Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

—FISH AND ANTICHRIST—SUPERSTITIONS 59potentate who best fills the bill, or closest answers to theauthor's Antichrist. ^Space debars from one fascinating branch of my subjectthe superstitions of Fishing.Their far-flung web enclosed theancient piscator more firmly than his brother venaior, or,indeed, any class save only the " medicine men " of Rome.Nor could their successors disentangle themselves, aswitness the recipe given above by Bassus for inscribing on thelimpets' shell the Gnostic formula, and Mr. Westwood's words," There is, m fact, more quaint and many-coloured superstitionin a single page of Old Izaak than in all the forty-fivechapters of the twentieth Book of the Geoponika. Silent arethey touching mummies' dust and dead men's feet—silent on thefifty other weird and ghastly imaginations of the later anglers." 2And even the modern angler, if he thoroughly examinehimself, must confess that some shred of gossamer stiU adheres.Does he not at times forgo, even if he boast himself incredulousof consequence, some act, such as stepping across a rod, lestit bring bad luck ? If particular individuals rise superior, theordinary fisherman in our present day still avows and stillclings to superstitions or omens. Let him in the South ofIreland be asked whither he goes, meet a woman, or see onemagpie, and all luck vanishes.^ A dead hare {manken) regardedas a devil or witch a century ago brought piscator nigh untoswooning.*Women seem usually fatal to good catches ; as one instanceout of many we read in HoUinshed's Scottish Chronicle, that" if a woman wade through the one fresh river in the Lewis,^ S. Bochart, Hierozoicon (Leipzig, 1796), p. 868, telling of a fish whoseright 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 wouldindeed be a boon. The capture of a fish some two years ago near Zanzibarwith Arabic inscriptions—legible only by the faithful—caused immense excitement,as possibly foretelling the speedy end of the world.* Angler's Note-Book, ii. p. 116.' Angler's Note-Book, i. 44.* Dougal Graham, Ancient and Modern Hist, of Buckhaven (Glasgow,1883), vol. ii. p. 235.