Barnacle goose myth

My nose was in a tight spot, and I beneath the water, underflowed by the flood, sunk deep into the ocean-waves, and in the sea grew covered with waves from above, my body touching a floating piece of wood.

In Ray Lankester's Diversions of a Naturalist (1917) [9] there is evidence of a serious literature debate arising from the work of Max Muller (1868),[10] together with a French Zoologist, Frederic Houssay,[11] George Perrot and Charles Chipiez.

Lankester pointing out the way the Barnacle Geese were represented, wrote that the solution was: The Mykenæan population of the islands of Cyprus and Crete, in the period 800 to 1000 years before Christ, were great makers of pottery, and painted large earthenware basins and vases with a variety of decorative representations of marine life, of fishes, butterflies, birds, and trees.

By gradual reduction in the number and size of outstanding parts—a common rule in the artistic "schematising" or "conventional simplification" of natural form—they converted the octopus and the argonaut, with their eight arms, into a bull's head with a pair of spiral horns … In the same spirit it seems that they observed and drew the barnacle floating on timber or thrown up after a storm on their shores.

… They brought the barnacle and the goose together, not guided thereto by any pre-existing legend, but by a simple and not uncommon artistic desire to follow up a superficial suggestion of similarity and to conceive of intermediate connecting forms…There is an absence of evidence to support his claim from Greek or Roman folklore.

These images are perhaps better interpreted as stylised representations of animals and plants that suited the designer of the pottery …[13]Many writers reference Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historiae as an early first century Roman source for the myth.

[18] As this period was intensely religious, Monastic orders, Churches, Universities and royalty acquired and copied manuscript versions of Bestiaries repeating and building a moralising a story about animals.

We have made prolonged research into the origin and truth of this legend and even sent special envoys to the north with order to bring back specimens of these mythical timbers for our inspection.

In our opinion this superstition arose from the fact that barnacle geese breed in such remote latitudes that men in ignorance of their real nesting places invented this explanation.

As a royal clerk and chaplain to King Henry II of England, Gerald of Wales accompanied Prince John between 1183 and 1186 on an expedition to Ireland.

His views on Ireland in Topographia Hibernica [26] include the following passage: … there are many birds called barnacles (bernacae) … nature produces them in a marvellous way for they are born at first in gum-like form from fir-wood adrift in the sea.

Then they cling by their beaks like sea-wood, sticking to wood, enclosed in a shell-fish shells for freer development … thus in the process of time dressed in a firm clothing of feathers, they either fall into the waters or fly off into freedom of the air.

They receive food and increase from a woody and watery juice… on many occasions I have seen them with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these tiny little bodies, hanging from a piece of wood on the sea-shore when enclosed in their shells and fully formed.

[29] Several writers make reference to a canon drawing a distinction between the barnacle goose as a "bird", and as a "fish" resulting from Pope Innocent III at this council.

Lankester (1915) [30] repeats this story, which is also found in Muller (1871 v.2),[31] The claim was that the clergy in France, Ireland and Great Britain, were instructed to stop permitting the eating of Barnacle Geese, during Lent, as a "fish".

Elaborating on this, Lankester (1915) wrote; … it had become accepted that the use [of the Barnacle Goose] as food on the fast-days of the Church was accepted … and as a result Pope Innocent III … to whom the matter was referred … considered it necessary in 1215 to prohibit the eating of barnacle geese in Lent, since although he admitted that they are not generated in the ordinary way, he maintained … that they live and feed like ducks, and cannot (therefore) be regarded as differing in nature from other birds … (such as ducks)Importantly, Muller (1871, v.2) disputes the source of a Lateran prohibition.

40 … states that Pope Innocent III, at the General Lateran Council, 1215, had to prohibit the eating of Barnacle Geese during lent …Beauvais' Speculum Naturale,[32] contained thirty-two books with more than 3700 chapters, across a variety of topics; including cosmography, physics, botany and zoology.

