PART II

“Except to politicians, a decent definition is a help and a delight.”

Acting on this American dictum I start with two definitions, one of Fishing and Angling, the other of Angling. The first we owe to that past master of the art, Plato. Whether it come within the category of “delight or help,” or whether he can endorse the verdict of Theætetus as to its “satisfactory conclusion,” each reader must decide.

Plato, using the method of elimination and incidentally more than three pages of print, eventually arrives at the following definition of Fishing and Angling:[82] “Then, now you and I have come to an understanding, not only about the name of the Angler’s art, but about the definition of the thing itself. One half of all Art was acquisitive: one half of the acquisitive Art was conquest or taking by force: half of this again was hunting, and half of hunting was hunting animals: of this again the under half was fishing, and half of fishing was striking: a part of striking was fishing with a barb, and one half of this again (being the kind which strikes with a hook and draws the fish from below upwards) is the Art we have been seeking, and which from the nature of the operation is denoted Angling or drawing up.”

_Theætetus:_ “The result has been quite satisfactorily brought out.”

In search of a more helpful definition I turn to the English Dictionaries. The _N.E.D._ (_New English Dictionary_, Oxford) gives Fishing—“to catch, or try to catch fish”—wide enough for all our purpose and for most of our performances! In their definitions of Angling, Angle, etc., the majority of dictionaries disagree, but unite in deriving Angle from the Aryan root, ANK = to bend, and establishing the fishing term as the cousin of the awkward angles of Euclid and of our youth. The _N.E.D._ in its definitions of ‘Angle’ (sb.), of ‘Angle’ (vb.), of ‘Angler,’ or of ‘Angling,’ does not even agree with itself.

Thus we find:

(A) “Angle (sb.), a fish hook: often in later use extended to the line, or tackle, to which it is fastened, and the Rod to which this is attached. See Book of St. Alban’s (title of ed. 2), _Treatyse perteynynge_ to _Hawkynge, Huntynge, and Fysshynge with an Angle_.”

(B) “Angle (vb.), to use an angle: to fish with a hook _and bait_.”

(C) “Angler, one who fishes with a hook and _line_.”

(D) “Angling, the action or art of fishing with a _rod_.”[83]

If A, B, C, which all differ, are accurate, D can hardly be so. Further from A, B, C, we can deduce no correct definition of D.

Under D the _N.E.D._ imports as a necessary component part of angling the presence of a rod, but I venture to think on insufficient grounds. In the first quotation cited in support, “Fysshynge, callyd Anglynge with a rodde,” the word “rodde,” if D hold good, must be redundant or unnecessary. “Rodde” I hold to be an added word of limitation, or description, as in “Fysshynge with an _Angle_.”

But since the dictionaries do hardly help—to some, indeed, they smack of “the heinous crime of word-splitting”—and since the importance (apart from etymological reasons) of possessing an accurate and adequate definition presses, let us prostrate ourselves before another oracle, the Law. But here too success scarcely crowns our quest. The leading case, _Barnard_ v. _Roberts and Williams_, yields, Delphic-like, little light or leading.[84]

The facts, briefly stated, were: Roberts and Williams laid in a private river two fishing lines; one end of the lines attached to two pieces of wood driven into the ground made fast the lines, the other end held hooks baited with worms, and a stone to keep the lines under water. “The lines were left by the men, who subsequently were found taking two fish off the hooks, and resetting the lines, of which the keepers deprived them. The charge (under s. 24 of the Larceny Act of 1861) ran of unlawfully, etc., taking fish otherwise than by angling. The Justices of Bangor refused to commit, on the ground that they were angling, and thus under the Act were protected from damages or penalty for such angling.”

On appeal both sides cited Izaak Walton and other authors; both quoted the _N.E.D._—the appellant its definition of ‘Angling,’ _i.e._ fishing with a rod, and the respondent that of ‘Angle’ (vb.), _i.e._ to fish with hook and bait.

The three Judges, judge-like, disagreed in their reasons but agreed in allowing the appeal, and disagreeing in their conceptions of angling agreed in abstaining from any definition.

