The Barnacle Goose. 
275 
on Michaelmas Day is still involved in obscurity, not¬ 
withstanding much learned discussion on the subject. It 
certainly dates as far back in English history as the reign 
of Edward IY. The tradition which assigns the choice of 
this dish on the 29th of September to the delight of 
Queen Elizabeth on hearing the news of the destruction 
of the Spanish Armada is still pertinaciously believed, 
despite the well-known fact that the date of the victory 
was the 21st of July. It is more likely that the habit of 
eating goose on Michaelmas Day arose from the fact that 
the 29th of September was a great festival. Geese were 
then plentiful and in full season, and would therefore be 
chosen as the chief article of diet. 
Mr. Harting has referred at some length to the strange 
notion, so often alluded to by writers of this 
period, that the Barnacle Goose was produced, 
according to some authors, from trees, according to others 
from rotten wood. Camden, it would appear, was too 
enlightened to adopt either of these theories, though he 
was not quite prepared with a satisfactory solution of the 
curious resemblance between the bird and the marine 
production. In his work on Britain he writes :— 
“ Concerning these claike geese, which some with much admira¬ 
tion have believed to grow out of trees, both upon this shore and else 
where, and when they he ripe to fall downe into the sea, it is scarce 
worth the labour to mention them. That there be little birds engen¬ 
dered of old and rotten keeles of ships, they can beare witnesse who saw 
that ship wherein Francis Drake sailed about the world, standing in a 
docke neere the Tavish, to the outside of the keele whereof a number of 
such little birds without life and fethers sticke close. Yet would I 
gladly thinke that the generation of these birds was not out of those 
logges of wood; but from the very ocean, which the poets termed the 
father of all things.” 
The barnacle or brent goose was often seen in great 
numbers in the north of England and Scotland, but its 
breeding-place was unknown. Gerat de Yeer, in the 
description of a voyage to Cathay and China, 1596, takes 
