Hello! Today I am returning to the Cheshire Sheaf with two more items on marine strandings, which seem to have caused just as much amazement hundreds of years ago as they do today.
The first report, chronologically speaking, comes from 1357:
A Porpoise or Grampus?
When, in the summer of 1357, a porpoise was captured at Kirkby Wallasey, on the foreshore of William de Bechynton and Richard Sampson, they sold it for £8 and divided the money. But the authorities then suggested that it was not a porpoise, but a grampus and as whales and the like were royal fish, it was claimed for the Earl of Chester. In spite of the fact that two juries found it was in truth a porpoise, a fine was enforced upon the lords of the soil. Representations to the Earl led to William de Bechynton being let off because he had done good service at the battle of Poitiers. How Sampson fared is not related. (“Black Prince`s Reg., iii, 250.) T.L.O.W. (1)
The Herring-Hog in Wirral
In a copy now in the Buxton Public Library, of Dr Charles Leigh`s Natural History of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the Peak published in 1700, (2) there is a contemporary manuscript note reading: the author has omitted (in his Chapter of Fishes) an Acct of the Herring-Hogg which was found upon the Shore near Wirehall by Sr John Bridgeman, Chief Justice of Cheshire, as he was rideing his Lent-Circuit in the year 1636. It was 20 yards and a foot in Length, and 5 yards high. The Lower Jaw-bone was 5 yards high. The Lower Jaw-bone was 5 yards long &c. It was heard to cry six or seven miles before they slew it; and so hideously that none durst come near it. &c., &c. Tho. Jefferson`s MS sub fin'
The herring hog is a grampus, but the grampus does not usually grow to 60 feet in length. ERNEST AXON (3)
The Cheshire Sheaf vol 32 August 1937 p.71
There is a copy of this book in the Local Studies Library in Macclesfield which I have been looking at today.
3 Cheshire Sheaf op. cit .vol 33 August 1938 p.72
Hot Chocolate Emma
We were together since we were five
Emma was so pretty she was a star in everyone`s eyes.
And when she said she`d be a movie queen
Nobody laughed
A face like an angel
She could be anything
Emmaline, Emma, Emmaline
I`m gonna write your name high on that silver screen
Emmaline, Emma, Emmaline,
I`m gonna make you the biggest star this world has ever seen
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