Barnacles and the Barnacle Goose (Background: Barrow)
In the past, people thought Barnacle Geese did not hatch from eggs like other birds – but emerged from barnacles, at places like Piel Island.
During the Middle Ages and well into the Early Modern period, most people thought those black-and-white-headed birds that we still call Barnacle Geese did not hatch from eggs like normal birds – but instead hatched from actual barnacles, down by the sea-shore or out at sea. The earliest account of this story is by Gerald of Wales, 1187.
In 1597, John Gerarde published ‘The Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes’, in which he reported his observations of this phenomenon in a chapter called ‘The Breed of Barnacles’ – in what reads like an eye-witness account!
“There is a small haude [holding, property] in Lancashire called the Pile of Foulders [Piel Island, aka the Pile of Fouldray], wherein are found the pieces of old and brused ships, some whereof have benn cast hither by shipwracke, and also the trunks or bodies with the branches of old and rotten trees, cast up there likewise, whereon is found a certain spume or froth, and it in time breedeth unto shells, in shape like those of the muskle, but sharper pointed and of a whitish colour … When it is perfectly formed, the shell gapeth open … next come the legs of the Bird hanging out; and as it growth greater it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come foorth and hangeth onely by the bill; in short space after it cometh to full maturitie, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers, and groueth to a fowle bigger than a Mallard, and lesser than a Goose having black legs and bill or beake, and feathers black and white … which the people in Lancashire call by no other name than a Tree Goose.’
He went on to add…
‘The bordes and rotten plankes whereon are found these shells, wherein is bred the Barnakle … they spawne as it were in March and April; the geese are formed in Maie and June, and come to fullnesse of feathers in the month after’
The chapter was accompanied by an illustration of ‘The Barnacle Tree’ 
The etymology of ‘barnacle’ appears to be unknown, but the word seems first to have been applied to the goose, and only later to the arthropod. The birds disappear for the summer (now known to have flown off to their Arctic breeding grounds) and this story presumably grew to explain their absence, and sudden reappearance. In the same way, swifts were thought in the late Summer to go into hibernation in the mud of pond and lake bottoms, to emerge the following Spring.
In 1700, the Lancashire naturalist Charles Leigh, in his ‘Natural History of Lancashire, Cheshire and the Peak in Derbyshire’, stated (pp.157-58), concerning barnacle geese, that he intended to ‘lay down some Reasons to shew the Impossibility of their being bred after the manner formerly receiv’d’. He went on to describe the anatomy of both the geese and the shell, clearly from personal observation – and criticising those who had not made such observations in the past, he concluded that ‘what therefore has been asserted… concerning this Bird, is only a vulgar Error, and they only wanted a thorow Enquiry, to give them satisfaction in this Matter’.
Gerarde’s ‘Herball’ is quoted at length in Richardson’s Antiquities of Furness (1880), pp.210-213, from which these extracts are taken.
Charles Leigh, ‘Natural History of Lancashire, Cheshire and the Peak in Derbyshire’ (1700), Oxford.
Text by Bill Shannon
Image of Barnacle Geese https://ebird.org/species/bargoo
For background information on Barrow, see
https://www.cumbriacountyhistory.org.uk/township/barrow-furness
For a full list of all interesting facts, click here
https://www.cumbriacountyhistory.org.uk/full-list-interesting-facts
