by Thomas Nashe
The red herring is a legate of peace, and so abhorrent from unnatural bloodshed that if, in his quarrel or bandying who should harbing him, there be any hewing or slashing or trials of life and death, there where that hangman embowelling is, his pursuivants or baillies return non est inventus;295 out of one bailiwick he is fled, never to be fastened on there more. The Scottish jockies296 or redshanks297 (so surnamed of their immoderate raunching298 up the red shanks or red herrings) uphold and make good the same. Their clack or gabbling to this purport: ‘How, in diebus illis,299 when Robert de Breaux,300 their gud king, sent his dear heart to the holy land, for reason he caud not gang thider himself, (or then or thereabout or whilom before or whilom after, it matters not) they had the staple or fruits of the herring in their road or channel, till a foul ill feud arose amongst his sectaries and servitors, and there was mickle tule,301 and a black world, and a deal of whin–yards302 drawn about him, and many sackless303 wights and praty barns run through the tender weambs, and fra thence ne sarry tale of a herring in thilk sound they caud grip.’ This language or parley have I usurped from some of the deftest lads in all Edinborough town, which it will be no impeachment for the wisest to turn loose for a truth, without any diffident wrestling with it.
The sympathy thereunto in our frothy streams we have took napping. Wherefore, without any further bolstering or backing, this Scottish history may bear palm.304 And if any further bolstering or backing be required, it is evident by the confession of the six-hundred Scottish witches executed in Scotland at Bartelmewtide was twelve-month, that in Yarmouth Road they were altogether in a plump305 on Christmas Eve was two year, when the great flood was, and there stirred up such tornadoes and furicanoes of tempests, in envy (as I collect) that the staple of the herring from them was translated to Yarmouth, as will be spoke of there whiles any winds or storms and tempests chafe and puff in the lower region.306
They and all the seafaring towns under our temperate zone of peace may well envy her prosperity, as a general envy encompassing it. Kings, noblemen, it cleaves unto, that walk upright and are anything happy; and even amongst mean artificers it thrusts in his foot, one of them envying another if he have a knack above another, or his gains be greater, and, if in his art they cannot disgrace him, they will find a starting hole in his life that shall confound him. For example: there is* a mathematical smith or artificer in Yarmouth that hath made a lock and key that weighs but three farthings, and a chest with a pair of knit gloves in the till of it, whose whole poise is no more but a groat. Now, I do not think but all the smiths in London, Norwich or York, if they heard of him, would envy him if they could not outwork him.
Hydra herring will have everything* Sybarite-dainty, where he lays knife aboard, or he will fly them, he will not look upon them. Stately born, stately sprung he is, the best blood of the Ptolemies no statelier, and with what state he hath been used from his swaddling clouts I have reiterated unto you, and, which is a not-above-ela, stately Hyperion or the lordly sun, the most rutilant308 planet of the seven,309 in Lent when Heralius310 Herring enters into his chief reign and sceptredom, skippeth and danceth the goat’s jump311 on the earth for joy of his entrance. Do but mark him on your walls any morning at that season, how he sallies and lavoltoes,312 and you will say I am no fabler. Of so eye-bewitching deaurate313 ruddy dye is the skincoat of this lantsgrave,314 that happy is that nobleman who for his colours in armoury can nearest imitate his chimical315 temper. Nay, which is more, if a man should tell you that god Hymen’s saffron-coloured robe were made of nothing but red herrings’ skins, you would hardly believe him. Such is the obduracy and hardness of heart of a number of infidels in these days, they will tear herrings out of their skins as fast as one of these exchequer-tellers can turn over a heap of money; but his virtues, both exterior and interior, they have no more taste of than of a dish of stockfish.
Somewhere I have snatched up a jest of a king that was desirous to try what kind of flesh-meat was most nutritive-prosperous with a man’s body, and to that purpose he commanded four hungry fellows in four separate rooms by themselves to be shut up for a year and a day, whereof the first should have his gut bombasted with beef and nothing else till he cried ‘Hold, belly, hold,’ and so the second to have his paunch crammed with pork, the third with mutton, and the fourth with veal. At the twelvemonth’s end they were brought before him, and he enquired of every one orderly what he had eat. Therewith out stepped the stallfed foreman that had been at host with the fat oxe, and was grown as fat as an oxe with tiring on the sirloins, and baft316 in his face ‘Beef, beef, beef’. Next the Norfolk hog or the swine-worrier, who had got him a sagging pair of cheeks like a sow’s paps that give suck, with the plentiful mast set before him, came lazily waddling in and puffed out ‘Pork, pork, pork’. Then the sly sheep-biter issued into the midst, and summer-setted317 and flipflapt318 it twenty times above ground, as light as a feather, and cried ‘Mitton, mitton, mitton’. Last the Essex calf or lagman,319 who had lost the calves of his legs with gnawing on the horselegs, shuddering and quaking, limped after, with a visage as pale as a piece of white leather, and a staff in his hand and a kerchief on his head, and very lamentably vociferated ‘Veal, veal, veal’. A witty toy of his noble Grace it was, and different from the recipes and prescriptions of our modern physicians, that to any sick languishers, if they be able to waggle their chaps, propound veal for one of the highest nourishers.
