hook." * We must, however, go further back than the ultima Thule of our Saxon lineage, for the first fisher man. Gervase Markham, in his book of "Country Contentments" (A.D. 1611), speaking of angling, says: "For the antiquity thereof (for al pleasures, like Gentry, are held to be most excellent, which is most ancient), it is by some Writers sayd to be found out by Deucalion and Pyrrha his Wife after the general flood; others write that it was the invention of Saturne, after the peace concluded between him and his brother Tytan; and others that it came from Belus the sonne of Nimrod, who invented all holy and vertuous Recreations; and al these, though they savour of fiction, yet they differ not from truth, for it is most certaine that both Deucalion, Saturne, and Belus, are taken for figures of Noah and his Family, and the invention of the art of angling, is truly sayd to come from the sonnes of Seth, of whom Noah was most principall. Thus you see it is good as having no coherence with evil, worthy of use; inasmuch as it is mixt with a delightful profit; and most ancient, as being the Recreation of the first Patriarkes." Walton himself, speaking of the antiquity of angling (p. 32), quotes the opinion of Jo. Da.† (as he calls the author of "The Secrets of Angling") thus: "Some say it is as ancient as Deucalion's Flood;" for in the poem (under the head of "The Author of Angling, Poetical Fictions"), the writer says, that urged by a lack of food for his starving family, * La professione di lui era di pescare pesciolini con la canna e con l'amo.— Le Revoluzioni di Napoli dal Signor Alessandro Giraffi. The name is noted only in the first edition. 66 "Then did Deucalion first this art invent Of angling, and his people taught the same. ** And thus with ready practice and inventive wit, But "others," adds our venerable father, "which I like better" (meaning Gervase Markham, see B. I., first edition), "say that Belus (who was the inventor of godly and vertuous Recreations) was the inventor of it; and some others say (for former times have had their disquisitions about it), that Seth, one of the sons of Adam, taught it to his sons, and that by them it was handed down to posterity. Others say, that he left it engraved on those Pillars which hee erected. to preserve the knowledge of the mathematicks, musick, and the rest of those precious arts, which by God's appointment and allowance and his noble industry were thereby preserved from perishing in Noah's Flood." These were the same with the tables of stone engraved with sacred characters by the first Mercury, and translated, according to Manetho (Syncelli Chronicon, 40), by Mercurius Trismegistus.* * Janus had the credit of having taught the Italians among other useful arts that of fishing, venari pisces (Alexander Sardus, De Rerum inventoribus, ii., 16); but Janus was the Osiris of the Etrurians, who followed closely the eastern mythology, and the legend only throws back the invention to the primitive ages. The reader will find similar traditions among the Phoenicians by consulting Eusebius (Præp. Evan., 1), who had in his eye this passage of Sanchoniatho's Cosmogony: "In times long subsequent to these (those of the fourth in descent from Eon), were born of the race of Hypsuranius, Agreus and Halieus, the inventors of the arts of hunting and fishing, from whom huntsmen and fishermen derive their names. A son (of Halieus) called Chryson, who is the same with Hephæstus, exercised himself in words, charms and divinations; and he invented the hook, the bait Leaving these amusing fables, we find the earliest authentic mention of angling in the book of Job (according to the probable chronology of Usher, B.C. 1520), where the Lord asks him (xli., 1, 2): "Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou put a hook in his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?" The first verse clearly shows that angling, fishing with hook and line, was practised at that early day. The second verse has been a fruitful source of critical conjectures to both Jewish and Christian commentators, for the word translated hook signifies properly a reed, meaning according to the Rabbi Salomon, an iron hook bent like a reed; Mercator calls it a hook made of a reed; the learned Bochart, in his Hierozoicon (treatise on the animals of Scripture), supposes that it is "a noose (capistrum) made of a pliant reed," as fish are sometimes snared among us; and that the word, rendered "thorn" in the second clause of the verse, means "a hook sharp as a thorn;" but Pinda, Schmidt, and some others, discover a reference here to the method which fishermen had (and still have) of stringing their fish, after their backs were split open, along a reed, when offering them for sale, or hanging them up to be dried or smoked. If I might hazard a conjecture among the rest, it would be that the reference is to some mode of spearing fish with a sharp barbed reed. This will be more admissible, and the fishing line, and boats of a light construction; and he was the first that ever sailed." "Quels souvenirs touchans cette ligne peut rappeler! Elle retrace à l'enfance, ses jeux; à l'âge mûr, ses loisirs; à la vieillesse, ses distractions; au cœur, sensible, le ruisseau voisin du toit paternel; au voyageur, le repos occupé des peuplades, dont il enlève la douce quietude; au philosophe l'origine de l'art.”—Lacipède, Histoire des Poissons. if we interpret the 26th verse (in our translation, “Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?" which is according to Bochart's reading) as Le Clerc and some others: "Canst thou put him bodily into a wicker pannier? or his head into a fish-basket:" vasculis vimineis piscatoribus portatis (Scottice, Creel)? Whatever interpretation we take (for the "reed" is a sore puzzle to the critics), the passage shows that various methods of fishing, certainly angling, were well known.* Spearing seems to me likely to be more ancient even than taking fish with a hook, as men would be tempted to thrust such a weapon at a good sized fish before they would go through the process of inventing and making a hook on which to fix bait. The Trident of Neptune, which aspiring mythologists have made to be a symbol of his power over three elements, is clearly a fish-spear a little out of proportion. His Oceanic majesty may find a copy of his sceptre on board any ship he visits as it crosses the line, and a salmon leister (waster, as the Scotch call it) is the same implement with two prongs added to the three. The other passage quoted by our author from the Old Testament is in Amos iv., 2 (B.C. 787), and not remarkable, except as showing that fish hooks were in common use. Το these may be added, Isaiah xix., 8; Habakkuk i., 15. Indeed, the Jews were much addicted both to the net and the angle, as appears from many passages, none of which, however, throw any light on our subject. The farthest stretch of profane writers into the history of fishing is the mention made by Diodorus Siculus (Lib. i., Goguet (Book ii.) says with truth, that nets are known only to men advanced in the arts of life. So Plutarch De Soler. Anim. 52), of Moris the immediate predecessor of Sesostris (see Larcher, Chron. d'Herodote, and Bähr on Herodotus ii., 100), which, according to Champollion Figeac, would put him about B.C. 1500 (perhaps a hundred years too soon). This Moris, the historian says, constructed the famous artificial lake called by his name, which was eighty stadia long and pinλε por (say four hundred feet) broad; and it cost fifty talents to open and shut the flood gates. In the middle he erected two sepulchral pyramids, one for himself and the other for his wife, with marble statues of them both on a throne. But it was also a vast fish pond, having in it twenty-two different kinds of fish, which increased so fast, that the most extensive preparations for salting them were not sufficient for the purpose. The revenue derived from the fishing he assigned to his wife, who had thus out of that source a talent ($10,000) a day for pin money. The passage is curious, as showing the importance of fish as an article of food.* Homer speaks distinctly of angling in the sea, Iliad, xxiv., 80-82; and as his text has puzzled not a little both ancient and modern writers, I give the original; he is speaking of Iris plunging into the sea: Ἡ δὲ, μολυβδαίνῃ ἐκέλη, ἐς βυσσὸν ὄρουσεν, The difficulty is to know what the ox-horn had to do with the angling apparatus. Pope shuns it altogether, unless he mistook it for an angling rod : * Calmet on Numbers xi., 32, thinks that the Israelites practised the salting of fish for food, having learned it in Egypt. |