FROM THE MOUTH'S OF FISH
Young John Firth was imprisoned in a cellar in Oxford. Fish were stored in
cellar as well, fellow prisoners had actually died from terrible smell of
the fish. Before Firth was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1533, he
wrote a theological treatise.
One hundred years later in 1626, a Mr. Mead was walking through the public marketplace when he heard a loud commotion coming from a fishmongers stall. When he stopped to investigate he discovered a small crowd of people looking at a book the fishwife had rescued from the stomach of a large codfish.
Mr. Mead took charge of the book which had been wrapped in a sailcloth. The book was slimmy and dog-eared but still in good shape. When Mead opened the book to read it he soon found that it was the lost treatise of John Firth! The Cambridge authorities were so impressed with this unique discovery that they had the book reprinted under the title Vox Piscis ("the voice of fish") or, The Book Fish. The cover was embellished with a picture of the fish, the book, and the fishmongers knife.
Is this just a fish tale? Or a bad case of fish indigestion and one fishy Strange Coincidence
(John Mitchell and Robert J. M. Richard, Phenomena: A Book of Wonders, P.92)