HERB - Lion and Locust wording in a period recipe

[Kathleen Keeler]

Gaylin Walli wrote:

> Friends,
> I'm trying to track something down for my class that I'm teaching on
> "Icky Things." There's a recipe for eliminating beauty spots that's
> detailed in Porta's _Natural Magick_. It reads:
>
> I will not omit Aelian's experiment of a Lion, which is kind of a
> Locust. For in some membranes, where the Testes are bound
> together, under which there are some soft Carbuncles, and tender,
> that are called Lions Fat.

My inclination is to read that lion is in fact a kind of locust.  The
phrase
"which is a kind of" seems pretty clear.
My Latin dictionary gives locusta as lobster, my English dictionary
traces
the English locust back to locusta, then to lobster to the Latin locusta
"locust, marine shellfish"
I don't think most people could find testicles on a locust (big insect)
but on a
lobster, yes.
Did Aelian have easy access to lions?
I'd look for an aggressive form of lobster -- I have nothing here on
Roman
or Italian common names for animals, and no American book is likely to
have
the same species.  The name lion (leo) goes back to the Greeks, it seems
really weird
to say this very familiar animal its a kind of locust unless there is a
locust called a lion.
I presuming it does not get to England, let alone the Americas, which is
why none
of the references I have talk about it.  (I will try checking my
European animal books
at home, but marine shellfish are not well-represented.)

Jasmine, the icky treatment that most grosses me out is putting a live
badger into
boiling water (there's quite a list of disgusting animal recipes in one
of the works included  in Cockayne). Do you have that one?  Do you have
time for me to find it for you?

Agnes
kkeeler1 at unl.edu

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