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same. Such reasoning is irresistible, and must, of course, be 
conclusive ! * * * § 
The vitality and antiquity of this myth was great ; for though 
it had to run the gauntlet of contradiction — e.g, by Albertus 
Magnus and by Koger Bacon, in the thirteenth century,! the 
belief in the miraculous transformation of the Barnacle-shell 
into the Barnacle-goose was as firmly established in the twelfth 
as it was in the seventeenth century. No better instance of 
the reality of this belief can be given than the fact that Bemicle- 
geese were allowed to be eaten during Lent, as they were not 
fowl but fish — an iniquitous custom against which Griraldus 
Cambrensis with much zeal and unction inveighs. 
A brief relation may not he without interest of the myth 
which had not only managed to struggle against contradictions 
no less than five centuries, but was of such seemingly suflScient 
stability that it could he tiuned to account by the faithful — 
both pastor and flock — in the no little important matter of 
varying — so elastic is the zoology of ecclesiastical dietetics J — 
the somewhat meagre monotony of Lenten dishes. 
Bellenden, archdeacon of Murray, thus quaintly renders the 
description of the origin of the “ geis genesit of the see, namit 
clakis,”§ given by one Hector Boece, in a Latin history of 
Scotland (1527): — ‘‘All treis that ar cassin in the seis be 
proces of tyme apperis first wormeetin, and in the small boris 
* One Joannes Cains, however, suggests to Gesner, that the bird called 
Bernaclus ought to he called Bernclacus, for the Old Britons and the modern 
Scots called, and still call, the wild goose Clake. “ Hence they still retain 
the name which is corrupted with us. Bake or Fenlake, i.e. lake goose, 
instead of Fencklake, for our people frequently change letters, and say hern 
for hren” One fatal objection to this theory is that among the numerous 
varieties of the name hernicula not one comes at all near to hernclacus. 
t The former declares that he saw the birds lay eggs and hatch them, 
which fact was corroborated later (in 1599) by some Dutch sailors who had 
visited Greenland, ^neas Sylvius (afterwards Pope Pius II.), when on a 
visit to King James (1393-1437) who, by the way, he terms “ hominem 
quadratum [the ‘ avy)p rerpaycuvoc ' of Aristotle ? ] et multa pinguetudine 
gravem,” inquired after the bernacle-tree, and complains, somewhat petu- 
lantly, that miracles will always flee farther and farther, for that when he 
came to Scotland to see the tree, he was told that it grew further north in 
the Orcades. 
% Professor Max Muller states that in Bombay, where with some classes 
of people fish is a prohibited article of food, the priests call the barnacle a 
sea-vegetable, under which name it is allowed to be eaten. 
§ Gesner, in the Third Book (“ Qui est de Avium natura ”) of his Sistoria 
Animalium, gives two rough woodcuts of the “ clakis,” and states, inter 
alia, that the herniclce were called Barliatce, but that he prefers hrdtce, or 
herniclce. 
