therefore was often
assumed as a disguise." The _escalop_ was sometimes used, and either of
them was considered as an emblem of the pilgrim's intention to go beyond
the sea. Thus, in Ophelia's ballad ("Hamlet," iv. 5, song), the lover is
to be known:

"By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon."

[927] Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 175.

In Peele's "Old Wives' Tale," 1595, we read, "I will give thee a
palmer's staff of ivory, and a scallop-shell of beaten gold." Nares,
too, quotes from Green's "Never Too Late" an account of the pilgrim's
dress:

"A hat of straw, like to a swain,
Shelter for the sun and rain,
With a scallop-shell before."

_Cuttle._ A foul-mouthed fellow was so called, says Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps,[928] because this fish is said to throw out of its
mouth, upon certain occasions, an inky and black juice that fouls the
water; and, as an illustration of its use in this sense, he quotes Doll
Tearsheet's words to Pistol, "2 Henry IV." ii. 4: "By this wine, I'll
thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps, an you play the saucy cuttle with
me." Dyce says that the context would seem to imply that the term is
equivalent to "culter, swaggerer, bully."[929]

[928] "Handbook Index to the Works of Shakespeare," 1866, p. 119.

[929] See a note in Dyce's "Glossary," p. 112.

_Gudgeon._ This being the bait for many of the larger fish, "to swallow
a gudgeon" was sometimes used for to be caught or deceived. More
commonly, however, the allusion is to the ease with which the gudgeon
itself is caught, as in the "Merchant of Venice" (i. 1), where Gratiano
says:

"But fish not, with this melancholy bait,
For this fool-gudgeon."

_Gurnet._ The phrase "soused gurnet" was formerly a well-known term of
reproach, in allusion to which Falstaff, in "1 Henry IV." (iv. 2), says,
"If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet." The gurnet,
of which there are several species, was probably thought a very coarse
and vulgar dish when soused or pickled.

_Loach._ A small fish, known also as "the groundling." The allusion to
it by one of the carriers, in "1 Henry IV." (ii. 1), who says, "Your
chamber-lie breeds fleas like a loach," has much puzzled the
commentators. It appears, however, from a passage in Holland's
translation of Pliny's "Natural History" (bk. ix. c. xlvii.), that
anciently fishes were supposed to be infested with fleas: "Last of all
some fishes there be w