COALFISH. 
85 
pronunciation; but Lacepede has carried the mistake a little 
further, in supposing it to bear the name of Raw Pollack. 
This word. Pollack, appears to have been taken from the 
northern nations, since it is the name employed by the people 
of Scandinavia. 
The name of Coalfish carries with it its own signification, 
but it has not been always understood; and the framer of an 
Act of Parliament, (15th. Charles II, C. 7,) not appearing to 
know what relationship there could be between this fish and the 
mineral, but supposing perhaps that the gull was a bird which 
had some connection with the sea, affixed to it also the name 
of Gullfish. It further becomes a question whether even 
another name should not be added to this lengthened list; for 
in an Act of Parliament, called the Statute of Herrings, (the 
31st. of Edward III, A.D. 1357,) there are the names of three 
fishes associated together, the taking and sale of which were 
thought worthy of being regulated by law, and that too in an 
arbitrary manner. These were Lob, Ling, and Cod; of the 
two latter of which there cannot be a doubt; but the former 
is more obscure. In Wright’s “Dictionary of Obsolete Words” 
the word is said to mean unwieldy — a lump: the proper name 
of the fish would appear to be Lobkeling. According to a 
Cambridge manuscript, 
“Lobkeling catcheth epirling — 
So stroyeth more men the lease.” 
Another dictionary says that lob means lazy — lumpish. It may 
mean the Coalfish or Hake. 
It is common and abundant on all the coasts of the British 
Islands, but the numbers are much the greatest in the north, 
and its range appears to extend in that direction as far as 
enterprise has yet reached, if indeed, in this last instance, the 
species is not different. It is known in North America, and 
Risso classes it also with the fishes of the Mediterranean, but 
he says it is rare at Nice, where he wrote, and he knows it 
only as taken in June. 
It is eminently a ravenous fish, and its Cornish name is 
characteristic of that propensity, the expression rauning being 
the ancient, and in some places the present pronunciation of the 
word ravening or ravenous. It snatches at a bait with headlong 