But had his principality gone through with fish as well as flesh, and put a man to livery with the red herring but as long, he would have come in* ‘Hurrey,320 Hurrey, Hurrey’, as if he were harrying and chasing his enemies, and Bevis of Hampton,321 after he been out of his diet, should not have been able to have stood before him. A choleric parcel of food it is, that whoso ties himself to rack and manger to for five summers and five winters, he shall beget a child that will be a soldier and a commander before he hath cast his first teeth, and an Alexander, a Julius Caesar, a Scanderbeg,322 a Barbarossa he will prove ere he aspire to thirty.
But to think on a red herring, such a hot stirring meat it is, is enough to make the cravenest dastard proclaim fire and sword against Spain. The most intenerate323 virgin-wax phisnomy, that taints his throat with the least rib of it, it will embrawn and iron-crust his flesh, and harden his soft bleeding veins as stiff and robustious as branches of coral. The art of kindling of fires that is practised in the smoking or parching of him is old dog324 against the plague. Too foul-mouthed I am to becollow325 or becollier326 him with such chimney sweeping attributed of smoking and parching. Will you have the secret of it? This well-meaning Pater patriae, and providitor and supporter of Yarmouth, which is the lock and key of Norfolk, looking pale and sea-sick at his first landing, those that be his stewards or necessariest men about him, whirl him in a thought out of the raw cold air, to some stew or hot-house, where immuring himself for three or four days, when he unhouseth him or hath cast off his shell, he is as freckled about the gills, and looks as red as a fox, clum,327 and is more surly to be spoken with than ever he was before, and, like Lais of Corinth,328 will smile upon no man except he may have his own asking. There are that number of herrings vented out of Yarmouth every year, though the grammarians make no plural number of Halec, as not only they are more by two thousand last than our own land can spend, but they fill all other lands, to whom at their own prices they sell them, and happy is he that can first lay hold of them.
And how can it be otherwise? For if Cornish pilchards, otherwise called fumadoes, taken on the shore of Cornwall from July to November, be so saleable as they are in France, Spain and Italy, which are but counterfeits to the red herring, as copper to gold, or ockamie329 to silver, much more their elbows itch for joy, when they meet with the true gold, the true red herring itself. No true flying fish but he, or if there be, that fish never flies but when his wings are wet, and the red herring flies best when his wings are dry. Throughout Belgia, High Germany, France, Spain and Italy he flies, and up into Greece and Africa, South and So
uthwest estritch-like, walks his stations,330 and the sepulchre palmers or pilgrims, because he is so portable, fill their scrips331 with them; yea no dispraise to the blood of the Ottomans, the Nabuchedonesor of Constantinople and giantly Antaeus,332 that never yawneth nor neezeth,333 but he affrighteth the whole earth, gormandizing, muncheth him up for imperial dainties, and will not spare his idol Mahomet a bit with him, no, not though it would fetch him from heaven forty years before his time; whence, with his dove that he taught to peck barley out of his ear, and brought his disciples into a fool’s paradise that it was the Holy Ghost in her similitude, he is expected every minute to descend, but I am afraid as he was troubled with the falling sickness in his lifetime, in self manner it took him in his mounting up to heaven and so ab inferno nulla redemptio,334 he is fallen backward into hell and they are never more like to hear of him.
Whiles I am shuffling and cutting with these long–coated Turks, would any antiquary would explicate unto me this remblere335 or quiddity,336 whether those turbanto* grout-heads,337 that hang all men by the throats on iron hooks, even as our towers hang all their herrings by the throats on wooden spits, first learned it of our herring men, or our herring men of them. Why the Alcheronship of that Belzabub of Saracens, Rhinoceros Zelim aforesaid, should so much delight in this shiny animal, I cannot guess, except he had a desire to imitate Midas in eating of gold, or Dionysius in stripping Jupiter out of his golden coat. And, to shoot my fool’s bolt amongst you, that fable of Midas eating gold had no other shadow or inclusive pith in it, but he was of a queasy stomach and nothing he could fancy but this newfound gilded fish, which Bacchus at his request gave him (though it were not known here two thousand year after, for it was the delicates of the gods, and no mortal food till of late years). Midas, unexperienced of the nature of it, for he was a fool that had ass’s ears, snapped it up at one blow, and because in the boiling or seething of it in his maw he felt it commotion a little and upbraid him, he thought he had eaten gold indeed, and thereupon directed his orisons to Bacchus afresh, to help it out of his crop again, and have mercy upon him and recover him. He, propensive inclining to Midas’ devotion in everything, in lieu of the friendly hospitalities drunken Silenus, his companion, found at his hands when he strayed from him, bad him but go wash himself in the river Pactolus, that is, go wash it down soundly with flowing cups of wine, and he should be as well as ever he was. By the turning of the river Pactolus into gold, after he had rinsed and clarified himself in it (which is the close of the fiction) is signified that, in regard of that blessed operation of the juice of the grape in him, from that day forth in nothing but golden cups he would drink or quaff it, whereas in wooden mazers338 and Agathocles’339 earthen stuff they trillild it off before, and that was the first time that any golden cups were used.
