Brewer's: Barnacle

The Solan goose. The strange tales of this creature have arisen from a tissue of blunders. The Latin pernacula is a “small limpet,” and bernacula (Portuguese, bernaca; French, barnache) is the Scotch

bren-clake or “Solan goose.” Both words being corrupted into “barnacle,” it was natural to look for an identity of nature in the two creatures, so it was given out that the goose was the offspring of the limpet. Gerard, in 1636, speaks of “broken pieces of old ships on which is found certain spume or froth, which in time breedeth into shells, and the fish which is hatched therefrom is in shape and habit like a bird.”

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