That selleth fishe, and so good cheep, that every man may buie;
Nor anything he loseth here, bestowing thus his paine,
For when it hath been offred once, 't is brought him all againe,
That twise or thrise he selles the same, vngodlinesse such gaine
Doth still bring in, and plenteously the kitchen doth maintaine.
Whence comes this same religion newe? What kind of God is this
Same Huldryche here, that so desires and so delightes in fishe?"
With fish much is possible in the way of a generous dietary during the Lenten penance and on meagre days. To the devout Thomas à Kempis nothing was more delicious to the taste than a salmon, always excepting the Psalms of David. The possibilities of a fish diet, however, have nowhere been more appreciably set forth than by Father Prout on the occasion of the classic "Watergrasshill Carousal," when Sir Walter Scott was among the guests. And though the turkey which was in readiness was forgone on account of the day being Friday and therefore a fast-day, the repast, nevertheless, did not languish. The trout, it will be remembered, the witty priest had caught himself from the neighbouring stream, as well as a large eel from the lake at Blarney. To these were added from the excellent market at Cork a turbot, two lobsters, a salmon, and a hake, with a hundred of Cork-harbour oysters. Besides these figured also a keg of cod-sounds, a great favourite of the bishop of the diocese, which invariably appeared at the table of Father Prout when his lordship was expected. With eggs, potatoes, sauce piquante, lobster-sauce, whiskey and claret in addition, the sacerdotal banquet proved a signal success, fully bearing out the sentiment expressed by the shepherd in the "Noctes" at the end of a Scottish repast,—"We 've just had a perfec' dinner, Mr. Tickler—neither ae dish ower mony, nor ae dish ower few."
Fish naturally demands a white wine; but a carp may be prepared—and doubtless is prepared—so sauced and spiced and aromatised by practised cloistral hands that a red wine, the favoured colour of the cowl, may accord with it perfectly. This is not saying that an abbot who may be as renowned for his gastronomic abilities as for his oratory necessarily confines himself or his followers to red wine with fish. Much will depend, of course, upon the mode of preparation,—it is to be supposed that the cellarer has both red and white wine at command to draw from as occasion demands; to be confined to a single variety must be as onerous to the cloth as to the layman. When the celebrated vineyard of Clos-Vougeot was the property of the Bernardin monks, before it was confiscated and declared national property, Dom Gobelot was the father-cellarer. It was he who, after being forced to retire to private life at Dijon, with a hundred dozen bottles of a famous year of his vineyard as a souvenir, proudly replied to the young Bonaparte, conqueror in Italy and returning from Marengo, when he requested some old Vougeot for his table: "If he wishes some forty-year-old Vougeot, let him come and drink it here; it is not for sale." And does not history record that Pope Gregory XVI, in the year 1371, made the Abbot of Clos-Vougeot a cardinal to express his gratitude for a present of a basket of his best old wine which the abbot had sent him?
The famous wine of "Est, Est, Est" owes its celebrity to a German bishop named Fuger, who, while on a journey to Italy, sent his secretary in advance in order to provide the best accommodations. He was especially charged to test the wine in all the inns en route, and wherever he found it best to write the word "Est" on the wall of the albergo. Arriving at Montefiascone, a small town on the highroad from Florence to Rome, the secretary found the wine so superior that he was at a loss to describe it until he bethought him of the inscription that a sultan of Lahore had engraved on the door of his seraglio,—"If there is a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here!" Accordingly, he wrote the word "Est" thrice in large characters on the wall of the principal inn—a fatal word for the bishop, who tarried so long and drank so freely that he died ere reaching his destination—Rome. His tomb exists at Montefiascone. On either side of his mitre and his arms his secretary had carved a reversed glass, with this epitaph on the stone: Est, Est, Est, et propter nimium est Johannes de Fuger dominus meus mortuus est. The explanation of the epitaph and emblems is given by the Roman prelate, Valery. It is still further averred that the death of Cardinal Mauri, a distinguished Italian prelate, whose remains were interred near those of the German bishop in the Church of St. Flavien, was also hastened by his fondness for the Montefiascone wine. The story of the bibulous bishop was told in 1825 in German, in a poem of fourteen stanzas, by Wilhelm Müller, father of Professor Max Müller.[39] It has also been excellently rendered in English verse by an American poetess whose name the efforts of the writer have been unable to trace: