Sea Monsters Unmasked, and Sea Fables ExplainedLee, Henry
History
Sea Monsters Unmasked, and Sea Fables Explained
Lee, Henry
Cephalopoda; Marine animals
In Fig. 13 an enormous lobster is in the act of similarly dragging
overboard from a vessel a man whom it has seized by the arm with one of
its great claws. From the crude image of a lobster having eight minor
claws and two larger ones, to that of a cuttle having eight minor arms
and two longer ones, the transition is not great; and I believe that
this also is a pictorial misrepresentation of a casualty by the attack
of a calamary similar to that above described, possibly another view of
the same incident. The idea is that of a sea animal capable of suddenly
seizing and grasping a man, and we must remember that we have evidence,
in the writings of Pontoppidan and others, that, even two centuries
later than Olaus Magnus, the Norsemen's knowledge of the cuttles was
exceedingly vague and indistinct. Any one who has seen, as I frequently
have at the Brighton Aquarium, and as they doubtless had whilst
lobster-catching, the threatening and ferocious manner in which a
lobster will brandish, and, if I may use the term, "gnash" its claws at
an intruding hand, even if held above the surface of the water, can well
imagine a party of fishermen discussing such a tragic occurrence as the
foregoing, and differing in opinion as to the identity of the creature
which had caused the catastrophe, some maintaining that it must have
been a sea-serpent, and others shaking their heads and asserting that
nothing but a colossal lobster could have done it.
Pontoppidan, in writing his history of Norway, of course had before him
the statements of Olaus Magnus; but, though their author was an
archbishop, he did not accept them with the childlike simplicity
generally ascribed to him. Quoting, and, singularly enough, misquoting,
the Swedish prelate as referring to a sea-serpent, when he is
describing, incorrectly, one of the _Acalephae_, or sea-nettles,
Pontoppidan says:--
"I have never heard of this sort, and should hardly believe the
good Olaus if he did not say that he affirmed this from his own
experience. The disproportion makes me think there must be some
error of the press.... He mixes truth and fable together according
to the relations of others; but this was excusable in that dark age
when that author wrote. Notwithstanding all this, we, in the
present more enlightened age, are much obliged to him for his
industry and judicious observations."
Of the sea-serpent Pontoppidan writes:--
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