“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed is king.” Mr. Justice Phillimore was the least non-positive. He even committed himself to the following: “He did not think that a rod must necessarily be part of an angler’s outfit, but only a hook and line. He thought _the human element_ must be present, and that it was not sufficient when the tackle was set once and for all, and then left.”

It is obvious from the above that, while the dictionaries are but blind guides, the Law (if on this occasion not exactly “a hass”) fails to elucidate what exactly constitutes Angling.

Dr. Henry van Dyke, the author of _Little Rivers_ and other fascinating books connected with fishing, suggests to me “Angling, the art of fishing by hand with a hook and line, with or without a rod.” I much prefer this to that of _N.E.D._, because of its greater accuracy and of its inclusion of that really skilful method, hand-lining. But for general convenience I adopt as the definition of Angling “_The action, or art, of fishing with a Rod._”

_My Fishing from the Earliest Times_ treats of the Old Stone Men, Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, Jews, Greeks, and Romans. The amount of space allotted to the last two, compared with that occupied by some of the other nations, may suggest the immortal even if apocryphal chapter of “_Snakes in Ireland_.” “There are none.”

To any such criticisms I make answer that for nearly all our knowledge as to the methods and tackle of fishing and varieties of fish we are indebted to the Greeks and Romans, and in a smaller degree to the Egyptians and Chinese.

Reasons of date, data, and dearth of paper prevent my using in this book the material which I had collected on Indian, Persian, and Japanese Fishing.

As regards India, while fishing by net falls well within my adopted date (500 A.D.), that by hook and line—not necessarily Angling—gains entrance by a short head, or a mere century.

Fish (_matsya_, apparently derived from the root _mad_ and signifying _the inebriated_) is down to _c._ 1000 B.C. only mentioned once[85] in the _Rigveda_, X. 68, 8. In the next period—that of the later Vedas and Brāhmanas—fish, but not methods of capture, find frequent mention.

The Net (_jāla_) is first referred to in the _Atharvaveda_ (not later than 800 B.C.) but not in connection with fishing, while in the _Yajurveda_ (_c._ 800 B.C.) names for fishermen and a hook—_baḍiša_—occur. The 139th _Jātaka_ (_c._ 400 A.D.) contains the first allusion to fishing with a _line_ and hook.

References in Sanskrit poetry to the iron hook and bait probably imply, though they fail to mention, the Rod. Passages in the epic _Mahābhārata_, V. 1106 (_c._ 200 A.D.), in Kāmandaki’s aphoristic poetry (_c._ 300-400 A.D.), in the _Pancatantra_, I. 208, “when women see a man caught in the bonds of love, they draw him like a fish that has followed the bait,” all suggest Angling.[86]

Fish legends, similes, stories—not always redounding to ichthyic wisdom—meet us fairly frequently. Manu[87] is saved from the Flood by a fish. Buddha[88] answers questions as to abstention from fish. Wondrous fish occur: _e.g._ the _Kar_, “which knows to the scratch of a needle’s point by how much the water in the Ocean shall increase, by how much it is diminishing.”[89]

Stories, such as the recovery by a fish of Šakuntalā’s ring and the consequent marriage of King Dushyanta; of Indra, the fearless slayer of the serpent, whose death for defiling the bed of Ahalyâ was compassed by fish;[90] of Adrikâ’s transformation into a fish and her conception in that form of a child by King Uparicaras;[91] of _The Stupid and Two Clever Fishes_;[92] of _The Frog and The Two Fish_,[93] all these make pleasant if varied reading. But when we come to _methods_ of fishing, all variety vanishes. We are confronted with a damnable monotony, a _toujours perdrix_. It is almost Net, or Nothing.

This holds true of the piscine tales even in the _Arabian Nights_, _e.g._ _The Fisherman and the Jinn_, and _The Fisherman and the ’Efreet_. The latter, however, possesses an unique interest: the fisherman here, unlike his Greek and Roman poverty-stricken brethren, became by means of his miraculous fish, “the wealthiest of the people of his age, and his daughters continued to be the wives of princes”!