Follow this tract in expounding the tale of Dionysius340 and Jupiter, and you cannot go amiss. No such Jupiter, no such golden-coated image was there; but it was a plain golden-coated herring, without welt or gard, whom, for the strangeness of it, they (having never beheld a beast of that hue before) in their temples enshrined for a God, and insomuch as Jupiter had shown them such slippery pranks more than once or twice, in shifting himself into sundry shapes, and raining himself down in gold into a woman’s lap, they thought this too might be a trick of youth in him, to alter himself into the form of this golden Scaliger341 or red herring. And therefore, as to Jupiter, they fell down on their marybones,342 and lift up their hay-cromes343 unto him. Now King Dionysius being a good wise fellow, for he was afterwards a schoolmaster and had played the coachman to Plato and spit in Aristippus the philosopher’s face many a time and oft, no sooner entered the temple and saw him sit under his canopy so budgely,344 with a whole goldsmith’s stall of jewels and rich offerings at his feet, but to him he stepped and plucked him from his state with a wennion,345 then drawing out his knife most iracundiously346 at one whisk lopped off his head, and stripped him out of his golden demy or mandillion,347 and flayed him, and thrust him down his pudding-house348 at a gob. Yet long it prospered not with him (so revengeful a just. Jupiter is the red herring), for as he tare him from his throne, and uncased him of his habiliments, so, in small devolution of years, from his throne was he chased, and clean stripped out of his royalty, and glad to go play the schoolmaster at Corinth, and take a rod in his hand for his sceptre, and horn-book pigmies for his subjects, id est (as I intimated some dozen lines before) of a tyrant to become a frowning pedant or schoolmaster.
Many of you have read these stories, and could never pick out any such English. No more would you of the Ismael Persians’ Haly, or Mortus Ali,349 they worship, whose true etimology is, mortuum halec, a dead red herring and no other, though by corruption of speech they false dialect and miss-sound it. Let any Persian oppugn350 this, and, in spite of his hairy tuft or love-lock he leaves on the top of his crown, to be pulled up or pulleyed up to heaven by, I’ll set my foot to his and fight it out with him, that their fopperly351 god is not so good as a red herring. To recount ab ovo,352 or from the church-book353 of his birth how the herring first came to be a fish, and then how he came to be King of Fishes and gradationately how from white to red he changed, would require as massy a tome as Holinshed.354 But in half a pennyworth of paper I will epitomize them. Let me see, hath anybody in Yarmouth heard of Leander and Hero, of whom divine Musaeus sung, and a diviner muse than him, Kit Marlowe?355
Two faithful lovers they were, as every apprentice in Paul’s churchyard356 will tell you for your love, and sell you for your money. The one dwelt at Abidos in Asia, which was Leander; the other, which was Hero, his mistress or Delia, at Sestos in Europe, and she was a pretty pinkany357 and Venus’ priest. And but an arm of the sea divided them; it divided them and it divided them not, for over that arm of the sea could be made a long arm. In their parents the most division rested, and their towns, like Yarmouth and Leystoffe, were still at wrig-wrag, and sucked from their mothers’ teats serpentine hatred one against each other. Which drove Leander when he durst not deal above-board, or be seen aboard any ship, to sail to his lady dear, to play the didopper358 and ducking water-spaniel359 to swim to her, nor that in the day but by owl-light.
What will not blind night do for blind Cupid? And what will not blind Cupid do in the night, which is his blind-man’s holiday?360 By the sea on the other side stood Hero’s tower, such another tower as one of our Irish castles, that is not so wide as a belfry and a cobbler cannot jert361 out his elbows in: a cage or pigeonhouse, romthsome362 enough to comprehend her and the toothless trot363 her nurse who was her only chatmate and chambermaid, consultively364 by her parents being so encloistered from resort that she might live chaste vestal priest to Venus, the Queen of Unchastity. She would none of that, she thanked them, for she was better provided, and that which they thought served their turn best of sequestering her from company, served her turn best to embrace the company she desired. Fate is a spaniel that you cannot beat from you; the more you think to cross it, the more you bless it and further it.
Neither her father nor mother vowed chastity when she was begot. Therefore she thought they begat her not to live chaste, and either she must prove herself a bastard, or show herself like them. Of Leander you may write upon, and it is written upon, she liked well; and for all he was a naked man and clean despoiled to the skin when he crawled through the brackish suds to scale her tower, all the strength of it could not hold him out. Oh, ware a naked man. Cithereare’s nuns365 have no power to resist him; and some such quality is ascribed to the lion. Were he never so naked when he came to her, because he should not scare her she found a means to cover him in her bed; and for he might not take cold after his swimming, she lay close by him to keep him warm. This scuffling or bo-peep in the dark they had awhile without weam or brack,366 and the old nurse (as there be three things seldom in their right kind till they be old: a bawd, a witch and a midwife) executed the huckstering367 office of her years very charily and circumspectly, till their sliding stars revolted from
them. And then, for seven days together, the wind and the Hellespont contended which should howl louder. The waves dashed up to the clouds, and the clouds on the other side spit and drivelled upon them as fast.
