Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

PIKE UNKNOWN TO GREEKS 197" Lucius obscuras ulva csenoque lacunasObsidet ; hie nullos mensarum lectus ad ususFervet fumosis olido nidore popinis,"which Badham has loosely translated :" The wary luce, midst wrack and rushes hid.The scourge and terror of the scaly brood,Unknown at friendship's hospitable board,Smokes midst the smoking tavern's coarsest food,"The striking silence as to a fish so far-spread in his habitatand so notable in his habits as Esox lucius in all preceding Greekand Latin literature must excuse a semi-excursus.Cuvier writes :" We are necessarily astonished that theAncients have left us no document, so to speak, on a fish soabundant in Europe as the Pike ... a fish which the Greeksmust have known. The word Esox occurs only once (Pliny,IX. 17) as an example of a large fish comparable 1to the Tunnyin form. In spite of Hardouin, I do not see that Esox of theRhine is the Pike, or beUeve with Ducange that it is the Salmon-The name Luccio or Luzzo, by which we stiU call the Pike inthis country, gives force to the supposition that the Latins ofthe time of Ausonius called it Lucius." 2The astonishment at the absence of all reference to thePike would be greatly increased, if the authors, or reallyValenciennes, had hved to read later writers.Parkyn {op. cit.,p. 131) cites the fish among those represented by the craftsmenof both PalaeoUthic and Neolithic Art in the caves of Franceand Spain. G. de Mortillet {op. cit., p. 220) claims that theremains of Pike in the Palaeolithic age occur not infrequently.F. Keller {op. cit., vol. I. 537, 544) notes their presence inNeolithic finds at Moosseedorf, etc. Meek, Migratiojt of Fish,p. 18 (London, 1917), states that the Pike " occupied theEuropean region in Oligocene and Miocene times, and thatthe remains of Pike are found in the Pleistocene of Breslau."1 C. Mayhoff here prints J. Hardouin's conjecture isox, which was basedon Hesychius' gloss, ia-o^- IxOvs iroihs K-nrwSvs.2 Cuvier and Valenciennes Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, vol. XVIII.,pp. 279-80 (Paris. 1846). See Introduction. If the Pike be late in hterature,in heraldry it makes amends, for there is no earUer example of fish bornein English heraldry than is afforded by the Pike in the arms of the family ofLucy, or Lucius—a play on words not confined to heraldry but to be found inShakespeare, Puttenham, and others. See Moule, op. cU., p. 49.