Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

:200 AUSONIUS—SALMO—FIRST MENTION OF PIKEThe Pike, though known in the thirteenth century, wasvery scarce. Its price (as fixed by Edward I.) doubled that ofthe salmon, and exceeded ten times over that of either the turbotor cod. Even as late as the Reformation a large pike fetchedas much as a February lamb, and a very small pickerel morethan a fat capon. This ratio of prices recalls the rebukeadministered by Cato the Censor to those prodigal Romanswho were wilHng to pay more for a dish of fish than for awhole ox.In view of the necessity for fish on the fast days, whichclaimed nearly half the year, the situation of twenty Sees(two Archbishoprics and eighteen Bishoprics) out of twentysevenon what were then salmon rivers can hardly have beena geographical accident.The Carp must also have been a scarce fish in Tudor England.Dame Juliana Berners writes, " Ther be fewe in Englande."Holinshed, a propos of its scarcity in the Thames, states, " Itis not long since that kind of fish is brought over into England."Leonard Mascall, however, in his Book of Fishinge (1596),credits a Mr. Mascall of Plumstead in Essex with the introductionof carp.A hackneyed couplet, frequently quoted for the purposeof establishing the date at which carp and pike were introduced,but so full of mistakes as to be worthless, runs thus" Turkies, Carps, Hops, Pickerell, and Beer,Came into England all in one year."Since another version brackets " Reformation, hops, bays,and beer," the year intended is obviously 1532.A Pike, or rather the head of a fish so-called, served at supperis said to have caused the end of Theodoric the Goth. In ithe imagined he saw the face and head of Symmachus, whomhe had just put to death ; straightway he became so terrorstrickenthat within three days he had joined his victim.