Full many a patrich had he in mewe,
And many a breme and many a luce in stew.
The stew was, of course, the monkish fish-pond, which has almost disappeared since the Reformation. The luce is the jack or pike of the fishermen, and is often found as a pun upon the family name of Lucy, which bears the pike as a charge. Richard de Lucie, who defended the castle of Falaise against Geoffry of Anjou, was Lord Diss in Norfolk; he was also Sheriff of Essex in the reign of Henry II, and built the castle of Ongar. Sir Richard Lucy, Lord Chief Justice of England, founded Lesnes Priory, near Erith, and dying in 1179, was buried within its walls. An antiquary named Weever, who had seen his tomb in 1630, states that upon the belt of the figure of the knight the fleur-de-lis, or fleur-de-luce, the rebus or name device of the Lucys, was sculptured in many places. The fleur-de-lis was here used in a doubly figurative sense for a pike or spear, to the head of which it bears some resemblance.
This is more particularly shown in the Cantelupe arms, gules, a fess vaire between three leopards’ heads jessant fleur-de-lis. The arms of Lucy are also among the quarterings borne by the family of Lowther, the head of which is, of course, Lord Lonsdale.
Certain fish, evidently intended for pike or luces, in the pavement of the Chapter House at Westminster may possibly allude to the early tradition that St. Peter’s Church was first built by King Lucius.
The ged and the pike are synonymous in North Britain, whence the Scots family of Ged bear for arms, azure, three geds, or pike, hauriant argent; Sir Walter Scott alludes to this play upon the name in Red Gauntlet. “The heralds,” he says, “who make graven images of fish, fowls, and beasts, assigned the ged for their device and escutcheon, and hewed it over their chimneys, and placed above their tombs the fish called a jack, pike, or luce, and in our tongue, a ged.”
Of this family was William Ged, an Edinburgh printer, who employed a stereotyping process as early as 1725. The Geddes, a very ancient family of Tweeddale, bear for arms, gules, an escutcheon between three luces’ heads couped argent.
Much of the good purpose of a close adherence to strict Lenten fare has no doubt been lost by our continued neglect of the manifold uses of herbs.
Amid all the talking and writing about vegetarianism very little attention seems to have been paid to the undoubted importance of the herb garden.
Our forefathers believed implicitly in the virtues of herbs, and extolled them in prose and verse. According to one of the old Roxburghe Ballads:—