[Loch-Ruadh] tree-geese

[Padraig Ruad O'Maolagain]

Ah, the human mind - able to justify almost anything in its own
self-interest.  Keep 'em coming, Madelina - I really enjoy reading these.

Padraig

Madelina de Lindesay said:
> from my Forgotten English page-a-day calendar:
>
> "In the earliest surviving account of tree-geese, from 1186, a British
> monk, Giraldus Cambrensis, reported that they 'are produced from fir
> timber tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum.  Afterwards they
> hang down by their beaks as if they were seaweed attached to the timber
> and are surrounded by shells.  Having thus in the process of time been
> clothed with a strong coat of feathers, they fly freely away into the
> air.... I have frequently seen with my own eyes more than a thousand of
> these small birds, hanging down on the seashore from one piece of timber,
> enclosed in their own shells and already formed.'  This dubious life cycle
> provided Church elders with a rationale for eating goose during an
> otherwise meatless Lent."
>
> (Tree-geese being a name given to barnacles from their supposed
> metamorphosis into geese....)
>
> I've also heard monks used to eat rabbit fetuses (feti?) during Lent, as
> they didn't consider them meat since they had not been born yet.
> Personally, I don't get the reasoning.
>
>
> --Madelina