Evidence that fishing in India was of old and is now (the fishing caste, I am told, ranks low) not highly regarded can be deduced (_inter alia_) from its total omission in the Fourteen Sciences and the Sixty-four Arts, which the _Vātsyặyana Kāma Sūtra_ (not later than the third century A.D.) promulgates for the education of children from five to sixteen. Among the requisite Sciences gymnastics, dancing, the playing of musical glasses, sword-stick, cock quail and ram fighting, teaching parrots and starlings to sing, all these find commendation, but fishing none!

As with India, so with Persia ancient and modern, _toujours le filet_! Very many of the earliest prose works in modern Persian came through the Pahlavi from the Sanskrit. Thus the three or four stories—occasionally but wrongly regarded as of Persian origin—about fish and fishing which are contained in the _Anwār-i-Suhaili_[94] can be traced to _The Fables of Bidpai_, or _The Pancatantra_,[95] translated from the Arabic version into Persian about 550 A.D.

In modern Persian (_c._ 1000 A.D.) poetry, lines allusive to fishing dot themselves sparsely:[96] even in them the Net bulks biggest. Hafiz (fourteenth century), however, gives us

“I have fallen into a Sea of Troubles, (presumably tears), So that my Beloved may catch me with a Hook” (a curl of hair).

A passage in Arabic furnished hope of finding Angling oases in the desert, but when in

“A fish whose jaw the gaff of Death had pierced,”

I found the word (_saffūd_) rendered _gaff_ given by Richardson’s _Persian-Arabic Dictionary_ as “a roasting spit, a poker for the fire,” my hope fled, for I quickly realised here an instance of anachronistic translation, or the employment of fishing terms appropriate to modern but inapplicable to ancient methods.[97]

I have come to the sad conclusion that the Persians ancient and modern care not in general for fishing or angling, although the Gulf, from which the ancient Sumerians garnered such splendid “harvest of the sea,” washes their shores, and from their mountains descend “fishful” streams. I have reached my conclusion for the following reasons:—

(A) There is no word in the language which properly expresses _fish_-hook. Arabic words, which strictly mean _grappling_ hooks, have been adopted or adapted. In modern Arabic itself these words are not used for a _fish-hook_: bâlûgh, a foreign term, prevails.

(B) In Persian, Arabic, and Turkish[98] the expression _to fish_, literally translated, equals _to hunt fish_, and generally describes a man who makes his living by _netting_, and selling fish.

(C) There is no word for fishing-rod in Wollaston’s great English-Persian Dictionary.

(D) Proverbs are usually the offspring and embodiment of the life and occupations of a nation. In both ancient and modern Persian there is, as far as I know, but one proverb—and that rather contemptful—allusive to fish or fishing. It runs, “Thou shall not make a fish thine enemy,” which probably signifies that no foe, however unlikely to injure, can be despised.

(E) In the experiences related to me by the Rev. Dr. St. Clair Tisdall, and by the late Sir Frank Lascelles, Netting ousts Angling.

The former:[99] “’Though I have lived in Persia for many years and have travelled through it from Sea to Sea, from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian, I have never seen a fish-hook in a Persian’s hands. In the districts I know best, the Net is the only weapon.”

The second, when our Minister at Teheran, on his first holiday went a-fishing. Having caught on a likely stream before supper three or four half-pound trout (I think), he anticipated next day pleasant sport. With the very early morning came not Remorse, but the local Sheikh to do his reverence and to make the customary present. “As I have heard that His Great Excellency worked hard for a few fish last night, my tribesmen have netted the river for the length of a parasang, and I bring you plenty of fish.” Tableau! Hasty flight of Sir Frank to another river, with like results!

Reasons both of date and data prevent my including the Japanese, perhaps the most alert and adaptive sea-fishers in the world. As their history before 500 A.D. must apparently be classed as legendary, this nation eludes my chronological Net. Data on ancient fishing, if existing, are either unknown[100] or as being derived from China find place _postea_.[101]

I set the time limit of my book at roughly 500 A.D., so as to include the last classical or quasi-classical piscatory poems _viz._ those of Ausonius—notably _ad Mosellam_—in the fourth and of Sidonius in the fifth century.

