Letter from Richard Walmsley to Henry Nowell

iBase ID

241915

Reference identifier

ZEC20140625001

Title

Letter from Richard Walmsley to Henry Nowell

Place

Preston

Personal names

Richard Walmsley, Henry Nowell, Kenyon Family

General notes

Letter from Richard Walmsley to Henry Nowell, in the Isle of Man, 14 Jan 1672-1673, from the Kenyon Family of Peel Hall collection In this letter Richard Walmsley asks Henry Nowell to send some "excellent sort of strong beer made in your island, such as my Lord of Derby drinks, some times, at Knowsley." He also asks him to "make a trial of burying his puffins in a clean cloth in the ground for twenty-four hours, to take away the rank taste they have after they are pulled; they use otters in the same manner, after the skin is taken off, and they are very sweet and inoffensive, but without it they are not to be endured." In the last half of the nineteenth century the puffin was given the scientific name in Latin of Fratercula arctica, which means "little brother of the north." People used to claim that a puffin was actually a cross between a bird and a fish because of its superb ability to swim underwater. This allowed some people to eat puffin meat on lent and Fridays to circumvent the prohibition of meat by the Catholic Church. Hunting and eating Puffins, sometimes referred to as "the clown of the ocean" on account of its colourful beak and comical appearance, no longer takes place in the UK and the Puffin is now a protected species with the population surviving at only a few sites including the Isle of Man. Puffins are however still hunted and eaten in Iceland and the Faroe Islands. The tradition of eating seabirds is centuries old and Inuits in the Arctic still bury little auks for three to eighteen months till they are nicely fermented before eating them. In the Western Isles of Scotland and in particular Lewis they maintain the tradition of hunting and eating "gugas", which are gannet chicks.

Medium

Digital Image

Colour

Original image size

digital

Year of image

c1673

Enter year in yyyy format

Locator

DDKE/HMC/320

Subjects

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