Wednesday 5 June 2024

Red Herring

Colloquial Inglês: 
What's that got to do with the price of fish?
Used when someone says something completely irrelevant to the conversation.
red herring: something that misleads or distracts from the relevant question. The jury is Out on whether Shagsper had any interest in fish or angling. But it is clear that Shaxpere's contemporaries had an interest in eating fish. Clear? How? Wot am ur evidence?

Clear because of the existence of Familiar Dialogues 1586 by Huguenot emigré Jacques Bellot who had been baffled by the colloquial English of costardmongers and drapers and resolved to write a phrasebook of English, French and English-as-she-is-spoke. These dialogues are familiar because they revolve around the antics of a cliché family arguing in the kitchen and out and about trying to purchase food and clothing. You can get the whole text in three columns on Project Gutenberg. I am annoyed with myself that this was completely new to me when it was posted on MetaFilter in May: niche lists involving foreign languages - c'est ma confiture. As often with MeFi, there is some interesting comments. Thereby, fo one example, I learned that a sheep's gather is/was equivalent to a chicken's pluck: liver + heart + lungs = the basic ingredients, with oatmeal, of haggis.

Mais revenons nous a nos poissons. It's all very well for quasi-bilingual foreign johnnies in 1586 to be comparing notes about what was on the fishmonger's slab but what are we to make of the available chowder-fare 440 years later. It's the perennial problem of using common names with all their ambivalence of meaning and regional variation [see Flora previa]. For future googlers, I here share my Linnaean findings. 

English            French         Linnaean
Soles              Des soles      Solea solea
A good plaise      Vne bonne plis Pleuronectes platessa
Viuers             Des viures     ???
Rotches, Gornettes Des rouges     Chelidonichthys cuculus
Whittinges         Des merlenc    Merlangius merlangus
Waisters           Des huistres   Ostrea edulis
Thurnebacke        De la Raye     Raja clavata
Smeltes            De l'eperlenc  Osmerus eperlanus
Redde hering       Du hareng sor  Clupea harengus
Whitte hering      Du hareng blanc Clupea harengus (salt)
Shrimpes           De la creuette Palaemon serratus
A loupster         Vn hommar      Homarus gammarus
Crabbes            Des escreuices Cancer pagurus
A picke            Vn brochet     Esox lucius
A pickerell        Vn brocheton   Esox lucius (small)
A millers thumbe   Vn gouion      Cottus gobio
A saumond          Vn saumond     Salmo salar
A lamproye         Vne lamproye   Petromyzon marinus
Elles              Des anguilles  Anguilla anguilla
A dorey            Vne dorée      Zeus faber
A makerell         Vn maquereau   Scomber scombrus
A trouette         Vne trouite    Salmo trutta
Smal lamproyes     Des lamprions  Petromyzon marinus
Moskels            Des mousles    Mytilus edulis
Cockelles          Des coques     Cerastoderma edule
A tenche           Vne tenche     Tinca tinca
A carpe            Vne carpe      Cyprinus carpio
Kempes             Des pimperneaux Anguilla anguilla
A whale            Vne ballaine   Balaenoptera acutorostrata

I think I'm correct‽ Fight me in the comments. "Rotches" could be the fresh water roach Rutilis rutilis but I think it's more likely in the context to be gurnard. I was baffled by "Waisters" until I looked at the french huisters or, as she is wrote today: huîtres where the âccent is the trace of the lost "s". Still baffled by "viuers" or in modern orthography vivers. A viver is apparently a stew-pond but here seems to be the inhabitants, so it's likely some sort of carp. As for "A whale" I've taken a punt with Balaenoptera acutorostrata, the minke whale, the smallest of the baleen whales. Although at ~10m long, it would be a good old heft to get that up from the Thames to Billingsgate fish market. The mystery fish pictured at Top? Clue.

More? In my trawls I came across Fish-eating in ancient Greece. Edible fish categories beyond the Linnaean taxonomy at academia.edu [behind sign-up wall]. Like me they have tracked down some ancient writing about the availability of fish in the market and tried to work out exactly what folks were eating 2000 years ago.

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