This date seems, indeed, a pre-ordained halting-place for three reasons. First, the tackle of our day (though improved almost beyond recognition in rod, winch, artificial bait, etc.) is merely the lineal descendant of the Macedonian described by Ælian in the third century A.D. Second, between Ælian and Dame Juliana’s _Boke_ no record, with two possible exceptions, of fishing with a fly exists. Third, and more important, we possess no real continuous link between the Angling literature of Rome down to the fifth century and that which sprang up after the invention of printing some thousand years later.

In the intervening centuries, it is true, books and manuscripts were written (mainly by monks) which treated more or less of fishing, but of Angling only incidentally.[102] They illustrate the customs of fishermen, the natural history of fish, the making and maintaining of _vivaria_ or fish-ponds, rather than instruct or inform on practical Fishing.

The most notable would, could we trace it, be “an old MS. treatise on fishing, found among the remains of the valuable library belonging to the Abbey of St. Bertin, at St. Omer. A paper on this was read, a few years before 1855, at a society of antiquaries at Arras. From its style, the MS. was supposed to have been written about 1000 A.D., and to have been divided into twenty-two chapters. The author’s main object was to prove that fishers had been singularly favoured by Divine approbation; but appended to the MS. was a full list of all _river_ fish, the baits used for taking them, and the suitable seasons for angling for each sort of fish.”

For the existence of this work, vanished now for over sixty years, we have only the authority of Robert Blakey.[103] But this, if it do pass muster with Dr. Turrell, fails to satisfy Westwood and Satchell, who describe his book on Angling as “a slipshod and negligent work, devoid of all utility, a farrago of quotations incorrectly given, and of so-called original passages, the vagueness and uncertainty of which rob them of all weight and value. Mr. Blakey’s volume, it is but fair to add, is redeemed from utter worthlessness by the excellent bibliographical catalogue appended to it by the _publisher_!”[104]

The _Geoponika_, whether written or redacted by Cassianus Bassus or Cassius Dionysius, or merely translated from a treatise by an ancient Carthaginian author, treats generally of agriculture. The twentieth book, however, deals with fish-ponds, fishing, and baits: unlike the Roman writers on _vivaria_, who tell us nothing as to the capture of the fish in them, the writer gives us instructive tips on baits.

One infallible recipe in chap. xviii. for collecting the fish—on the lines of Baiting the Swim—from its superstitious _naïveté_ compels quotation: “Get three limpets, and having taken out the fish therein, inscribe on the shell the words, Ἰαώ Σαβαώθ, or ‘Jehovah, Lord of Hosts’; you will immediately see the fish come to the same place in a surprising manner.”[105] The two Greek words formed the so-called Gnostic formula and occur frequently on amulets, etc. The _Geoponika_ adds immediately, “this name the Ichthyophagi use.”

About the fourteenth century a poem entitled _De Vetula_, attributed to R. de Fournival, got translated or imitated by Jean Lefevre. The fishing portion (68 lines) awakes our interest, as it shows that “more than six hundred years ago, and probably two hundred years before the date of _The Boke of St. Albans_, most of the modern modes of fishing were practised; for instance, the worm, the fly, the torch and spear, the night line, the eel-basket and fork,” etc.

This quotation from Westwood and Satchell might cause a casual reader to suppose that (α) from _De Vetula_, written only some two centuries before _The Boke of St. Albans_, we gain our first information “of these modes of fishing,” and (β) that these were “modern,” whereas Oppian had described them all, some thirteen hundred years before _The Boke of St. Albans_ saw light.

With the exception of de Fournival and the elusive MS. of Dom Pichon,[106] which (written about 1420 but only rediscovered about 1853) probably stamps this monk as the first to practise artificial hatching, the Continent produced practically nothing till the appearance at Antwerp in 1492 of the first printed original book on Fishing, which as regards printing precedes _The Boke of St. Albans_.

