KNOT

This article appears in Volume V15, Page 871 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: KHA-KRI

KNOT , a Limicoline bird very abundant at certain seasons on the shores of Britain and many countries of the northern hemisphere. Camden in the edition of his Britannia published in 1607 (p. 408) inserted a passage not found in the earlier issues of that

work

WORK

, connecting the name with that of King Canute, and this account of its origin has been usually received. But no other evidence in its favour is forthcoming, and Camden's statement is merely the expression of an

opinion

OPINION (Lat. opinio, from opinari, to think)

,' so that there is perhaps ground for believing him to have been mistaken, and that the clue afforded by Sir

Thomas

Browne, who (c. 1672) wrote the name " Gnatts or Knots," may be the true one.2 Still the statement was so determinedly repeated by successive authors that Linnaeus followed them in calling the species Tringa canutus, ' His words are simply " Knolls, i. Canuti aues, vt opinor e Dania enim aduolare creduntur." In the margin the name is spelt " Cnotts," and he possibly thought it had to do with a well-known story of that king. Knots undoubtedly frequent the sea-shore, where Canute is said on one occasion to have taken up his station, but they generally retreat, and that nimbly, before the advancing surf, which he is said in the story not to have done.
2 In this connexion we may compare the French maringouin, ordinarily a gnat or mosquito, but also, among the French Creoles of America, a small shore-bird, either a Tringa or an Aegialitis, according to Descourtilz (Voyage, ii. 249). See also Littre's Dictionnaire, s.v.
' There are few of the Limicolae, to which group the knot belongs, that present greater changes of plumage according to age or season, and hence before these phases were understood the species became encumbered with many synonyms, as Tringa cinerea, ferruginea, grisea, islandica, naevia and so forth. The confusion thus caused was mainly cleared away by Montagu and Temminck.
The Tringa canutus of Payer's expedition seems more likely to have been T. maritima, which species is not named among the birds of Franz Josef Land, though it can hardly fail to occur there.esteemed a great delicacy, as witness the entries in the Northumberland and Le Strange Household Books; and the British Museum contains an old treatise on the subject:" The maner of kepyng of knotts, after Sir William Askew and my Lady, given to my Lord Darcy, 25 Hen. VIII." (MSS. Sloane, 1592, 8 cat. 663). (A. N.)

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