SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 14275, 10 February 1912, Page 7

SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR.

(Bt Str PvAT Laxxesteb, X.C.8., F.R.S.)

(Special rights secured by "The Press.")

CHRISTMAS DAY, FAST DAYS, AND FISH.

Most people arc "familiar with the fact that fasting in the Christian Church has from early times-been of two degrees—one in which no flesh of beast or bird or fish, not even eggs nor milk, may be consumed, and a less severe degree in which the eating of allowed. It is not at first sight clear -why'the eating of fish , —and even of birds such as the Barnacle goose- and the Sooty duckj supposed to be produced from fish —has been permitted by the Christian Church, since the flesh of fish is highly nourishing and an excellent substitute for the meat of beasts and birds, and a man fed upon it is far from suffering the effects of truo "fasting." 3lany races and out-of-the-way people live entirely upon vegetables and a little fish, and do very well on that diet. It has been proved by some learned enquirers that {here was a special significance about the permission by the early Christians of , a fish diet .during so-called "fasting." Real and complete fasting, abstention from all food, for a day or even a" week, "was, and still is, practised- by some Eastern peoples as a religious exercise. It is a matter or fact that an ecstatic condition of mind is favoured by complete fasting, and conditions favourable to illusions of various kinds are so produced. But the later Christians seom to have regarded the partial fasting during Lent and on certain days .of tne week as a sort of protest against gluttony and excess, and there is no objection to it among Protestant Churches excepting that it must, not be claimed as a merit or the equivalent of "good works." That fish were, oven in the most ancient times, allowed to bo eaten on fast days is curious. It was at on© time suggested that the custom camo horn Syria, and had j to do with certain pagan ceremonials i and the worship of the fish-god Dagon. j It was supposed that somo of these early Christians managed, under the guise of a fast of the Church, to maintain an ancient pagan custom and religious rite connected with the Syrian j fish-god, as do also the Jews, who eat! fish on Friday evening. On the other hand, it appears that the- worshippers of the fish-god (at any rate, at a remote period) were forbidden to ent fish as being sacred; hencs it seemed possible that the permission of a fish diet to Christians during days of fasting was given as a means of encouraging those who retained pagan superstitions to ignore- and forget them. The worship of fish of of a fish-god is one of the outcomes of the..eld Nature-worship —the cult of Cybele and Hhea, who in the Greek Islands became the great mother Aohrodite born of the sea, and in Syria A'shtaroth (Astarte). She appears also as Atargatn. the Syrian fish-goddess born from a fish'fi egg, and worshipped at Hieapolis: her worshippers must not eafc fish. Dae;on, the fish-god of the Philistines, belongs to the same group of mythologic inventions. He was halt fish and half human, like a merman, and is, in spite of this strange "get no," identified with the Greek Adonit>! The cult of the fish-god was widely spread in ancient Greece, 'even in Byzantine times, and many Christian converts.were devotees of the fish worship. I have on my table a photograph of a life-sized fish modelled in gold which was dug up in 1883 from the shores of a lake near the coasts of the Black Sea. It was supposed to be of mediaeval workmanship, but is now shown to be of . ancient Greek workmanship (450 8.C.), and was probably a" votive offering connected with the worship of the fish-god. Then, again, in the ancient Indian story of the Deluge we read of Manu (who is the Noah of that variety of the ancient legend) finding a remarkable young fish in a stream where he is bathing. The young fish (which is [really, the god Vishnu in disguise) can

talk, and requests Manu to take care of it, and promises him if ho does so to reveal to him when the deluge is coming en. Mann takes homo the fish and rears it. He then is told by the fish to prepare an ark. and place on board "useful animals and seeds. The ark floats aivay in the flood, guided by the sagacious fish, which eeizea a rope, and. swimming in front of tho ark, tows it to a mountain in Armenia : (Ararat !\ where the vessel rests whilst ths flood goes down. There was evidently a special cult of the fish to Syria and the East, which spread to Greece and Home in very early preChristian times, r.nd survives in some of the stories in the "Arabian Nights'" about human beings turned into fish. It is not surprising "that th:e cn't should havo lodged itself by obscure means in the practices of the early Church.

