Spenser's Marine Monsters . 
95 
sometimes raise himself beyond the sail-yards, and casts such floods of 
waters above his head, which he had sucked in, that with a cloud of 
them he will often sink the strongest ships, or expose the mariners 
to extream danger. This beast hath also a long and large round mouth 
like a lamprey, whereby he sucks in his meat or water, and by his 
weight cast upon the fore or hinder deck, sinks and drowns a ship. He 
hath a thick black skin all his body over, long fins like to broad feet, 
and a forked tail, 15 or 20 feet broad, wherewith he forcibly binds 
any parts of the ship, he twists it about. A trumpet of war is 
the fit remedy against him, by reason of the sharp noise, which he 
cannot endure.” (Page 226.) 
By other writers the sawfish is called the whirlpool, or 
physeter. It would not, perhaps, be worth while to 
notice these extravagancies but that Spenser must have 
some authority or suggestion for his list of marine 
monsters in the Faerie Queene (xii. 23, 24):— 
“ Spring-headed hydres ; and sea-shouldring whales. 
Great whirlpooles, which all fishes make to flee; 
Bright scolopendraes armd with silver scales; 
Mighty monoceros with immeasured tayles; 
“ The dreadful fish, that hath deserved the name 
Of Death, and like him lookes in dreadfull hew; 
The griesly wasserman, that makes his game 
The flying ships with swiftness to pursew; 
The horrible satyre, that doth shew 
His fearefull face in time of greatest storme; 
Huge ziffius, whom mariners eschew 
No less than rockes, as travellers informe; 
And greedy rosmarines with visages deforme.” 
In these lines scolopendra , the name of the centipede, is 
probably applied to the sea-serpent; monoceros is the 
narwhal or sea-unicorn; the dreadful fish is the morse or 
walrus, so also is the rosmarine; the satyr is the merman, 
dreaded by sailors as foreboding tempest; ziffius is pro¬ 
bably xiphias, the sword-fish. 
Harrison mentions both the Dolphin and the porpoise, 
and they seem to have been generally recog¬ 
nised as distinct species, notwithstanding 
