The Barnacle Goose Myth

From Topographia Hibernica British Library MS 13 B VIII



An early reference to the myth of the barnacle goose is in the eleventh century Exeter Book of Riddles. 

" …..My beak was close fettered, the currents of ocean, running cold beneath me.

There I grew in the sea, my body close to the moving wood. I was all alive when I came from the water clad all in black, but a part of me white. When living the air lifted me up, the wind from the wave bore me afar - up over the seal’s bath…..

Tell me my name...."

The most important way that the Barnacle Goose myth was propagated during the early Medieval period was through Bestiaries. Bestiaries described a beast real or imaginary and used that description as a basis for an allegorical teaching. As this period was intensely religious, Monastic orders, Churches, Universities and royalty acquired and copied manuscript versions of Bestiaries repeating and building a moralising a story about animals. Animal stories both real and mythical were used. As people were dependent on wild and domestic animals for their survival, they had an obvious interest in the world and its animals around them.

“…..There is also a small species known as the barnacle goose arrayed in motly plumage – it has in certain parts white and others black circular markings of whose haunts we have no certain knowledge. There is however a curious popular tradition that they spring from dead trees. It is said that in the far north old ships are found in whose rotting hulls a worm is born that develops into the barnacle goose. This goose hangs from dead wood by its beak until it is old and strong enough to fly.’’ Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, de arte venandi cum avibus, Book 1 C. III

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle_goose_myth

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