The New Murrey and Blue blog

If there’s one thing that I loathe, it’s wriggling, wormy, serpentine creatures. Worst of all, I’m ashamed to say, is the humble garden worm. Ugh! I don’t harm them, I simply avoid them. Eels are on my list as well, especially when they used to writhe and slither up the little streams and ditches (as in the illustration above) near my first married home in the village of Hardwicke, just south of Gloucester. They were like large snakes and had come in from the nearby Gloucester & Sharpness canal, which in turn allowed them access from the Severn and its estuary! As for their apparently delicious and hugely sought-after young, elvers…. No! In the season, my next door neighbour used to catch the latter and bring them home in buckets…ghostly little things with tiny eyes. And he’d cook and EAT them? 😨

So, imagine my discomfort on reading this article 

It begins: “….In early medieval England, people paid their rents with all manner of things. One particularly bizarre item was prized by landlords: eels. John Wyatt Greenlee considers why the fish was the perfect form of payment….”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the point where I leave you to read on about our medieval ancestors’ ways of doing things….