To rouse your drinker when his vigour fails.”[238]
Escargotières, or snail-gardens, still exist in many parts of Europe, e.g. at Dijon, at Troyes and many other places in central and southern France, at Brunswick, Copenhagen, and Ulm. The markets at Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, etc., are chiefly supplied by snails gathered from the open country, and particularly from the vineyards, in some of which Helix pomatia abounds. In the Morning Post of 8th May 1868 there is an account of the operation of clearing the celebrated Clos de Vougeot vineyard of these creatures. No less than 240 gallons were captured, at a cost in labour of over 100 francs, it being estimated that these snails would have damaged the vines to an extent represented by the value of 15 to 20 pipes of wine, against which may be set the price fetched by the snails when sold in the market.
It is generally considered dangerous to eat snails at once which have been gathered in the open country. Cases have occurred in which death by poisoning has resulted from a neglect of this precaution, since snails feed on all manner of noxious herbs. Before being sent to table at the restaurants in the great towns, they are fattened by being fed with bran in the same way as oysters.
The Roman Catholic Church permits the consumption of snails during Lent. Very large numbers are eaten in France and Austria at this time. At the village of Cauderon, near Bordeaux, it is the proper thing to end Carnival with especial gaiety, but to temper the gaiety with a dish of snails, as a foretaste of Lenten mortification.
The following species appear to be eaten in France at the present day: H. pomatia, aspersa, nemoralis, hortensis, aperta, pisana, vermiculata, lactea. According to Dr. Gray, the glassmen at Newcastle used to indulge in a snail feast once a year, and a recent writer informs us that H. aspersa is still eaten by working people in the vicinity of Pontefract and Knottingley.[239] But in this country snails appear to be seldom consciously used as an article of food; the limitation is necessary, for Lovell tells us that they are much employed in the manufacture of cream, and that a retired (!) milkman pronounced it the most successful imitation known.
Preparations made from snails used to be highly esteemed as a cure for various kinds of diseases and injuries. Pliny the elder recommends them for a cough and for a stomach-ache, but it is necessary “to take an uneven number of them.”[240] Five African slugs, roasted and beaten to a powder, with half a drachm of acacia, and taken with myrtle wine, is an excellent remedy for dysentery. Treated in various ways, snails have been considered, in modern times, a cure for ague, corns, web in the eye, scorbutic affections, hectic fevers, pleurisy, asthma, obstructions, dropsy, swelling of the joints, headache, an impostume (whitlow), and burns. One of Pliny’s remedies for headache, which competes with the bones of a vulture’s head or the brain of a crow or an owl, is a plaister made of slugs with their heads cut off, which is to be applied to the forehead. He regards slugs as immature snails, whose growth is not yet complete (nondum perfectae). Lovell states that “a large trade in snails is carried on for Covent Garden market in the Lincolnshire fens, and that they are sold at 6d. per quart, being much used for consumptive patients and weakly children.”
The custom still seems to linger on in some parts of the country. Mr. E. Rundle, of the Royal Cornwall Infirmary, gives his experience in the following terms: “I well remember, some twelve years since, an individual living in an adjoining parish [near Truro] being pointed out to me as ‘a snail or slug eater.’ He was a delicate looking man, and said to be suffering from consumption. Last summer I saw this man, and asked him whether the statement that he was a ‘snail eater’ was true: he answered, ‘Yes, that he was ordered small white slugs—not snails—and that up till recently he had consumed a dozen or more every morning, and he believed they had done him good.’ There is also another use to which the country people here put snails, and that is as an eye application. I met with an instance a few weeks since, and much good seemed to have followed the use.”[241]
A reverend Canon of the Church of England, whose name I am not permitted to disclose, informs me that there was a belief among the youth of his native town (Pontypool, in Monmouthshire) that young slugs were ‘good for consumption,’ and that they were so recommended by a doctor who practised in the town. The slugs selected were about ¾ inch long, “such as may be seen crawling on the turf of a hedge-bank after a shower of rain.” They were “placed upon the tongue without any previous preparation, and swallowed alive.” My informant himself indulged in this practice for some time, “not on account of any gustatory pleasure it afforded, but from some vague notion that it might do him good.”
A colleague of mine at King’s College tells me that the country people at Ponteland, near Morpeth, habitually collect Limax agrestis and boil it in milk as a prophylactic against consumption. He has himself frequently devoured them alive, but they must be swallowed, not scrunched with the teeth, or they taste somewhat bitter.
Snails have occasionally fallen, with other noxious creatures, under the ban of the Church. In a prayer of the holy martyr Trypho of Lampsacus (about 10th cent. A.D.) there is a form of exorcism given which may be used as occasion requires. It runs as follows: “O ye Caterpillars, Worms, Beetles, Locusts, Grasshoppers, Woolly-Bears, Wireworms, Longlegs, Ants, Lice, Bugs, Skippers, Cankerworms, Palmerworms, Snails, Earwigs, and all other creatures that cling to and wither the fruit of the grape and all other herbs, I charge you by the many-eyed Cherubim, and by the six-winged Seraphim, which fly round the throne, and by the holy Angels and all the Powers, etc. etc., hurt not the vines nor the land nor the fruit of the trees nor the vegetables of —— the servant of the Lord, but depart into the wild mountains, into the unfruitful woods, in which God hath given you your daily food.”