Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/459

 12 s. ii. DEC. 2, 1916. NOTES AND QUERIES.

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between the larger trading vessels (ahneeyous) standing in the roadsteads (Shobbos, lOlb), for which purpose they carried ladders (B. B., 73a). It was one of these fishing .smacks that conveyed a gleeful party of fishermen to a floating island, on which they lit fires preparatory to frying the freshly caught fish, when, to their consternation, the island turned turtle and flung them all into the sea. It was an aged shark or whale, a huge monster on whose back there had sprung up trees and herbaceous grasses (ibid., 73b).

The episodes related above of Rabbi Hoonah, who was one of the actual sufferers, point conclusively to the swordfish, which is caught by harpoons or in a specially constructed net called the palamitare. Swordfishes usually weigh about a hundred- weight ; and the flesh makes excellent feeding. It is eaten fresh or cured in salt and oil (Moed Kotoun, lla). Probably this estim- able scholar was a master smacksman trawling the Spanish seas for tunnies, or the Mediterranean for pilot-fish, flying-fish, wrasse, sturgeon, halibut, &c., all of which were tohour (fit for consumption by the Hebrews). Other kinds were dolphins, por- poise, and trigger-fish, and were known under the generic title of kavara (Chulin, 63b). Hundreds of others were declared by the Rabbins not edible, and were rejected as " unfit." Some of the better kinds of fish, such as carp, bream, and salmon, were angled for with rod and line, rather than taken with the michmouress or net, because the more beautiful specimens realized high prices and could be guaranteed as tohour (edible) by the salesmen (Chulin, 63b), on whose integrity the public were wont to rely, as not all the fishmongers in Jemsalem, &c., were Israelites (Neh. xiii. 16).

The story of the living island, incredible though it may seem, corroborates the state- ments recorded by Procopius, in 562, of a dreadful monster caught in the Propontis after it had been wrecking vessels for over fifty years in those waters. Extraordinary stories are related (B. B., 73b) of the white shark, and of the file-fish and saw-fish (Pristis antiquorum), called by the Rabbins izza (B. B., 74a), met with in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and a constant source of danger to the pearl-diver.s (ibid., 74a). The izza may also be the squid, the gigantie sea-serpent " with a great horn, spouting streams of water," and described (ibid.) as being " 300 parasangs in length." The habits of the snake-bird seem pointedly outlined under the name of tsiffra in B. B.,

73b. Independent research demonstrates the probability of the existence of these- cetaceaixs. One of them is reputed to have gripped a ship in its dorsal fins for 72 hours before finally releasing it (B. B., 73b), and this is a feat of which the swordfish, sturgeon,, or trigger-fish was quite capable, especially if the vessel were merely abitsis, or row-boat. The problem of the izza and of the- tsiffra, " whose head reached to the skies,, while its nether Limbs lay submerged in the- waves " (ibid., 73b), invites some considera- tion of the remarkable verse in Isa. xxvii. 1 in which leviathan is referred to in the R.V. as " this piercing serpent, even the leviathan that crooked serpent," of which the Hebrew words are these : Livyoson nacliash boreeach^. livyoson nachash akkalosoun. Now the; terms in which leviathan is described fit the- squid most effectively, with its starlike structure, resembling, so to speak, the cross- bars and transverses of a gigantic gate jbereeach). In depicting these amphibious or cetaceous monsters of the deep as belong- ing to two different sets or schools of mammalia, the R.V. is unconsciously fol- lowing the line of criticism adopted by Ibn Ezra in loco, which, curiously enough,. is in alliance with a similar theory advanced (ibid., 74a) by Rav Ashee, that there are- two kinds of leviathans, &c., all possessing" similar traits and habits, whether they have their haunts and habitations on land or not,, included under the order of tannineem, or cetacea. Not so, however, Kimchi, who discerns in liiyoson, &c., some mighty amphibious creature, now roaming over the- land, seeking whom it may devour, with extended proportions and terrible circular coils, now floating on the bosom of the sea, a colossal swan, or huge sea-snake with hood erect and eyes shooting fire, filling the horizon, with its majestic outlines perhaps the- " ribbon-fish." Whatever the monster was at sea, on land it would assume the twisted interlacing form of the poisonous serpent known as the Elaps fulvius, which when coiled up and enfolded suggests a gate (bereeach)^ lifts its head to the skies in the manner of the- tsiffra, and has beautiful ring-markings which suggest the derivation of livyoson from livyo,. a garland, in Prov. i. 9 ; and when it is coiled up becomes a nachash akkalosoun as well- as a nachash boreeach. In this connexion Kimchi's own words deserve to be quoted here : " This creature is thus designated because it is capable of expanding its body to indefinite lengths, but the moment it is constrained, it curls itself up into huge spirals," with its frightful hood projecting.