Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/504

 496

NOTES AND QUERIES.

O 25., JUNE 21. 56.

that of the fowl, as its habits respecting the de- posit of its eggs, and its incubation, prove ; but the goose, as a domesticated bird, kept near the house, and fed by man, was known to Homer (see Odyssey, xv. 161. 174.; xix. 536. 552.) ; whereas Homer never mentions the barn-door fowl. In the time of Theognis, however, about 540 B.C., the crowing of the cock was a familiar sign of the morning (v. 864.) ; and Aristophanes mentions the domestic fowl under the name of " the Per- sian bird" (Av. 488. 712.) ; a name which it had doubtless acquired in its way to Greece from India, its native country. (See Penny Cyclop., art. "Pheasants;" Buffon, Oiseaux, torn. iii. art. cog.)

No mention either of the goose or of the duck occurs in the Bible. The domestic fowl is not mentioned in the Old Testament ; but the crowing of the cock is a well-known incident in the story of St. Peter, and the maternal love of the hen is alluded to in Matth. xxiii. 37., Luke xiii. 34.

It may be doubted whether the tame goose was sur r Hist. cCAnim. (TAristote, p. 603.) remarks that Aristotle, unlike the moderns, does not in. his Natural History distinguish between the wild and the tame goose. Plato likewise, in his Politicus, 8., represents one interlocutor saying to the other, that even if he has not travelled over the Thessalian plains, he has heard of establishments for feeding geese and cranes, and believes in their existence ; thereby implying that such establish- ments were not then commonly to be seen in Arreece.
 * bird commonly kept in Greece. Camus (Notes

Nevertheless the flesh of geese, as a dainty, was familiar to the Greeks, and to some of the neigh- bouring nations, though it seems to have been unknown to the Jews. Herodotus (ii. 37.) speaks of the Egyptian priests being supplied with abund- ance of beef and goose ; and Euripides combines the flesh of this bird with veal, as an article of lux- urious diet. (Cress. Fragm., 13.) Theopompus, the historian, related that when Agesilaus went to Egypt, the Egyptians sent him a present of fatted geese and calves. (Athen., ix. 32., where other in- stances of fatted geese are cited.)

The duck was doubtless known as a tame bird to the Greeks (see Aristoph., Pint. 1011.). Other passages of Aristophanes, which mention the duck, Ach. 841., Pac. 494., Av. 569., may refer to the wild bird ; nor is the chapter in Athenasus upon ducks (ix. 52.) decisive. Detailed precepts for the breeding of ducks are, however, given by the Roman writers on husbandry. (Varro, 11. It., iii. 11.; Columella, viii. 15.) Cicero, too, speaks of the hatching of ducks' eggs by hens, and of the distress of the hen at seeing the ducklings take to the water, in language such as we might use at present. (De Nut. Deor., ii. 48.)

The Bomans were likewise well acquainted

with the breeding of the tame goose ; full in- structions for the management of it are given by their writers, (Varro, E. R., iii. 10. ; Columella, viii. 13, 14.). From the Romans its use was pro- bably propagated over the whole of western Eu- rope : Cajsar (B. G., v. 12.) says that the ancient Britons considered it unlawful to eat the flesh of the domestic fowl and the goose, but that they bred these birds for their amusement. This su- perstitious objection to the goose was probably of no long duration in Britain, and it certainly was not shared by the Gauls. Indeed, the use of the goose became so universal in western Europe during the later ages of the empire, that this bird lost its classical name of anser, and acquired, in mediaeval Latin, the name of auca, contracted from avica, a diminutive of avis. It was called " the bird," because it was the most useful of do- mestic fowls ; as Homer was called by the Greeks " the poet ; " as the Holy Scriptures were called " the book ; " and as the ox was in Low Latin called " the animal " (aumaille in old French). From auca are derived the Italian and Spanish oca, and the French oie. As this form is feminine, the Romance languages have no word which pro- perly designates a gander ; and hence to mark the sex, the French says La mire oie, Mother Goose. (Ducange in auca; Diez, Roman. Wdrterb. in oca.}

Le Grand D'Aussy tells us that in ancient France the goose held for many centuries the first place among poultry ; it enjoyed this honour at the table of kings. Charlemagne, in three pas- sages of his Capitularies, directs that all his country houses should be furnished with them : the old proverb alludes to the goose being kept by the king, " Qui mange 1'oie du roi, cent ans apres il en rend la plume." It was the great dainty of the commonalty and of the citizens. But it has (he adds) lost its ancient consideration, and is now (1782) only admitted to the tables of the middle class. (Vie Privee des Franqais, torn. i. p. 294.) The above proverb corresponds to the maxim of English law, " Nullum tempus occurrit regi." See Le Roux de Lincy, Proverbes Fran- faz's, vol. ii. p. 75.

According to Cibrario, Economia del Media Evo, vol. iii. p. 113., a goose baked in an oven, with a stuffing of garlic and quince, was an ex- quisite dish at Florence in the time of the novelist Franco Sacchetti, that is, in the latter half of the fourteenth century.

BufFon, too, says that the goose was the dainty of our ancestors, but that since the introduction of the turkey from America, it has sunk to the second place at our tables and in our poultry yards.

The geese which saved the Capitol are described as having been sacred to Juno : other deities, however, showed a fondness for this bird. Ju-