So long ago as the twelfth century, the story was promulgated by Giraldus Cambrensis, in his “Topographia Hiberniæ,” and Munster, Saxo Grammaticus, Scaliger, Fulgosus, Bishop Leslie, and Olaus Magnus, all attested to
the truth of this monstrous absurdity. Gesner, too, and Aldrovandus[146] may be also cited.
THE BARNACLE GOOSE TREE. From Aldrovandus.
A second phase or modification of the story is that given by Boëce, the oldest Scottish historian: he denies that the geese (Scotticè, Claiks) grow on trees by their bills, as some believe, but that, as his own researches and personal experience prove, they are first produced in the form of worms, in the substance of old trees or timber floating in the sea; for such a tree, cast on shore in 1480, was brought to the laird, who ordered it to be sawn asunder, when there appeared a multitude of worms, “throwing themselves out of sundry holes and bores of
the tree; some of them were rude, as they were new-shapen; some had both head, feet, and wings, but they had no feathers; some of them were perfect-shapen fowls. At last the people, having this tree each day in more admiration, brought it to the kirk of St. Andrew’s, beside the town of Tyre, where it yet remains to our days.” Other instances he adduces by way of proof, and at length he comes to the conclusion, that the production of these geese from fruits is the erroneous opinion of the ignorant; it being ascertained that “they are produced only by the nature of the ocean sea, which is the cause and production of many wonderful things.”
In this view he was supported by Turner and others: “When,” says Turner, “at a certain time an old ship, or a plank, or a pine-mast rots in the sea, something like a little fungus at first makes its appearance, which at length puts on the manifest form of birds; afterwards these are clothed with feathers, and at last become living and flying fowl.” (“Avium Præcip. Hist.,” Art. “Anser.”) Turner, however, does not give up the goose-tree, but informs Gesner that it is a different bird from the brent or bernicle goose, which takes its origin from it. (Gesner, “De Avibus,” iii. p. 107.) Passing a host of other authorities, with their accumulated proofs, and the depositions of unimpeachable witnesses, we may come to Gerard, who, in 1597, published the following account in his “Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes”:—
THE BARNACLE GOOSE TREE. From Gerard.
“There is a small island in Lancashire, called the Pile of Foulders, wherein are found the broken pieces of old and bruised ships, some whereof have been cast thither by shipwracke, and also the trunks or bodies, with the branches, of old and rotten trees, cast up there likewise; whereon is found a certaine spume, or froth, that in time breedeth unto certaine shels, in shape like those of the muskle, but sharper pointed, and of a whitish colour, wherein is contained a thing in forme like a lace of silke, finely woven as it were together, of a whitish colour; one ende whereof is fastened unto the inside of the shell, even