No more than a few months have elapsed since the greatest Greek scholar
of the day, the Reverend Doctor Gaisford, late Dean of Christchurch,
Oxford, was carried to his last resting-place within the walls of
the ancient cathedral over which he had presided so many years. The
students of the house, clad in white surplices, preceded the remains
of their venerated Dean as the procession passed along the east side
of the quadrangle, from the deanery to the cathedral. Great Tom had,
by tolling every minute (a thing never done except at the death of
the sovereign or the dean), announced the decease; and now a small
land-bell, carried in front of the procession by the dean’s verger, and
tolled every half-minute, announced that the last rites were about to
take place.
The cathedral clock struck four; the usual merry peal of bells for
evening prayers was silent. We strolled towards the cathedral, and
finding a side-door open, walked in. The dull, harsh, and grating
sound of the workmen filling up the grave struck heavily on our ears,
as it resounded through the body of the church. The mourners were all
gone; and alone, at the head of the grave, watching vacantly the busy
labourers, stood the white-headed old verger; another hour, the ground
would be all levelled, and the stones replaced over the master he had
served faithfully so many years.
The verger informed us that the ground now opened had not been moved
for two hundred years, and that a dean had not been buried within the
precincts of the church for nearly one hundred years. Bearing these
facts in mind, we poked about among the earth which had been thrown out
of the grave. We found among the brick-bats and rubbish a few broken
portions of human bones, which had evidently been buried very many
years; but fastened on to one of the brick-bats we discovered a little
bone which we at once pronounced not to be human. It was a little round
bone, about the size of a large shirt-stud, from the centre of which
projected a longish, tooth-like spine, the end of which still remained
as sharp as a needle, and the enamel which covered it still resisted a
scratch from a knife. The actual body of the bone was very light and
brittle, and a simple test we applied showed that it had been under
ground very many years.
The question arose, what was our bone, and how did it get to the place
where it was found? It was shown to the greatest authority we have in
comparative anatomy, and he immediately pronounced it to be a spine
from the back of a very large fish, commonly known as the skate or
thornback. This creature has, fixed into the skin of his back in a row
along the back of his tail, many very sharp prickles of a tooth-like
character, and covered with enamel, just like our specimen. If one of
these skin-teeth be cut out from a recent fish, the stud-like knob of
bone into which the spine is fixed, will be found, serving to keep this
formidable weapon (for such it is) in its proper position; and dreadful
blows can Mr. Thornback give with his armed tail in his battles, be
they submarine, or be they in the fisherman’s boat.
How did the spine of a thornback get into Christchurch Cathedral, into
ground that had not been moved for two hundred years? Before the days
of Henry the Eighth the precincts, where the college now stands, were
occupied by monkish buildings, where monks had many fast-days, and,
on these days, were probably great consumers of fish. The supply of
fresh-water fish, from the Thames close by, would hardly be equal to
the demand. It is therefore probable that they procured salt-water
fish, and a thornback is, above all fish, the most likely to have been
supplied by the fishmonger.
In an old book on fishes and serpents, we found, unexpectedly, evidence
to prove that the skate--a hundred years ago--formed a favourite dish
at the high tables of the colleges. The book was published in seventeen
hundred and sixty-three, and the passage runs thus: “The skate, or
flaire, is remarkably large, and will sometimes weigh above one hundred
pounds; but what is still more extraordinary, there was one sold by
a fishmonger at Cambridge to St. John’s College, which weighed two
hundred pounds, and dined one hundred and twenty people. The length was
forty-two inches, and the breadth thirty-one inches.”
The monkish cook--like a cook of the present day--would, probably,
skin and cut off the tail of the thornback, when he cooked him for the
monks’ dinner, and then he would probably throw both skin and tail,
spines and all, into the rubbish-hole outside the kitchen; there they
would remain till removed. And, next, when did this removal take place?
A curious book--Collectanea Curiosa--published at Oxford in seventeen
hundred and eighty-one, tells us. In this book there is an article
entitled, “Out of the journal book of the expences of all the buildings
of Christ Church College, Oxon, which I had of Mr. Pore, of Blechinton.”
The second item runs thus: “Spent about the femerell of the new kitchen
and sundry gutters pertaining to the same, xviijs. viijd.”
Further on we find, “Paid to Thomas Hewister, for carriage of earth and
rubble from the fayre gate, and the new stepull to fill the ditches,
on the backside of the college, clvj. loads, at a peny the load by
computation, xiijs.”
Again: “Paid to Mr. David Griffith, Priest, for his stipend for wages,
as well for keeping of the monastery of St. Frideswide, and saying
of Divine service after the suppression of the same unto the first
stalling of the dean and canons in the said college, as for his labours
in overseeing the workmen dayly labouring there in all by the space of
thirteen months, vij £.”
From this evidence it will appear that for a considerable space of time
(probably about five years) many alterations were made, and much earth
removed from place to place. The cathedral, and, in fact, nearly all
the quadrangle--as will appear by comparing their levels with that of
the street outside--stand upon made ground. It is probable, therefore,
that some of the earth from outside the monkish kitchen, or other
rubbish hole, was carted to form the floor of the cathedral, and with
it, of course, any rubbish that happened to be there.
This, then, was the fate of our thornback’s spine. The thornback was
eaten by the monks of St. Frideswide, the spine thrown away, unheeded,
unregarded, to be disinterred, after the lapse of more than three
hundred years, at the funeral of a college dean, and finally to be
honoured by having its history recorded in Household Words.