CHAPTER 90
Heads or Tails
"De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam." BRACTON, L. 3, C. 3.
Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along withthe context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coastof that land, the King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must havethe head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail.A division which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there isno intermediate remainder. Now as this law, under a modified form,is to this day in force in England; and as it offers in various respectsa strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast--and Loose-Fish,it is here treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteousprinciple that prompts the English railways to be at the expense of aseparate car, specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty.In the first place, in curious proof of the fact that the above-mentionedlaw is still in force, I proceed to lay before you a circumstance-thathappened within the last two years.
It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich,or some one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeededin killing and beaching a fine whale which they had originallydescried afar off from the shore. Now the Cinque Ports arepartially or somehow under the jurisdiction of a sort of policemanor beadle, called a Lord Warden. Holding the office directlyfrom the crown, I believe, all the royal emoluments incidentto the Cinque Port territories become by assignment his.By some writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so.Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbinghis perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that samefobbing of them.
Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and with theirtrowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauledtheir fat fish high and dry, promising themselves a good 150 poundsfrom the precious oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare teawith their wives, and good ale with their cronies, upon the strengthof their respective shares; up steps a very learned and most Christianand charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his arm;and laying it upon the whale's head, he says--"Hands off! this fish,my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord Warden's." Upon thisthe poor mariners in their respectful consternation--so truly English--knowing not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching their headsall round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the stranger.But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften the hard heartof the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone. At length oneof them, after long scratching about for his ideas, made bold to speak,
"Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?"
"The Duke."
"But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?"
"It is his."
"We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense,and is all that to go to the Duke's benefit; we getting nothingat all for our pains but our blisters?"
"It is his."
"Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate modeof getting a livelihood?"
"It is his."
"I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my shareof this whale."
"It is his."
"Won't the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?"
"It is his."
In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke ofWellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particularlights, the case might by a bare possibility in some small degreebe deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergymanof the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging himto take the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration.To which my Lord Duke in substance replied (both letters were published)that he had already done so, and received the money, and would be obligedto the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend gentleman)would decline meddling with other people's business. Is this the stillmilitant old man, standing at the corners of the three kingdoms,on all hands coercing alms of beggars?
It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duketo the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needsinquire then on what principle the Sovereign is originally investedwith that right. The law itself has already been set forth.But Plowdon gives us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caughtbelongs to the King and Queen, "because of its superior excellence."And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogentargument in such matters.
But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail?A reason for that, ye lawyers!
In his treatise on "Queen-Gold," or Queen-pin-money, an oldKing's Bench author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth:"Ye tail is ye Queen's, that ye Queen's wardrobe may be suppliedwith ye whalebone." Now this was written at a time when the blacklimber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely usedin ladies' bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail;it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyerlike Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail?An allegorical meaning may lurk here.
There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers--the whale and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations,and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's ordinary revenue.I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter;but by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be dividedin the same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly denseand elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded,may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality.And thus there seems a reason in all things, even in law.
Moby Dick; Or, The Whale Page 90