[Loch-Ruadh] tree-geese

[Madelina de Lindesay]

Heh, I don't suppose eating the barnacles instead of the geese would get them off the hook, would it?

LOL

MdL

-----Original Message-----
From: Padraig Ruad O'Maolagain <padraig_ruad at irishbard.org>
Sent: Jan 12, 2005 2:40 PM
To: Madelina de Lindesay <lymadelina at earthlink.net>, 
	"Shire of Loch Ruadh, Kingdom of Ansteorra, SCA, Inc." <loch-ruadh at ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Loch-Ruadh] tree-geese

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