342 
The Animal-Lore of Shalcspeare’s Time. 
“ Here swimmes the pearcli, the cuttle and the stocke-fisli, 
That with a wooden staffe is often beaten.” 
(Chester, Love's Martyr , p. 99.) 
Stockfish is here spoken of as a distinct fish, but no such 
species is found in the works of modern naturalists. Cot- 
grave says it was a small kind of cod, called a melwell, 
or keeling, which was dried for winter use, but the name 
was not confined to dried cod. Stow, in his Survey of 
London (p. 32), quotes from a book of household 
accounts, in the time of Edward II. : “ For six thousand 
eight hundred stockfishes, so called for dried fishes of all 
sorts, as lings,habardines, and other, £41 6s. Id” Stock¬ 
fish was evidently uncommonly tough eating, and had to 
be pummelled on a stone before it could be penetrated by 
human teeth. Stephano thus threatens Trinculo , who has 
irritated Caliban past endurance :— 
“ Trinculo, run into no further danger: interrupt the monster one 
word further, and, by this hand, I’ll turn my mercy out o’ doors, and 
make a stockfish of thee.” ( Tempest , iii. 2, 78.) 
Thomas Muffett, in his Healths Improvement (p. 170), 
informs us that— 
“ Stockfish whilst it is unbeaten is called buckhorne, because it is 
so tough; when it is beaten upon the stock, it is termed stockfish. 
Erasmus thinketh it to be called stockfish, because it nourisheth no 
more than a dryed stock: wherefore howsoever it be sod, buttered, fried, 
or baked, and made both toothsomer and delectable by good and 
chargeable cookery; yet a stone will be a stone, and an ape an ape, 
howsoever the one be set up for a saint, and the other apparelled like 
a judge.” 
The Latin name given to this commodity, asellus aridus , 
also denotes the treatment to which it was subjected. 
Stockfish was considered inferior even to salt fish. 
An account is given by Mr. C. W. Shepherd, in his work 
on The North-West Peninsula of Iceland , 1867 (p. 11), 
of the mode in which this uninviting article of diet is 
prepared in that island in recent times. A very similar 
