Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

OXYRHYNCUS—CARV—FAST DAYS 199The story of how the Lupus comes to his death by thePrawn can be read in Oppian 1 and in iElian.2 The fish, evervoracious, takes the prawns into his mouth by the thousand ithese, unable to resist or retreat, jump about and puncture histhroat and jaws so seriously that he soon dies of poison andsuffocation.Pliny (IX. 17), it has been claimed, under the word Esoxintends our Esox lucius ; but Cuvier maintains, and rightly,that his Esox signifies some very large fish, perhaps a Tunny.Sulpicius Severus, a presbyter who Uved in Aquitania[c. 365-425 A.D.) and penned an enthusiastic Life of S. Martinof Tour,^ writes " : ad primum j actum reti permodico immanemEsocem extraxit." It is not for me to discuss or decry thisamazing statement of a very small net holding this monstrousEsox. But as the growth of a Pike under the most favourablecircumstances is probably not more than 2 lbs. a yearfor twelve years when usually it lessens materially, I do suggestthat the adjective immanem is hardly appHcable (unless St.Martin's biographer, perhaps also a fisherman, has lapsedunconsciously into a " fish story ") to a fish of about 20 or 30lbs., and so would seem to confirm Cuvier.*Pike, Carp, and Grayling were not apparently indigenousin England. They were introduced from the Continent atsome undetermined date by one of the earlier religious ordersfor the better keeping of Fast Days, which as enjoined by theChurch, even in Queen Elizabeth's time, amounted to noless than 145 in number.^1 op. cit. II. 127 ff.3 op. cit. I. 30.3 De Virtute B. Martini, III. 13.* The biggest Pike ever caught in the United Kingdom seems to be the72-pounder mentioned by Colonel Thornton in his " Sporting Tour." Walton'sring-decorated fish (see Gesner), three hundred years or so old, was no doubtheavier, if it were genuine. At any rate a Pike of 40-50 lbs. is very exceptional,« The value of the herring (C'lupea harengus) was unknown to the Greeksand Romans, and so remained generally till the Middle Ages. " Ignorance,presumably of the real nature of the Cetaceans betrayed our forefathers intobreaking Lent, for under the impression that the whale, porpoise, and sealwere fish, they ate them on fast days. High prices, moreover, were paid forsuch meats, and porpoise pudding was a dish of State as late as th° sixteenthcentury" (P. Robinson, Fisheries Exhibition Literature, Ft. III. p. 42). Somalaxity may, I think, be pardoned, for the very name" porpoise " (in Guernseypourpeis)~dehved apparently from porc-peis (porcum-\-piscem)— 'implies thatthe creature was regarded as a " pig-fish."