[33] Van der Lugt (2000) [34] provides the most reasoned and detailed case against the claims for a Lateran Council prohibition of barnacle goose eating during Lent.

He argues that while there certainly was a lengthy debate between canonists in the late 12th and early 13th centuries relating to what was permissible for adherents to eat during Lent, it did not concern the barnacle goose.

[35][36] Finally, at the time of the Lateran Council, scholars such as Gervase of Tilbury (d. 1220) and Alexander Neckam (d. 1217) frequently referred to myths or folklore about the natural world.

[40] Continuing in this vein, he records the following story: … I / We … heard that in Scotland there was once a tree growing on the bank of a river which produced fruits shaped like ducks.

(Barnacle Geese) For I told them that in our country were trees that bear a fruit that become birds flying, and those that fell in the water live, and they that fall on the earth die anon …[49]Some 75 years after Pope Pius II, Hector Boece[50] in his "Scotorum Historiae a Prima Gentis Origine"[51] gave further credence to this story with an account of a discussion he had with his friend and colleague Canon Alexander Galloway[52] whilst on a trip to source stories of Scottish saints for William Elphinstone.

… I will not hesitate to describe something I myself witnessed seven years ago… Alexander Galloway, parson of Kinkell, who, besides being a man of outstanding probity, is possessed of an unmatched zeal for studying wonders… When he was pulling up some driftwood and saw that seashells were clinging to it from one end to the other, he was surprised by the unusual nature of the thing, and, out of a zeal to understand it, opened them up, whereupon he was more amazed than ever, for within them he discovered, not sea creatures, but rather birds, of a size similar to the shells that contained them … small shells contained birds of a proportionately small size… So, he quickly ran to me, whom he knew to be gripped with a great curiosity for investigating suchlike matters and revealed the entire thing to me…Boece would have known these geese as Claik Geese or Clack Geese and sometimes Clag-geese.

[57] The age of the myth and the lack of empirical evidence on bird migration led to other erroneous accounts of the breeding habits of Barnacle Geese being common until the 20th century.

He provides a number of explanations for the myth, and his belief – one of which starts: … there are founde in the north parts of Scotland and the islands adjacent, called Orchades, certaine trees, of a white colour, tending to russet, wherein are contained little living creatures; which shels in time of maturitie doe open; and out of them grow those living things; which falling into the water doe become foules, whom we call Barnakles; in the north of England, Brant Geese; and in Lancashire Tree Geese; but the other that do fall upon the land, perish and come to nothing, thus much by the writing of others and also from the mouths of people of those parts which may very well accord with truth…His illustration shows bird-like creatures emerging from "buds" and birds swimming on the sea.

(to left, above) In this volume he treats the myth in a half-page report, and writes that the mythical geese are found "duntaxat in scotia aut orcadibus maris" ("only in Scotland and the Orkney sea").

This taxonomic work can be seen in recent papers by John Buckeridge and colleagues, who have addressed one of Darwin's contributions in the mid- to late-century: that is, the "species problem".

[68] As noted above, there are a variety of translations of the myth in Boece e.g. Thomas Dempster (1829)[69] In this 20th century telling, Stewart quotes John Bellenden's Scots vernacular speech.

But their opinion is not to be sustained for, as soon as these apples and fruits fall from the tree in(to) the sea-flood they grow first worm-eaten, and "by short process of time", are altered in(to) geese …Allowing Stewart to conclude: … Bellenden's Boece (gave) a fresh lease of life to the tale; … (recently) … naturalists ha(ve) located the barnacle geese nurseries in Greenland and ha(ve) a rough idea of the migration routes … But parallel to scientific advances the old versions continued to have a folklife existence …According to Joshua Trachtenberg, the place of origin of the barnacle goose was described in Jewish literature by several theories: trees from which the birds grow like fruit and hang by their beaks until they fall off, rotting wood, brine, etc.

[75] The question of slaughtering Barnacle Geese is referenced to Isaac ben Abba Mari of Marseilles (יצחק בן אבא מרי) (c. 1120 – c. 1190) in around c. 1170.