This little Flemish work by an unknown author contains twenty-six chapters of a few lines, gives recipes for artificial baits, unguents, and pastes, and in the last two pages notes the periods when certain fish eat best. As its title sets out, it teaches “how one may catch birds and fish with one’s hands, and also otherwise.”[107]

The earliest description of fishing in the English language meets us in _The Colloquy of Aelfric_, A.D. 995, which Skeat first brought to notice and first “Englished” in _The Oldest English Treatise on Fishing_.[108] This takes the form of a short dialogue introduced into the _Colloquy_ written by Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the purpose of teaching his pupils Latin, and therefore written in Anglo-Saxon with a Latin translation beneath. “It is arranged as a conversation between the master and his pupil; the latter in turns figuring as huntsman, fisherman, falconer.”

The length of the _Colloquy_, even of the fishing portion, prevents inclusion here, but the pupil’s objection to fishing in the sea, “because rowing is troublesome to me,” and to going a-whaling, “because I had rather catch a fish I can kill than one that can, with one stroke, kill both me and my comrades,” strikes me as well taken and pertinent.

A poem by Piers of Fulham, written about 1420 (the original MS. of which can be seen at Trinity College, Cambridge) claims next our notice. The author, judging from Hartshorne’s rendering, fully justifies the description of him as a somewhat pessimistic angler. He seems to have anticipated De Quincey’s “fishing is an unceasing expectation and a perpetual disappointment.” He fully appreciated its difficulties and disappointments, but clearly possessed some sportsmanlike instincts, as the following, among other, verses show[109]:—

“And ete the olde fishe, and leve the yonge, Though they moore towgh be uppon the tonge.”

A Latin book _Dialogus creaturarum optime moralizatus_ was published in 1480; a translation about 1520 styles it _The Dialogues of Creatures Moralysed_. This very rare work, which I have found fully dealt with from an Angler’s point of view only by Dr. Turrell, furnishes the earliest known illustration of an angler fishing with a float.

Next in date, and last to be noticed here, comes the famous _Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle_, printed at Westminster by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496 as part of the second edition of _The Boke of St. Albans_. Whether, as has been commonly supposed, Dame Juliana Berners wrote it, or whether any such lady ever existed, are points of controversy, but that _The Treatyse_ was not an immaculate conception, without parents or ancestors, can be reasonably proved by its reference to earlier writers on fishing, and to its “these ben the xii flies ye shall use” being introduced as a precept of practice rather than a revelation of invention.

If few the forbears of what some term “not only the first angling manual in England, but also the first practical work written in any language,” its vitality and its prolific progeny admit of no doubt. According to Mr. A. Lang (who accounts for the startling fact by the increased number of people able to read owing to the spread of education) no less than ten editions of _The Boke_ were issued within four years of publication, while Dr. Turrell limits himself to fourteen undated editions between 1500 and 1596.

Whatever the number of the editions, the need for and the vitality of _The Treatyse_ is demonstrated by the fact that for over a hundred years no new work on Angling was printed in England, and between it and _The Compleat Angler_—a space of over one hundred and fifty years—there occur but four books on the subject.[110] To its prolific progeny, the _Bibliotheca Piscatoria_ bears witness[111] in its catalogue of some fifteen hundred authors and of countless books, MSS. etc.

We owe, it is said, this voluminous literature to the geographical position of England, which lends itself very favourably to the pursuit of all kinds of fishing. Can we, also, flatteringly add the other factor of Lacépède’s dictum, “Il y a cette différence entre la chasse et la pêche, que cette dernière convient aux peuples les plus civilisés?”

But the pursuit of fishing did not prevail in early England or Scotland. A passage in Bede (probably used by Henry of Huntingdon), which has, I think, escaped the many-eyed net of our fishing authors, testifies to its absence in the former.

St. Wilfrid (born 634) on his return from Friesland, where fishing yielded the staple of food, met with such success in his mission to the South Saxons that he not only converted them, “with all the priests of the Idols,” but also—“which was a great relief unto them”—taught them the craft of fishing, of which, save eeling, they wotted naught. Collecting under the Saint’s order eel-nets where they could, the first adventurers _meritis sui patris Divina largitate adjuti_[112] enmeshed three hundred fishes, which they equally divided between the poor, the net-owners, and themselves.

The Celtæ, with some exceptions such as the scomber-catching Celtiberi, eschewed fish, probably from religious prejudices, which owing to their adoration of the springs, rivers, and waters prevented the eating of their denizens.

