h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Journal of Thomas Dinely, 1861.

Dinely is an Englishman who was travelling in Ireland.

The guy who edited this journal is just downright cruel. After a passage where Dinely describes a lake overflowing with enormous fish, especially trout, it simply says:

[Here follows a statement about the fish called Sargus, which is unfit to print.]

COME ON! You can't just leave us hanging like that.

Now I'm going to have to spend hours finding out what's so filthy and obscene about the 17th Century Sargus fish.

My mind is boggling. Let us know if you find out.

Ahem. It's worse than I thought. The poet Du Bartas might shed some light on what Dinely's censored words are:

"The Adulterous Sargus doth not only change,
Wives every day in the deep streams, but (strange)
As if the honey of Sea-love delight
Could not suffice his ranging appetite,
Goes courting She-Goats on the grassie shore,
Horning their husbands that had horns before."

Emmmm...

(Still no idea what Dinely said, but it's a fair guess he was thinking along Du Bartas's wavelength!)

When was it edited? In other words, what would have been the morals of the time?

1867 - so well into the era of prudishness, I suppose. But then, fish climbing out of lakes to copulate with goats would raise a few eyebrows even today...

(That was a typo in the first post, by the way. When I said "1861" it should of course have been "1681", hence "17th Century" )