Max Müller made use of the observation--a perfectly true and interesting one--that a whole people or folk will be led to a wrong conclusion, or to a belief in some strange and marvellous occurrence, by the misunderstanding of a single word, attributing to that word a sense which now fits the sound, but one quite different from that with which the word was originally used in the tradition or history concerned. Words are, in fact, misinterpreted after a lapse of time, or when imported from distant lands, just as we have seen that pictures and sculpture often have been. For instance, Richard Whittington, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1398 and other later years, did business in French goods, which was spoken of in the city as "achat," and pronounced "akat." Hence in later centuries, when the prevalence of Norman French was forgotten, it was stated (in a play produced in 1605) that Whittington owed his fortune to "a cat," and the story of the wonderful cat and its deeds was built up "line upon line" or "lie upon lie." Max Müller suggested that the story of the barnacle and the goose could be similarly explained. The brant or brent goose which frequents the Irish shore was, he supposes, called "berniculus" by the Latin-speaking clergy as a diminutive of Hibernicus, meaning "Irish." There is absolutely no evidence to support this. Max Müller supposes that Hibernicus became "Hiberniculus," and then dropping the first syllable became "Berniculus," and that this word was applied to the "Irish goose." It might have been, but there is nothing to show that it was. Meanwhile the ship's barnacle and other sea-shells were called in the Celtic tongue "barnagh," "berniche," or "bernak," and the hermit-crab is still called on the Breton coast, "Bernard l'hermite," a modification of "bernak l'hermite." There is no doubt that the word "barnacle" as applied to the stalked shell-fish growing on ships' bottoms is a diminutive of the Celtic word "bernak," or "barnak." It became in Latin "barnacus," and then the diminutive "barnaculus," and so "barnacle" was used for the little stalked shell-fish encrusting old timber. According to Max Müller, later generations thus found the two animals, goose and shell-fish, called by the same name, "bernikle," or "barnacle." "Why?" they would ask: and then (he supposes) they would compare the two and detect points of resemblance, until at last a very devout and astute monk had the happy thought of declaring that the Hibernian goose was called "berniculus," or "barnak-goose," _because_ it did not breed from eggs as other birds do, but is hatched out of the shell of the shell-fish, also very naturally and rightly called "berniculus," or barnak, as any one may see by carefully examining the fish contained in the shell of the barnacle or little stalked "barnak," which has the complete form of a bird. Since, however, it is not a bird, but a fish in nature and origin, this holy man declared that