Whatever the cause, Dion Cassius expressly comments on the abstinence of the Caledonians, although their seas and rivers abounded with food.[113] In time the example of the clergy and the ordinance of fast days gradually overcame—save in the case of Eels, which still remain to the Highlander an abomination—their obstinate antipathy. Across St. George’s Channel the Irish two centuries ago “had little skill in catching fish.”[114]

But when the Western Highlanders did go a-fishing, their prayers and promises—prompted by the same principle of gratitude being a sense of favours to come—echo the prayers and promises, _Dis mutatis_, of the _Anthologia Palatina_.

The seas differ, but the gods precated are the same. If in the following verses you substitute for “Christ, King of the Elements” Poseidon, King of the Waters, for “brave Peter” ruseful Hermes, and for “Mary fair” Aphrodite, you have the tutelary deities of fishing. The spirit of the prayer and promise of the firstling remain unchanged.

For century after century the fishermen of the Isles have handed down orally to generation after generation the Gaelic prayer with which they set out to sea.[115]

“I will cast down my hook: The first fish which I bring up In the name of Christ, King of the Elements, The poor man shall have for his need: And the King of the Fishers, the brave Peter, He will after it give me his blessing. Columba, tender in every distress, And Mary fair, the endowed of grace, Encompass ye us to the fishing bank of ocean, And still ye to us the crest of the waves!”

The rarity—I have not met its mention—and curious nature of a volume published at Frankfort in 1611, even if more than a century after _The Boke of St. Albans_, compels some reference.

_Conjecturæ Halieuticæ_ by Raphael Eglinus consists of a long dissertation based on the strange markings of three fishes (pictured on its title-page), two caught in Scandinavia on the same day, November 21, 1587, and the third in Pomerania on May 21, 1596. These markings, supposedly chronological, provide their author with a basis for various prophecies and warnings of the evils to come in Central Europe, especially in Germany.

As neither text nor type peculiarly tempt to perusal, I have not found it easy to disentangle the disasters or allot to each country its individual woe. Deductions from Daniel, the patriarch Joseph, and of course the Apocalypse enable Eglinus to establish definitely to his own satisfaction the future advent, in one or other of the Central Kingdoms, of Antichrist.

Nor, again, is it easy to gather whether a time-limit is set for his appearance, or whether the prophecies apply to twentieth-century events. Alas! also, the data do not enable me with certainty from the very promising entries from Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria to single out the precise potentate who best fills the bill, or closest answers to the author’s Antichrist.[116]

Space debars from one fascinating branch of my subject—the superstitions of Fishing. Their far-flung web enclosed the ancient _piscator_ more firmly than his brother _venator_, or, indeed, any class save only the “medicine men” of Rome.

Nor could their successors disentangle themselves, as witness the recipe given above by Bassus for inscribing on the limpets’ shell the Gnostic formula, and Mr. Westwood’s words, “There is, in fact, more quaint and many-coloured superstition in a single page of Old Izaak than in all the forty-five chapters of the twentieth Book of the Geoponika. Silent are they touching mummies’ dust and dead men’s feet—silent on the fifty other weird and ghastly imaginations of the later anglers.”[117]

And even the modern angler, if he thoroughly examine himself, must confess that some shred of gossamer still adheres. Does he not at times forgo, even if he boast himself incredulous of consequence, some act, such as stepping across a rod, lest it bring bad luck? If particular individuals rise superior, the ordinary fisherman in our present day still avows and still clings to superstitions or omens. Let him in the South of Ireland be asked whither he goes, meet a woman, or see one magpie, and all luck vanishes.[118] A dead hare (_manken_) regarded as a devil or witch a century ago brought _piscator_ nigh unto swooning.[119]

Women seem usually fatal to good catches; as one instance out of many we read in Hollinshed’s _Scottish Chronicle_, that “if a woman wade through the one fresh river in the Lewis, there shall no salmon be seen there for a twelvemonth after.”

Superstitions of every sort and almost incredible dictate to the ancient and to the modern fisherman what are the good and what the bad days for plying his craft, or setting his sail. Their cousin, imitative magic, plays no small part in deciding his bait.

