The stout yeoman and (among others) the father-lasher and the coney-fish

A History of British Fishes, by William Yarrell; the third edition, edited by Sir John Richardson. 2 vols, 1859.

Mr Yarrell having died in 1856, this edition includes a memoir of him, in which he is described thus: "His aspect was that of a stout yeoman ... his mild but fearless eye, and his open forehead, showed, even to a stranger, a man at peace with himself and with his fellow men." His portrait does indeed show a man with an open countenance, and an intent gaze, as if he is considering what the species and characteristics of the portrait-maker might be. He was a great collector and student of natural history specimens, and his History of British Fishes was first published serially in 1835-36; according to the Oxford DNB, in this work "he paid particular attention to species that were a source of food, and he would often eat the specimens he collected to test whether they might be added to those known to be fit for the table." He also seems to have been a careful collector of vernacular fish-names -- my eye was caught by the long-spined sea bullhead, also known as the father-lasher, rock dolphin or lucky proach; the ocellated blenny, or butterfly fish; the great pipe-fish or needle-fish, known in Scotland as the tangle-fish; the twaite-shad; and the burbot or eelpout, "sometimes called the Coney-fish, from its habit of lurking and hiding itself in holes like a rabbit."

A linguistic pioneer

In a series of reprints of French historical documents comes L'éclaircissement de la langue française, by Jean Palsgrave, published in Paris in 1852. That's interesting, I thought - a Frenchman with what looks like an English surname. Then I came to a facsimile of the title page of the original (published in 1530), where he is described as "maistre Jehan Palsgraue Angloys natyf de Londres" and to the main text, which is in English (albeit Tudor English - "The true soundynge of the french tonge resteth in gyvyng to every frenche worde by hymselfe his naturall frenche sounde, and in soundynge frenche wordes, as they come to gether in sentences, lyke as the frenchmen use to do" - and some of it somewhat technical - "In the thyrde accident, that is to say, circumlocutynge of the preter tenses they differ moche from verbes actives"). So I looked up Palsgrave in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and found John Palsgrave, died 1554 - an interesting man, who was tutor to Henry VIII's sister Mary prior to her marriage to King Louis XII of France, and later to Henry's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond. His great work on the French language was a pioneering endeavour to enable speakers of English to converse fluently in French as it was spoken at the time, which he did by means of in-depth linguistic analysis of the vernacular of both languages, making him a fascinating source for the history of both languages.