Gudgeon. This being the bait for many of the larger fish, “to swallow a gudgeon” was sometimes used for to be caught or deceived. More commonly, however, the allusion is to the ease with which the gudgeon itself is caught, as in the “Merchant of Venice” (i. 1), where Gratiano says:
“But fish not, with this melancholy bait,
For this fool-gudgeon.”
Gurnet. The phrase “soused gurnet” was formerly a well-known term of reproach, in allusion to which Falstaff, in “1 Henry IV.” (iv. 2), says, “If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet.” The gurnet, of which there are several species, was probably thought a very coarse and vulgar dish when soused or pickled.
Loach. A small fish, known also as “the groundling.” The allusion to it by one of the carriers, in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1), who says, “Your chamber-lie breeds fleas like a loach,” has much puzzled the commentators. It appears, however, from a passage in Holland’s translation of Pliny’s “Natural History” (bk. ix. c. xlvii.), that anciently fishes were supposed to be infested with fleas: “Last of all some fishes there be which of themselves are given to breed fleas and lice; among which the chalcis, a kind of turgot, is one.” Malone suggests that the passage may mean, “breeds fleas as fast as a loach breeds loaches;” this fish being reckoned a peculiarly prolific one. It seems probable, however, that the carrier alludes to one of those fanciful notions which make up a great part of natural history among the common people.[930] At the present day there is a fisherman’s fancy on the Norfolk coast that fish and fleas come together. “Lawk, sir!” said an old fellow, near Cromer, to a correspondent of “Notes and Queries” (Oct. 7th, 1865), “times is as you may look in my flannel-shirt, and scarce see a flea, and then there ain’t but a very few herrin’s; but times that’ll be right alive with ’em, and then there’s sartin to be a sight o’ fish.”
Mr. Houghton, writing in the Academy (May 27th, 1882) thinks that in the above passage the small river loach (Cobitis barbatula) is the fish intended. He says, “At certain times of the year, chiefly during the summer months, almost all fresh-water fish are liable to be infested with some kind of Epizoa. There are two kinds of parasitic creatures which are most commonly seen on various fish caught in the rivers and ponds of this country; and these are the Argulus foliaccus, a crustacean, and the Piscicola piscium, a small, cylindrical kind of leech.”
Mermaids. From the earliest ages mermaids have had a legendary existence—the sirens of the ancients evidently belonging to the same remarkable family. The orthodox mermaid is half woman, half fish, the fishy half being sometimes depicted as doubly-tailed. Shakespeare frequently makes his characters talk about mermaids, as in the “Comedy of Errors” (iii. 2), where Antipholus of Syracuse says:
“O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,
To drown me in thy sister’s flood of tears;
Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote:
Spread o’er the silver waves thy golden hairs,
And as a bed I’ll take them and there lie,
And, in that glorious supposition, think
He gains by death, that hath such means to die.”
And, again, further on, he adds:
“I’ll stop mine ears against the mermaid’s song.”
Staunton considers that in these passages the allusion is obviously to the long-current opinion that the siren, or mermaid, decoyed mortals to destruction by the witchery of her songs. This superstition has been charmingly illustrated by Leyden, in his poem, “The Mermaid” (see Scott’s “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,” vol. iv. p. 294):