The most "remarkable outcome of this is the recognition of the fish as the symbol of Christ. Tho letters of the Greek name for fish, iehthus, can bo interpreted as»nn acrostic, the component letters of the word taken in order being the first letters of the words Jcsous Christos Theou "Uios Soter, which are in English ' ; Jesus Christ Son of God, Saviour." This 00-inci-denco enabled the pagan worshippers of the ,fish-god to make their symbol or '"totem" (using that word in a broad sense) the symbol of tho Christian religion. Whether tho use of tho fish and of the letters of tho Greek name for it. was or was not independently started by the early Christians, its employment must have'conciliated the fish-worshipping pagans, and rendered it easy to bring them into the fellowship of the Christian Church. Hence we see that a fish has more to do with Christmas than • appears at first sight. It is quite possible that whilst the cult of the fish-god or fish-goddess may have involved at one period of its growth, an abstention from tho eating of fish or of particular species of fish as being sacred, yet the very ancient belief in "contagious magic" and the acquirement of the qualities of a man or an animal by eating his flesh, may have in the end prevailed and led to the eating of fish, the sacred symbol, on the fast days prescribed by the Church, when a special significance would be attached to such food as was sanctioned.

It has long been known that there is a special association of the very ancient and primitive Greek cult of Orpheus, -with tbo much later cult known as Christianity. Many of the I most important doctrines and practices of the widely-spread secret society of the Orpheists closely resemble those of Christianity. Carvings and medals of Orpheus bringing all animals to his feet by his music were, by the earliest Christians, adopted as equally well representing Christ the Good Shepherd But recent discoveries carry the matter much further. Orpheus is one- of the names of a mythical hunter and fisherman of pre-historic times, who taught his people muiic, and by his magTc helped them to successful catches of fish, and to the "netting" of beasts, as well as of fish. Hie followers adopted the fish as their "totem," or sacred animal, and they represented Orpheus (whether known by that or other names) as the "warden of the fishes, a fish-god, and himself a fish—"the great fish" —and a "fisher of men." Fishes were kept in his temples and eaten solemnly (at first in tbo raw condition), in order to transmit to his worshippers his powers. In Greece, where his cult was introduced by way of Thrace, ho became mixed with, or made a 6iil>stitute for Dionysius (the wine-god), and the eamo legends were told about the 'one as tho other. Ho and his followers are pictured as wearing a fox's skin (supposed by some to have been originally the skin of a .sea-fox or shark), and the fable of the fox and tho grapes, and of the fox fishing with his tail, belong to the Orpheus legends. Very ancient, peoples, earlier, than the j Greeks of classical times, . habitually adopted some animal as thA: totem and name-god— : as do many savage'i races to-day,'* Thus, the Myrmidones j of.Thessaly had tho ant (myrmes) as I their totem, the Arcadians the bear ! (arctos), the Pelasgi, who, preceded the other tribes in Greece; —tho stork I (pelargos). It is now- suggested that the Hellenes, who succeeded tho Pelasgi, and gave their name to Greece (Plellas) and to all its people, were so called from their having the fish (ellos, tho mute or silent ono, a common term applied to fish) as their "totem," and that they were in fact from the first worshippers of the fishgod Orpheus, Di-orphos, Dagon or Adonis! Other "cults" grow up anions them, and the whole Olympian company of Gods and Goddesses were fitted out by poets and priests with man-liko forms, and with the speech, habits, and passions of humanity. But the old deep-rooted worship of the primeval fisherman who was typified by and ideutified with "tho great 'fish"—much elaborated by its hymns and mystio ritual, its lore, and its legend—flourished and developed wonderfully in seoret, wherever Greeks were found. Its priests were missionaries like rhe mendicant friars of later days, and it was not only the most popular cult in Greeco and Asia Minor, but also" in Southern Italy. Hence it is easy to understand that Christianity, by adopting tho fish— the ichthus —as its emblem, readily received sympathy and converts from the Orpheists, and that the solemn rite of eating the fish on appointed days, was established. Some of my readers will see on Christmas I>ay the Greek word for "a fish" stamped upon Prayer Books, or a fish embroidered on the hangings of tho church where they will go to celebrate tho birth of Christ, as their ancestors have done for a thousand years. I And now they will understand what iis to-day the perfectly harmless association of the sacred fish with Christian ornumont, derived from a lingering pagan reverence for the mysterious silvery inhabitants of deop pools, great rivers, and the sea. It is to such survivals of the now dim rituals and celebrations of ancient days that wo owe the joyful holly and the mystic mistletoe, still happily preserved in our festivities at Christmas and New Year.

