[Sca-cooks] Description of the Beaver

[Johnna Holloway]

This never posted so I will send it again. I hope it comes through ok  
this time.

I came across Harrison’s description today which described the rest of  
the beast as akin to a large rat.


Here's the description from the online version of Harrison from  
Fordham.edu.

  "I might here intreat largely of other vermin, as the polecat, the  
miniver, the weasel, stote, fulmart, squirrel, fitchew, and such like,  
which Cardan includeth under the word Mustela: also of the otter, and  
likewise of the beaver, whose hinder feet and tail only are supposed  
to be fish.


Certes the tail of this beast is like unto a thin whetstone, as the  
body unto a monstrous rat: as the beast also itself is of such force  
in the teeth that it will gnaw a hole through a thick plank, or shere  
through a double billet in a night; it loveth also the stillest  
rivers, and it is given to them by nature to go by flocks unto the  
woods at hand, where they gather sticks wherewith to build their  
nests, wherein their bodies lie dry above the water, although they so  
provide most commonly that their tails may hang within the same.


  It is also reported that their said tails are delicate dish, and  
their stones of such medicinal force that (as Vertomannus saith) four  
men smelling unto them each after other did bleed at the nose through  
their attractive force, proceeding from a vehement savour wherewith  
they are endued.


  There is greatest plenty of them in Persia, chiefly about Balascham,  
from whence they and their dried cods are brought into all quarters of  
the world, though not without some forgery by such as provide them.


  And of all these here remembered, as the first sorts are plentiful  
in every wood and hedgerow, so these latter, especially the otter  
(for, to say the truth, we have not many beavers, but only in the  
Teisie in Wales) is not wanting or to seek in many, but most, streams  
and rivers of this isle; but it shall suffice in this sort to have  
named them, as I do finally the martern, a beast of the chase,  
although for number I worthily doubt whether that of our beavers or  
marterns may be thought to be the less."


  from Modern History Sourcebook: William Harrison (1534-1593):  
Description Of England, 1577 (from Holinshed's Chronicles)


Of Savage Beasts And Vermin

[1577, Book III., Chapters 7 and 12; 1587, Book III., Chapters 4 and 6.]

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1577harrison-england.html

Johnnae

On Nov 23, 2010, at 5:51 PM, Sarah O'Connor wrote:

> snipped
> I think the answer to the preference for tail is (as stated above)  
> that it
> was a highly caloric red meat that was ecclesiastically legal for  
> Lent.
>
> ~Elinor
On Nov 23, 2010, at 4:41 PM, Kathleen Gormanshaw wrote:

> Why so many beaver TAIL recipes, but nothing mentioning the rest of
> the beaver?