“ ‘What do you want here?’ he asked of Tyacke.
“‘The oysters I put down to feed,’ was the reply; ‘they were placed there by your permission, and now I am anxious to re-ship them, to be in time for to-morrow’s market.’
“ ‘True,’ replied the Kentishman, ‘I gave you leave to lay down the oysters and feed them, but not a word was said about re-shipping them. Where they are, there they stay; and if you persist in trespassing, I shall know what to do.’
“Poor Tyacke found himself much in the predicament of many a flat who has been picked up by a sharp. A century ago law was not justice, nor justice law. Perhaps it may not be so even now, and the story of the lawyer who ate the oyster in dispute, and gave each of the disputants a shell, may hold as good in our day as it did in that when the author of the ‘Beggars’ Opera’ put it into verse.”
It is said that the oyster, a delicate, refined animal, is particularly fond of music. One of the oyster’s historians says that an old ballad is still sung by many a hardy seaman as he trolls his dredging nets:—
“The herring loves the merry moonlight,
The mackerel loves the wind,
But the oyster loves the dredger’s song,
For he comes of a gentle kind.”
Shakspere, it may be remembered, alludes to “an oyster crossed in love.”