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Once upon a time people believed that the barnacles which are found attached to ships' bottoms, or pieces of timber long floating on the ocean, turned into geese, and the barnacle-goose was so called because it was supposed to have its origin in that common mollusc, the barnacle."
It is to be remarked that Gerard's description of the goose-progeny of the barnacle tree exactly corresponds with the appearance of the bird known to ornithologists as the "barnacle-goose"; and there can be no doubt that, skilled as was this author in the natural history lore of his day, there was no other feeling in his mind than that of firm belief in and pious wonder at the curious relations between the shells and their fowl-offspring.
Afterward, he found out that there had been no intention of regaling him with human flesh, but only with the flesh of the strange animal called "man." As the "man of the mountain" is fixed to the ground by his navel-string, so the barnacle-goose is grown to a tree by its bill.
Of origins we know nothing certainly, nor how words came by their meanings in the remote beginning, when speech, like the barnacle-goose of the herbalist, was suspended over an expectant world, ripening on a tree. But this we know, that language in its mature state is fed and fattened on metaphor.
Tell us your story, O heroic but dilapidated bird! and perhaps song or legend may find in it themes that shall be immortal. The eagle is silent, and I suspect, Annie, that he is but a plain, home-bred fowl after all. But what shall we say to this piece of plank, hung with barnacles that look large enough for the fabled barnacle-goose to emerge from? Observe this fragment a little.
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