147. _the Bernakes_: The barnacle goose—introduced here on a hint from Odoric—is a species of wild goose that visits the Northern coasts in winter. It was popularly supposed to grow from the shell-fish called 'barnacle', which attaches itself to floating timber by a stalk something like the neck and beak of a bird, and has feathery filaments not unlike plumage. As the breeding place of the barnacle goose was unknown, and logs with the shell-fish attached were often found on the coasts, it was supposed that the shell-fish was the fruit of a tree, which developed in the water into a bird. Giraldus Cambrensis, _Topographia Hibernica_, I. xv, reproves certain casuistical members of the Church who ate the barnacle goose on fast-days on the plea that it was not flesh; but himself vouches for the marvel. The earliest reference in English is No. 11 of the Anglo-Saxon _Riddles_, of which the best solution is 'barnacle goose'. For a full account see Max Müller's _Lectures on the Science of Language_, vol. ii, pp. 583-604. 157. _grete notes of Ynde_, 'coco-nuts'. 163-4. _Goth and Magoth_: see Ezekiel xxxviii and xxxix. The forms of the names are French. 170. _God of Nature_: Near the end of the _Travels_ it is explained that all the Eastern peoples are Deists, though they have not the light of Christianity: _þei beleeven in God þat formede all thing and made the world, and clepen him 'God of Nature'_. 191-2. _þat þei schull not gon out on no syde, but be the cost of hire lond_: the general sense requires the omission of _but_, which has no equivalent in the original French text: _qils ne<nt> issent fors deuers la coste de sa terre_ (MS. Sloane 1464, f. 139 b). But some MSS. like Royal 20 B. X have _fors qe deuers_, a faulty reading that must have stood in the copy used by the Cotton translator. Cp. note to l. 108. 199-200. _a four grete myle_: renders the French _iiii grantz lieus_. There is no 'great mile' among English measures. 209 ff. In the Middle Ages references to the Jews are nearly always hostile. They were hated as enemies of the Church, and prejudice was hardened by stories, like that in the text, of their vengeance to come, or of ritual murder, like Chaucer's _Prioress's Tale_. England had its supposed boy martyrs, William of Norwich (d. 1144), and Hugh of Lincoln (d. 1255) whom the Prioress invokes: _O yonge Hugh of Lyncoln, slayn also With cursed Jewes, as it is notable, For it is but a litel while ago, Preye eek for us_, &c.