Note 601 — Chapter XVII
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Contrast with the Greeks and Romans the abstention from the Murænidæ by the Egyptians, Jews, Mussulmans, and Highlanders; in the case of the last, however, the abstention was due to no religious injunction but to physical loathing.
Fuller on the derivation of the Isle of Ely is too quaint to omit: “When the priests of this part of the country would still retain their wives in spite of what Pope and monks could do to the contrary, their wives and children were miraculously turned into eels, whence it had the name of Ely. I consider it a lie.” That Ely is derived from the abundance of Eels taken there has the ancient authority of Liber Eliensis (II. 53). J. B. Johnston, The Place-Names of England and Wales (London, 1915), p. 250, takes Ely to mean the “eel-island.” He adds, however, that Skeat regarded Elge, Bede’s spelling of the name, as “eel-region,” the second element in the compound, ge, being a very rare and early Old English word for “district” (cf. German, Gau). Isaac Taylor, Names and Histories (London, 1896), s.v. Ely, states that rents were there paid in Eels.