274 
The Animcd-Lore of Shakspeares Time . 
many persons of right good credit. But such as are not given to 
superstitious credulity, attribute this unto a secret property of the 
ground, and to a hidden dissent betweene this soile and those geese, 
such as is betweene wolves and squilla root.” 
Drayton gives a similar report, in verse, as to the 
multitude of geese which frequented the fens of Lincoln¬ 
shire :— 
“And with my wondrous flocks of wildgeese come I then. 
Which look as though alone they peopled all the fen, 
Which here in winter time, when all is overflow’d 
And want of solid sward inforceth them abroad, 
Th’ abundance then is seen, that my full fens do yield, 
That almost through the isle, do pester every field. 
The barnacles with them, which wheresoe’er they breed, 
On trees, or rotten ships, yet to my fens for feed 
Continually they come, and chief abode do make, 
And very hardly forc’d my plenty to forsake.” 
(. Polyolbion, song xxv.) 
John Taylor, “ the Water Poet,” in his Penniless 
Pilgrimage , or account of a tour through Scotland, makes 
mention of the Solan goose, a variety which still breeds 
in great numbers on the Bass Bock, in the Frith of 
Forth :— 
“ It is very good flesh, but it is eaten in the form as we eat oysters, 
standing at a sideboard, a little before dinner, unsanctified without 
grace; and after it is eaten, it must be well liquored with two or three 
good rouses of sherry or canary sack. The lord or owner of the Bass 
Bock doth profit at the least two hundred pounds yearly by those 
geese; the Bass itself being of a great height and near three quarters 
of a mile in compass, all fully replenished with wild fowl, having but 
one small entrance into it, with a house, a garden, and a chapel 
in it; and on the top of it a well of pure water.” (Works, p. 60, 
ed. Hindley, 1872.) 
The tame goose was considered to act as a guard 
against thieves, being a light sleeper and very clamorous 
if disturbed. 
The origin of the custom of having goose for dinner 
