I watched Heston Blumental’s “Feasts” series recently and was surprised to learn that the lamprey fish is still being caught and eaten in fair sized quantities by Latvians. The lamprey was an ‘olde English’ delicacy though given it is an ugly sucker mouthed eel like fish it is hard to see why. Latvians seem to eat it washed down with fruit brandy in large quantities. Henry I of England died in 1135 from blood poisoning after eating too many lampreys. Henry I also had 20 acknowledged illegitimate children and was buried at Reading Abbey so perhaps he had it coming to him.
Pre Heston all I knew about lampreys that the collective noun for a group of lampreys was a ‘surfeit’ (because of poor Henry I) and the title of a detective novel by Kiwi Ngaio Marsh. Marsh wrote 32 detective novels between 1934 and 1982 and ‘A Surfeit of Lampreys’ was published in 1941. Sadly I have read none of them although I have the SofL somewhere at home in its original Penguin detective ‘green’.
Still it started me thinking about collective nouns and not the usual flock (sheep), herd (cows) or school (fish) nor even a pride (lions), murder (crows) or mob (kangaroos) but the really obscure, funny or made up collective nouns.
Here’s a small sample:
A pitying of doves
A band of jays
A plump of moorhen
A parliament of owls
A company of parrots
An unkindness of ravens
A host of sparrows
A cloud of bats
A coalition of cheetahs
A skulk of foxes
A leash of greyhounds
A bloat of hippopotami
A fall of lambs
A richesse of pine martens
A prickle of porcupines or echidnas
A sneak of weasels
A stuck of jellyfish
A glide of flying fish
An army of frogs
A shrivel of critics
A body of pathologists
A palette of artists
A box of cricketers
A break of winds
A jam of tarts
A shower of meteorologists
A harvest of farmers
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