Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

MUNDUS SYMBOLICUS—THE ROSE AND FISH 277in my chapter on Tackle.Nor, again, is the author far astraywith his lemma for the Monachus — or Monk fish (a name derivedfrom the hood on its head) " Habitum non virtutem " —whichrecalls the mediaeval jeer, " The cowl makyth not the Monk,"and Oscar Wilde's description—half-echoing Browning—of thepike as " some mitred old bishop in partibus." Of the Monkfish—also Bishop fish—a well intended representation can befound in the pages of the learned Gesner,Under Salmo, when suffering from leeches or gill-maggots,the author provides us not only with the lemma, " Hcaretubique " and the appropriate, if not quite original, reflectionof St. Bernard that conscience is like the leech which ceasethnot night nor day from making its presence felt,but also with— a vivid description of a kelt dying " donee toto corpore tabescat."Any connection between a salmon and a swallow {hinmdo)for a moment seemed a new ichthyic revelation ! The context,however, and not least St.Bernard's pointing of the moral, ledto the discovery of the misprint of hirundibus for hirundinibus(' leeches ').With one more passage I regretfully leave Picinelh, or ratherErath. The collocation of the rose and fish held in the handof Cupid, which Alciatus " non sine mysterio insiruxisset," occasioned" the erudite " and anonymous epigram (p. 671) showingthat Love resembles the rose and the fish. This apparentincongruity finds explanation thuswise : while each hasprickly points, the first fades in a day and the second is incapableof being tamed—a comparison which, if unique, ignores theEgyptian and Roman powers of domestication. ^" Symbola adidantum cernis, Rosa, Piscis amoriim,^Non sane uniiis Symbola certa mali.Nam Rosa verna suis non est sine sentibus, idemPiscis habet spinas intiis et ipse suas.Piilchra Rosa est, verum ilia brevi fit marcida, piscisEst ferns, esse aliqua nee cicur arte potest."1 The bronze statuette found at Hartsbourg showing the Germanic godChrodo, standing on a fish, while holding in his uplifted left hand a wheel,and in his lowered right a basket of fruit and vegetables, is not at all on allfours. Cf. Montfaucon, Antiquity Explained, trans. D. Humphreys (London,1921), II. 261, pi. 5G, 3.2 The construction of Rosa, Piscis ' ' is not discernible. Perhaps (' RosaPiscis ')would be less obscure.