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The Gaelic Names of Birds. 73
or warrior-birtl. Tt is only a winter visitor with us, going to tlie
Arctic regions to breed. It was its coming to us in such vast
flocks, and yet never being known to lay eggs or breed, that gave
rise to the absurd old belief that the Bernicle Goose, instead of
being bred from an egg like other birds, came from a shell that
grew on trees in the Hebrides. E\en so late as the time of
Gerald, the herbalist, we find this ridiculous theory still believed,
as he tells us " that in the northern parts of Scotland there existed
certain trees bearing, instead of fruit, small russet coloured shells
which opened at maturity, and let fall little living things which,
at the touch of ocean, became bernicles." The worthy botanist
then proceeds to relate " what his own eyes had seen and his own
hands had touched on a small island strewed with sea-waifs, in the
shape of wrecks and the trunks of trees covered with a froth or
spume. This froth changed into shells containing something like
lace of silk finely woven, as it were, together, one end being
attached to the inside of the shell, and the other in a loose mass
or lump of matter. When this is perfectly formed the shell gapeth
open, and the first thing that appeareth is the foresaid lace or
string, next come the legs of the bird hanging out, and as it
gi'oweth greater it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it
is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill ;
in shoi^t space after
it cometh to full maturity and falleth into the sea, where it
gathereth feathers, and groweth into a fowl Ingger that a mallard
and lesser that a goose." Wild as this story is. Chambers says it
is matched by even a higher authority. Sir Robert Murray, one of
His Majesty's Council for Scotland, who records, in the Philosophical
Transactions for 1678, how he plucked several shells from
a rotten fir tree on the Isle of Uist, and upon opening them found
each one containing the rudiments of a bird—the little bill like
that of a goose, the eyes marked, the head, neck, breast, wings,
tail, and feet formed, the feathers everywhei-e perfectly shaped and
blackish coloured. So wides}n-ead was this belief, and .so thoroughly
believed, that the high authorities of the Roman Catholic Church
decreed that as the bernicles were not engendered of flesh they
were not to be considered as birds, and might, therefore, be eaten
by the faithful on fast days. I may add that the shells from which
the beniicle was supposed to come belongs to a variety of
mollusks, now know to naturalists as Cirripedia. I suspect the
word bernicle, as either applied to the bernicle goose or the shell-
fish, comes from the Gaelic Bairnnach—a limpet or shell-fish
(Alex. Mivcdonald)—literally, the notched or nicked shell. The
bernicle goose is often mentioned in our old lore. In Gillies' rare
work, in an old lorram, page 50, we have :