Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

10 INTRODUCTIONdate (1660) dealing with fishing, Les Ruses Innocentes, whichmay be described [mutatis mutandis) as the counterpart of TheBoke of St. Albans.The first four books are concerned with " divers methods "(of most of which the author, d la Barker, claims the invention)for the making and the using of all kinds of nets for the captureof birds, both of passage and indigenous, and of many kinds ofanimals.The fifth confides to us " les plus beaux secrets de la pechedans les Rivieres ou dans les Etangs." As the secrets areconcerned almost entirely with Net fishing, little light reachesus. Both the instructions and illustrations in chap, xxvi.,Invention pour prendre les Brockets d la ligne volante, showthat the line after being attached about the middle of thepole was twisted round and round till made fast at theend of the pole, from which depended some eighteen feet ofline.iSetting conjecture aside and faced by the fact that theEgyptian line was certainly made fast at the top and thatneither illustrations nor writings (so far as I have been ableto discover) indicate any other condition, we are driven by amass of evidence, negative though it be, to the conclusionthat the ancients 2 and the moderns down to some datebetween 1496 and 165 1 fished with " tight " lines.1 With good reason the author styles his work, " Ouvrage tres curieux,utile, et recreatif pour toutes personnes qui font leur sejour k la campagne."2 No example of a running Mne has ever been produced from either ancientliterature or ancient art, but on the other hand numerous illustrations of thetight line on vases, frescoes, mosaics, etc., are extant. To the examplescollected by G. Lafaye in Daremberg and Saglio, Diet, des antiquiUs, iv. 489, ffs.v. ' piscatio,' can be added : (a) Ivory relief from Sparta, seventh centuryB.C., published by R. M. Dawkins in the Annual Report of the Brit. School atAthens, 1906-7, xiii. 100, ff., pi. 4. (6) Black figured lekythos from HopeCollection (Sale Cat. No. 22), published by E. M. W. Tillyard in Essays andStudies presented to W. Ridgeivay, Cambridge, 1913, edited by E. C. Quiggin,p. 186, ff. with plate, (c) Graeco-Roman gem in A. Furtwangler, Beschreibungder geschnittenen Steine im Antiquarium (zu Berlin), Berlin, 1896, p. 257,No. 6898, pi. 51. Cf. the same author, Die Antiken Gemmen, Leipzig-Berlin, 1900, i. pi. 28, 25, and pi. 36, 5 ; ii. 140 and 174. A. H. Smith, Cat.of Engraved Gems in the Brit. Museum, London, 1888, p. 191, Nos. 1797-99,and p. 206, No. 2043. {d) Coins of Carteia in Spain, well represented byA. Heiss, Description gJnh'ale des Monnaies antiques de I'Espagne, Paris, 1870,p. 331 f., pi. 49, 19-21. (e) Mosaic in Melos, see R. C. Bosanquet in theJour, of Hell. Studies, 1898, xviii. 71 ff., pi. i. (/) Silver krater iiova. Hildesheimshows Cupids with fishing rods and tridents catching all sorts of