The overfishing of the seas by these huge factory ships and the decline in many of the species we all know must lead to the emergence, in some instances, of less well-known creatures from the depths in our shops. All edible, no doubt, but not easy on the eye. Some of these the French recommend rather for making soup or bouillabaisse. A shortage of our more regular fish leads also, of course, to the farming of them, including even the elusive (in Ireland anyway) char.
But one fish, which swims in salt and fresh water, known and eaten in France, is never seen in Irish shops and indeed one woman who has been buying for a big firm here said she had never even heard of it. It is the lamprey. The writer has eaten them in Bordeaux, cooked, he recalls, in a red wine sauce. Nothing to remember in particular, though the other diner said she thought it was fatty and didn't like it. It is an eel-like creature of disgusting habits, some may think, for it has a circular mouth with teeth and clamps itself to a suitable fish and sucks its blood until, in many cases, the host fish dies. You may remember that, in Salar the Salmon by Henry Williamson, a lamprey attaches itself to Salar, who cannot shake or scrape it off. The salmon is finally saved when a hag-fish, one of the same family as the lamprey, seizes it and actually eats its way into the lamprey.
But cannibalism in fish is nothing strange. The trout angler proudly bringing a fish to the bank and knocking its head on a stone to give it a quick death may be surprised to find a smaller trout pop out of the mouth of his prize catch, the skin of the victim already dissolving. Mrs Beeton gives the lamprey short shrift. "With the Romans," she says, "the fish occupied a respectable rank among the piscine tribes, and in Britain it has at various periods stood high in public favour. It was the cause of the death of Henry 1st of England, who ate so much of them, that it brought on an attack of indigestion, which carried him off." History books used to write of him dying of "a surfeit of lampreys".
She tells us that it is most in season in March, April and May and ends: "but it is by some regarded as an unwholesome food, although looked on by others as a great delicacy. Her cooking advice is brief: "Lampreys are dressed as eels." Cooked, that is.