alone sufficient to show, if it
were necessary, how fully he appreciated every branch of antiquarian
lore; and what a diligent student he must have been in the pursuit of
that wide range of information, the possession of which has made him one
of the most many-sided writers that the world has ever seen. The
numerous incidental allusions, too, by Shakespeare, to the folk-lore of
bygone days, while showing how deeply he must have read and gathered
knowledge from every available source, serve as an additional proof of
his retentive memory, and marvellous power of embellishing his ideas by
the most apposite illustrations. Unfortunately, however, these have,
hitherto, been frequently lost sight of through the reader's
unacquaintance with that extensive field of folk-lore which was so well
known to the poet. For the sake of easy reference, the birds with which
the present chapter deals are arranged alphabetically.

_Barnacle-Goose._ There was a curious notion, very prevalent in former
times, that this bird (_Anser bernicla_) was generated from the barnacle
(_Lepas anatifera_), a shell-fish, growing on a flexible stem, and
adhering to loose timber, bottoms of ships, etc., a metamorphosis to
which Shakespeare alludes in "The Tempest" (iv. 1), where he makes
Caliban say:

"we shall lose our time,
And all be turn'd to barnacles."

This vulgar error, no doubt, originated in mistaking the fleshy peduncle
of the shell-fish for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and
the tentacula for a tuft of feathers. These shell-fish, therefore,
bearing, as seen out of the water, a resemblance to the goose's neck,
were ignorantly, and without investigation, confounded with geese
themselves. In France, the barnacle-goose may be eaten on fast days, by
virtue of this old belief in its fishy origin.[152] Like other fictions
this one had its variations,[153] for sometime the barnacles were
supposed to grow on trees, and thence to drop into the sea, and become
geese, as in Drayton's account of Furness ("Polyolb." 1622, song 27, l.
1190). As early as the 12th century this idea[154] was promulgated by
Giraldus Cambrensis in his "Topographia Hiberniae." Gerarde, who in the
year 1597 published his "Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes,"
narrates the following: "There are found in the north parts of Scotland,
and the isles adjacent called Orcades, certain trees, whereon do grow
certain shell-fishes, of a white color, tending to