But enough here of fishing superstitions. Are they not writ large in Pliny, Oppian, Plutarch, in the _Folk Lore Records_, and larger, geographically, in that masterpiece, _The Golden Bough_?

The most incredulous, if there were one chance in a hundred of the operation ensuring adeptness in our craft, would willingly sacrifice in conformity with Australian superstition the first joint of his little finger.[120] Nor, again, if only the most moderate success resulted, would any of us utter a belated plaint at his mother imitating her Fijian sister and throwing, when first a-fishing after childbirth, his navel-string into the sea, and thus “ensuring our growing into good fisherfolk.”[121]

FOOTNOTES:

[82] Jowett’s _Translation_, vol. iv. p. 343. The whole passage, which is too long for quotation, is fairly typical of Platonic methods.

[83] The _italics_ are mine.

[84] 23 Law Times, 439.

[85] In H. Grassmann’s _Wörterbuch zum Rig-Veda_, twice. One cannot indict a whole sex for inebriety on the strength of a single passage, but fish, despite _matsya_ being masculine in Sanskrit, are always feminine according to the _Avesta_ (vol. v. p. 61, of _Sacred Books of the East, Pahlavi Texts_): “Water, Earth, Plants, and Fish are female, and never otherwise.”

[86] For help and guidance as to India I am greatly in debt to my old Oxford friend, Dr. A. Macdonell, Boden Professor of Sanskrit, and to his two books, _History of Sanskrit Literature_, p. 143, and Macdonell and Keith, _Vedic Index of Names and Subjects_ (London, 1912), vol. ii. p. 173.

[87] _The Story of the Flood in the Catapatha Brāhmana._

[88] _Sacred Books of the East_, xx. 252. Cf. x. 41.

[89] _Ibid._, xvi. 7. Cf. xxiii. 239, and v. 65.

[90] De Gubernatis, _Zoological Mythology_ (London, 1872), vol. ii. 331, f.

[91] De Gubernatis, _Zoological Mythology_ (London, 1872), vol. ii. 331, f.

[92] _The Pancatantra_, I., Story 17.

[93] _A Group of Hindoo Stories_, by an Aryan (really F. F. Arbuthnot) (London, 1881), p. 35.

[94] Book I., Story 12 and 15. Book XI., Story 4. Here the fisherman, when asked by the king the sex of a fish, saves the situation and collars 2000 dinar by ejaculating the blessed word, not Mesopotamia, but “Hermaphrodite,” which he had once overheard two students casually employ.

[95] Sir William Jones holds that this collection of Fables “comprises all the wisdom of Eastern nations, and was surpassed in esteem and popularity by few works of Oriental literature.”

[96] No Quatrain of Omar Khayam sings of the craft.

[97] See _Idyll_ XX. of Theocritus, _postea_ 135, note 1, for another example.

[98] Modern Turkish contains (according to Dr. Tisdall) two genuine old _Turkish_ words for fish-hook, (1) _Ôltah_, (2) _Zôngah_. This is of great interest, for it goes far to show that the Turks, even before leaving Central Asia, were familiar with Angling.

[99] To him, a high authority on Persia, not only from the many years spent there but also from his great linguistic accomplishments, I am greatly in debt for much of the foregoing.

[100] Mr. Harold Parlett, our Consul at Dairen and an authority on Japan, writes, “I know of no books in Japanese dealing with the _history_ of fishing, and I think it improbable that any exist, unless in MS. It is a subject, which as far as I know, has not yet been studied. I should advise you to dismiss ancient Japanese methods in as few words as possible.” I follow his advice.

[101] On consulting a great Sinologist, he rapped out, “The only thing I know or want to know of Japan is that every art, every craft, it possesses came from China.”

[102] W. J. Turrell, _Ancient Angling Authors_ (London, 1910), p. xi. _Ancient_, in this most researchful work, might, I venture to suggest, be qualified by _British_, for six pages (in the Preface) suffice for all fishing before the tenth century.

[103] _Angling Literature_ (London, 1856), p. 33.