Tho use of fish as a regular article of diet is very widely spread. Fresh fish is considered by medical men to bo more easily digested than tho flesh of beasts or birds, and a healthy substitute tor the latter. Almost everywhero where fish are eaten, the practice of drying and often salting fish, so as to store them for consumption after an abundant "catch," has grown up, and with it a great liking for tho flavours produced by the special chemical changes in tho fish. Ordinary putrefaction produces very powerful poisons in.the tieeh of fish.' They are known as "ptomaines," and are produced, in the flesh of fish more readily than in that of other animals. But the process of drying in tho sun or of salting and smoking the fish averts tho formation of these poisons. It seems, however, that a diet of dried fish is responsible for a certain kind of poisoning in man, which renders him liable to the attack of the terrible bacillus of leprosy. Tho leprosy bacillus must get into the body by an abrasion or crack in tho skin," through contact with a person already infected. The. substitution of fresh "meat nnd vegetables as a diet in place- of dried fish and salted meat has apparently been one- of the chief causes of the disappearance of leprosy from Europe; it is rapdily becoming extinct in Norway. It still survives in a few localities, and is comI mon In several uncivilised communities in remote regions, such as parts of [Africa, India, China, and tho Pacific ! Islands. A few marine fish are known which are highly poisonous to any and every man, even when cooked, and eaten in

a perfectly fresh condition, and there ore many* individuals who suffer from the "idiosyncrasy," as it is called, of liability to bo dangerously poisoned not only by tho peculiar and rare fish which are poisonous to everyone, but by any and every fish they may eat, or by two or three common kinds only. Thus, some persons arc poisoned if they ont lobster or crab, or oysters or mussels, but can tolerate ordinary fish. Others are poisoned, without fail, by mackerel and by grey mullet, but- not by solo or salmon. The symptoms reEembfonhose produced in ordinary persons by the "ptomaines" of putrid hsh, and seem to be due to the presence even in fresh fish of a kind of ptomaine which some persons cannot destroy by digestion, ■■whilst most persons can do so. It is literally true that "What is one man's meat is another man's lK)ison."

The uso as a f 'relish' , of tbo little fish, the anchovy—allied to the sprat «r.d tho herring—preserved in salt liquor in a partially decomposed stato, but not undergoing the ordinary chemical change excited by the bacteria of putrescence, is remarkablo and very widely spread. Anchovy sauce is made by mashing tip such chemically decomix)sed anchovies, and is one of the very createst and most approved of all sauces. The anchovy is a MediterraI nean fish ; it is taken in small numbers in sprat-nets in the English Channel and in the Dutch Zuyder Zee. Socalled "Norwegian anchovies" are., not anohovies, but are small sprats. "When taken fresh and cooked and eaten, tho anchovy has a very bitter, unpleasant flavour, which can bo washed out of it by splitting the fresh fish and letting it lie in salt and water. It was this ! practice of washing out tho bitterness • s'hioh led the Mediterranean fishor-folk to discover that if left for some time in moderately strong brine tho" anchovy develops a wonderfully appetising flavour, and becomes dark red in colour. 1 whilst the Hquid also oecoines red. I believe that it has not been ascertained whether the red colour is duo to n. direct action of the salt upon the bloodpisment of the- fish —as is the red colour of salt beef—or whether it is due to a special red-colonr-making bacterium, as is the case with salted dried cod, -which is sometimes rendered unsaleable by th:s red growth. However that may be, tho red colour of tho preserved anchovy is well known, and is produced by dealers, by means of artificial pigments, if not already naturally present in the salted fish as they come to market. Xo one would guess on tasting a really fresh bitter anchovy that .it could develop the fine flavour which it- does when soaked in brine to get rid of its bitterness.

Another little fish, the Bummaloh, or "Bombay duck" (Harpodon), is taken in large quantities off tho West Coast of India, and is dried and used for tho peculiar flavour thus developed, which is quite- di/Terent from that of the anchovy. It is a deep-water fish, and is phosphorescent. Tho liking for the flavours developed in these fishes by various bacteria when specially treated, is similar to that which necessity and custom has developed in our attitude to cheese. Fresh cheese is difficult to obtain. Habit has ended in our preferring stale, decomposed cheese, which has developed a whole scries of flavours by the action on it of special bacteria and moulds. The Roman soldiers of tho first century used a small salted'fish (probably enough the anchovy) to eat with their rations of bread, and such fish were usually sold with bread. Probably the small "fishes" which, together with a dozen loaves of bread, arc stated to have- been used in "the miraculous feeding of tho multitude by Christ, were salted anchovies.