Mediaeval Dishonesty. 
77 
Shakspeare has but one mention of this animal:— 
“Hostess. Say, what beast, thou knave, thou? 
Falstaff. What beast! why, an otter. 
Prince. An otter, Sir John ! why an otter ? 
Pal. Why, she’s neither fish nor flesh.” 
(1 Henry IV., iii. 3, 141.) 
The doubt among learned men as to the nature of the 
otter, hinted at in the above passage, was not quite 
cleared up even in the time of Izaak Walton, who 
declines to commit himself by speaking positively on the 
subject. 
Olaus Magnus writes of the otters of Norway :— 
“ The otters have a square mouth, and bite as beavers, they are like 
them in their skins but they are a third part longer. Their skins are 
greatly used by the northern people, to enlarge the borders of their 
garments, because their skin will hold fast. They are sold by tens, as 
beavers and foxes, and martins skins are : and they are falsified with 
smoke of a stone-tree upon coles, that they may appear to be of a 
shining black; but if you rub them presently with a white cloth, the 
colour is gone, and the sophistication is discovered. So wolves skins 
powdred, with coal and chalk, rubbed with a linnen cloth, are proved 
to be falsified. So squirrels skins, called in Italian dossoe, strewed over 
with chalk, are discovered to be false by a black cloth. We must 
search out which colour is natural, and which artificial, and so prize 
them.” (Page 183.) 
Those who talk sentimentally about the “ good old 
times,” would fain have us believe that such deceptions 
as are here described are inventions of a modern date. 
Sir Thomas Browne records that otters were plentiful 
in his time: “ They are accounted no bad dish by many ; 
they are to be made very tame; and in some houses have 
served for turnspits ” (vol. iv. p. 336, ed. Wilkins). They 
could hardly have been trusted when fish formed part of 
the meal. 
The Badger was also known by the names bawson, 
brock, and gray. In Ben Jonson’s Sad Shep- 
7 7 b , J • i • , 1 Badger. 
herd, a country swam brings as a present to 
his mistress a fine— 