[104] There is in existence a Byzantine MS. entitled Ψαρολόγος (lit. “Fishbook,” _i.e._ anecdotes of fish), which K. Krumbacher, _Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur_, 3rd ed. (München, 1897), p. 884, states should be published.

[105] The result of the work done during the last twenty years by German writers, such as W. Christ, _Geschichte des griechischen Litteratur_, ed. 3 (München, 1898), p. 664 f.; E. Oder, in Pauly-Winowa _Real Enc._ (Stuttgart, 1910), VII., 1221-1225; and F. Lübker, _Reallexikon des klassischen Altertums_ (Leipzig, 1914), p. 409, seems to show that our _Geoponika_ is a reduction, _c._ 950 A.D., by an unknown hand of an older compilation made in the sixth century by Cassianus Bassus. Behind him in turn are older works of the fourth century, _viz._ the συναγωγὴ γεωργικῶν of Vindanius Anatolius in twelve books, and the γεωργικά of the younger Didymos of Alexandreia in fifteen books. Ultimately we get back to Cassius Dionysius of Utica, who translated the Carthaginian Mazo’s work on agriculture (88 B.C.).

[106] See _infra_, p. 291.

[107] The date of 1492 is suggested by Mr. Alfred Denison, who translated and issued privately twenty-five copies of _Dit Boecxken leert hoe men mach voghelen vanghen metten handen. Ende oeck andersins_. From the press of Mathys Van der Goes. The marriage of Madame Van der Goes to Godfridus Bach, whose printer’s mark also appears in the book, seems to point to 1492. See, however, M. F. A. G. Campbell, _Annales de la Typographie Neerlandaise au xv^e siècle_ (La Haye, 1874), p. 80, and _Bibl. Pisc._, pp. 35, 36.

[108] _The Angler’s Note-Book_, 1st series (1880), p. 76.

[109] Cf. Turrell, _op. cit._, 4. In “and with angle hookys” in Piers, Mr. Marston, _op. cit._, 2, sees “probably the earliest known reference to angling in English.”

[110] Cf. M. G. Watkins, _Introduction to the Treatyse, etc._ (London, 1880), p. xi.

[111] It enumerates 3158 distinct editions of 2148 different fishing works published before 1883. The _Supplement_ issued by Mr. R. B. Marston in 1901 gives 1200 more. Mr. Eric Parker’s delightsome and pocket-companionable _An Angler’s Garland_, London, 1920, gives many happy extracts from the fifteen hundred, and present-day writers.

[112] In Bede, “Et divina se innante gratia.”

[113] 76, 12. τῶν γὰρ ἰχθύων, ἀπείρων και ἁπλέτων ὒντων, οὐ γεύονται.

[114] James Logan, _The Scottish Gael_ (Inverness, 1876), vol. ii. p. 130 f.

[115] Alexander Carmichael, _Carmina Gælica_ (Edinburgh, 1900), vol. i. p. 325.

[116] S. Bochart, _Hierozoicon_ (Leipzig, 1796), p. 868, telling of a fish whose right ear bore the words, _There is no God, but God_, and left, _Apostle of God_, and neck, _Mahomet_, concludes with a parody of Virgil, _Buc._, iii. 104.

“Die quibus in terris inscripti nomina Divum Nascantur pisces, et eris mihi magnus Apollo!”

A _magnus Apollo_ to graduate the claims of the different potentates would indeed be a boon. The capture of a fish some two years ago near Zanzibar with Arabic inscriptions—legible only by the faithful—caused immense excitement, as possibly foretelling the speedy end of the world.

[117] _Angler’s Note-Book_, ii. p. 116.

[118] _Angler’s Note-Book_, i. 44.

[119] Dougal Graham, _Ancient and Modern Hist. of Buckhaven_ (Glasgow, 1883), vol. ii. p. 235.

[120] John F. Mann, “Notes on the Aborigines of Australia,” _Proc. Geograph. Soc. of Australia_, i. p. 204.

[121] J. G. Frazer, _op. cit._, iii. 206-7.

GREEK AND ROMAN FISHING

“_Noster in arte labor positus, spes omnis in illa._”

GREEK AND ROMAN FISHING.[122]