In 1435, Aeneas Silvius Bartholomeus, travelled to Scotland to encourage James I of Scotland to assist the French in the “Hundred Years War”. He spent several months travelling around Britain. and recorded these travels in his book entitled "de Europa". A short section of the book is devoted to Scotland and Ireland. He described James as “ … a sickly man weighed down by a fat punch..”. He noted the cold inhospitable climate of Scotland and “ .. semi-naked paupers who were begging outside churches went away happily after receiving stones as alms…”. Continuing in this vein, he records the following story: " …I … heard that in Scotland there was once a tree growing on the bank of a river which produced fruits shaped like ducks. "When these were nearly ripe, they dropped down of their own accord, some onto the earth, and some into the water. Those that landed on the earth rotted away, but those that sank into the water instantly came to life, swam out from below the water, and immediately flew into the air, equipped with feathers and wings. When I eagerly investigated this matter, I learned that miracles always recede further into the distance and that the famous tree was to be found not in Scotland but in the Orkney islands…" It is believed that this story from Pope Pius II is the first recorded account of the Barnacle Geese myth in Scotland.
Some 75 years later, Hector Boece in his "Scotorum Historiae a Prima Gentis Origine" gave further credence to this story with an account of a discussion he had with his friend and colleague Canon Alexander Gallowayon an island in what is now called the Western Isles. The event, if it occurred, was sometime between c.1506x1520. Boece allows Galloway in the narrative to give two contrasting accounts of the geese story. Boece records:
" …. It remains for me to discuss those geese commonly called clacks, which are commonly but wrongly imagined to be born on trees in these islands, on the basis of what I have learned from my diligent investigation of this thing. ….. I will not hesitate to describe something I myself witnessed seven years ago… Alexander Galloway, parson of Kinkell, who, besides being a man of outstanding probity, is possessed of an unmatched zeal for studying wonders… When he was pulling up some driftwood and saw that seashells were clinging to it from one end to the other, he was surprised by the unusual nature of the thing, and, out of a zeal to understand it, opened them up, whereupon he was more amazed than ever, for within them he discovered, not sea creatures, but rather birds, of a size similar to the shells that contained them …. small shells contained birds of a proportionately small size….. So, he quickly ran to me, whom he knew to be gripped with a great curiosity for investigating suchlike matters and revealed the entire thing to me…..”
The Claik or Clack Geese as they were known to Boece survived scrutiny during the Scottish Enlightenment. The age of the myth and the lack of empirical evidence on Bird migration led to several other accounts of the origins of Barnacle Geese being common until the 20th century.
