King Lear, Act ii. Sc. 4.
It is not surprising that, to so common a bird, numerous allusions should be made in the Plays of Shakespeare, and, in addition to the passages quoted in Chapter VII.,[145] many others might here be mentioned, were it not that the repetition might prove tedious.
BARNACLES.
It was anciently believed that the Bernacle Goose (Anser bernicla) was generated from the Bernacle or Barnacle (Lepas anatifera). Shakespeare has alluded to the metamorphosis in the following line:—
“And all be turned to barnacles.”
Tempest, Act iv. Sc. 1.
It is strange that in matters concerning the marvellous, even men of education will take pains to deceive themselves, and, instead of investigating nature with a “learned spirit,” give a license to ill-directed imagination, and credit absurdities. When such men are so credulous, how can we wonder at the superstitions of the illiterate?
The first phase of the story in question is, that certain trees, resembling willows, more particularly in one of the Orkneys, Pomona, produced at the ends of their branches small swelled balls, containing the embryo of a goose suspended by the bill, which, when ripe, fell off into the sea and took wing.
THE BARNACLE GOOSE.