mere-strǣt, f.n: the road which the sea furnishes; literally, ‘mere-street’, the sea.

Note (2020-03-04): Thanks, Saibot, for identifying the image!
Note (2015-06-07): Helen Anderson notes the resemblance of these fish to the Saint-Pierre fish in her comment below. Here’s an image of one, which comes from an interesting blog post about it from Behind the French Menu.

The fish are very distinctive, they look like John Dory, aka St. Pierre fish; they have a big spot on the side which is supposedly St. Peter’s thumbprint when he blessed them. Only thing is, they are a saltwater fish and St Peter was, we assume, a freshwater lake fisherman, but such details have never bothered anyone! I wonder if it’s a confusion of the two stories, unless that’s St Peter blessing them.
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I just googled them and they do look quite similar–very interesting! I wonder why they are in the sky rather than the water. Is that just a miraculous side effect of the blessing?
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Hopefully, the following link works: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Codex_Egberti#/media/File:CodexEgberti-Fol024r-CalmingAStorm.jpg
On Wikipedia, you will find a short article about the Codex Egberti:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Egberti
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Thank you so much — five years later and I can finally update the image with the correct info!
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