous reformer of Church 

 abuses. Amongst the laxities of discipline against which 

 he found it necessary to protest was the custom then 

 prevailing of eating these Barnacle geese during Lent, 

 under the plea that their flesh was not that of birds, but of 

 fishes. He writes : 



"There are here many birds which are called Bernacae, which 

 nature produces in a manner contrary to nature, and very wonderful. 

 They are like marsh-geese but smaller. They are produced from fir- 

 timber tossed about at sea, and are at first like geese upon it. After- 

 wards they hang down by their beaks, as if from a sea-weed attached 

 to the wood, and are enclosed in shells that they may grow the more 

 freely. Having thus, in course of time, been clothed with a strong 

 covering of feathers, they either fall into the water, or seek their liberty 

 in the air by flight. The embryo geese derive their growth and nutri- 

 ment from the moisture of the wood or of the sea, in a secret and most 

 marvellous manner. I have seen with my own eyes more than a 

 thousand minute bodies of these birds hanging from one piece of 

 timber on the shore, enclosed in shells and already formed. Their 

 eggs are not impregnated in coitu, like those of other birds, nor does 

 the bird sit upon its eggs to hatch them, and in no corner of the world 

 have they been known to build a nest. Hence the bishops and clergy 

 in some parts of Ireland are in the habit of partaking of these birds on 

 fast days, without scruple. But in doing so they are led into sin. 

 For, if any one were to eat of the leg of our first parent, although he 

 (Adam) was not born of flesh, that person could not be adjudged 

 innocent of eating flesh." 



This fable of the geese appears, however, to have been 

 current at least a hundred years before Giraldus wrote, for 

 Professor Max Muller, who treats of it in one of his 

 " Lectures on the Science of Language," amongst many 

 interesting references there given, quotes a Cardinal of the 

 eleventh century, Petrus Damianus, who clearly describes 

 that version of it which represents the birds as bursting, 

 when fully fledged, from fruit resembling apples. 



It is a curious fact that these Barnacle geese have 



