an angler; and this noble emulation I wish to you, and all young anglers. CHAP. XVIII. or Penk; Loach; Bull-Head, or Mil ler's - Thumb; and the Sticklebag. PISCATOR. There be also three or four other little fish that I had almost forgot; that are all without scales; and may for excellency of meat, be compared to any fish of Of the Minnow, greatest value and largest size. They be usually full of eggs or spawn, all the months of summer; for they breed often, as 'tis observed mice and many of the smaller four-footed creatures of the earth do; and as those, so these come quickly to their full growth and perfection. And it is needful that they breed both often and numerously; for they be, besides other accidents of ruin, both a prey and baits for other fish. And first I shall tell you of the Minnow or Penk. The MINNOW hath, when he is in perfect season, and not sick, which is only presently after spawning, a kind of dappled or waved colour, like to a panther, on its sides, inclining to a greenish or sky colour; his belly being milk white; and his back almost black or blackish. He is a sharp biter at a small worm, and in hot weather makes excellent sport for young anglers, or boys, or women that love that recreation. And in the spring they make of them excellent Minnow-tansies; for being washed well in salt, and their heads and tails cut off, and their guts taken out, and not washed after, they prove excellent for that use; that is, being fried with yolk of eggs, the flowers of cowslips and of primroses, and a little tansy; thus used they make a dainty dish of meat. The LOACH is, as I told you, a most dainty fish he breeds and feeds in little and clear swift brooks or rills, and lives there upon the gravel, and in the sharpest streams: he grows not to be above a finger long, and no thicker than is suitable to that length. The Loach is not unlike the shape of the Eel: he has a beard or wattles like a barbel. He has two fins at his sides, four at his belly, and one at his tail; he is dappled with many black or brown spots; his mouth is barbel-like under his nose. This fish is usually full of eggs or spawn; and is by Gesner, and other Since Walton wrote, there has been brought into England from Germany, a species of small fish, resembling Carp in shape and colour, called Crucians, with which many ponds are now plentifully stocked: and from China, those beautiful creatures Gold and Silver Fish; which are usually kept in ponds, basins, and small reservoirs of water; to which they are a delightful ornament. It is now a common practice to keep them in a large glass vessel like a punch-bowl, with fine gravel strewed at the bottom; frequently changing the water, and feeding them with bread and gentles. Those who can take more pleasure in angling for, than in beholding them, which I confess I could never do, may catch them with gentles: but though costly, they are but coarse food.-H. learned physicians, commended for great nourishment, and to be very grateful both to the palate and stomach of sick persons. He is to be fished for with a very small worm, at the bottom; for he very seldom, or never, rises above the gravel, on which I told you he usually gets his living. The MILLER'S-THUMB, or BULL-HEAD, is a fish of no pleasing shape. He is by Gesner compared to the Sea-toad-fish, for his similitude and shape. It has a head big and flat, much greater than suitable to his body; a mouth very wide, and usually gaping; he is without teeth, but his lips are very rough, much like to a file. He hath two fins near to his gills, which be roundish or crested; two fins also under the belly; two on the back; one below the vent; and the fin of his tail is round. Nature hath painted the body of this fish with whitish, blackish, brownish spots. They be usually full of eggs or spawn all the summer, I mean the females; and those eggs swell their vents almost into the form of a dug. They begin to spawn about April, and, as I told you, spawn several months in the summer. And in the winter, the Minnow, and Loach, and Bull-head dwell in the mud, as the Eel doth; or we know not where, no more than we know where the cuckoo and swallow, and other half-year birds, which first appear to us in April, spend their six cold, winter, melancholy months. This BULL-HEAD does usually dwell, and hide himself, in holes, or amongst stones in clear water; and in very hot days will lie a long time very still, and sun himself, and will be easy to be seen upon any flat stone, or any gravel; at which time he will suffer an angler to put a hook, baited with a small worm, very near unto his very mouth: and he never refuses to bite, nor indeed to be caught with the worst of anglers. Matthiolus commends him much more for his taste and nourishment, than for his shape or beauty. There is also a little fish called a STICKLEBAG, a fish without scales, but hath his body fenced with several prickles. I know not where he dwells in winter; nor what he is good for in summer, but only to make sport for boys and women-anglers, and to feed other fish that be fish of prey, as Trouts in particular, who will bite at him as at a Penk; and better, if your hook be rightly baited with him, for he may be so baited as, his tail turning like the sail of a windmill, will make him turn more quick than any VARIATION.] 8 Summer birds.-2d, 3d, and 4th edit. Petrus Andreas Matthiolus, of Sienna, an eminent physician of the sixteenth century, famous for his Commentaries on some of the writings of Dioscorides.-H. N Penk or Minnow can. For note, that the nimble turning of that, or the Minnow, is the perfection of Minnow-fishing. To which end, if you put your hook into his mouth, and out at his tail; and then, having first tied him with white thread a little above his tail, and placed him after such a manner on your hook as he is like to turn, then sew up his mouth to your line, and he is like to turn quick, and tempt any Trout; but if he does not turn quick, then turn his tail, a little more or less, towards the inner part, or towards the side of the hook; or put the Minnow or Sticklebag a little more crooked or more straight on your hook, until it will turn both true and fast; and then doubt not but to tempt any great Trout that lies in a swift stream.* And the Loach that I told you of will do the like: no bait is more tempting, provided the Loach be not too big. And now, scholar, with the help of this fine morning, and your patient attention, I have said all that my present memory will afford me, concerning most of the several fish that are usually fished for in fresh waters. VENATOR. But, master, you have by your former civility made me hope that you will make good your promise, and say something of the several rivers that be of most note in this nation; and also of fish-ponds, and the ordering of them: and do it I pray, good master; for I love any discourse of rivers, and fish, and fishing; the time spent in such discourse passes away very pleasantly. PISCATOR. CHAP. XIX.† Of WELL, scholar, since the ways and weather do both favour us, and that we yet see not Tottenham Cross, you shall see my willingness to Observations of satisfy your desire. And, first, for the rivers of this nation there be, as you may note out of Dr Heylin's Geography, and others, in number three hundred and twenty-five, but those of chiefest note he reckons and describes as followeth. Fish. The chief is THAMISIS, compounded of two rivers, Thame and Isis; whereof the former, rising somewhat beyond Thame in *The Minnow, if used in this manner, is so tempting a bait, that few fish are able to resist it. The present Earl of told me, that in the month of June last, at Kimpton Hoo, near Wellwyn, in Hertfordshire, he caught (with a Minnow) a Rud, a fish described in page 182, which, insomuch as the Rud is not reckoned, nor does the situation of his teeth, which are in his throat, bespeak him to be a fish of prey, is a fact more extraordinary than that related by Sir George Hastings, in Chap. IV., of a Fordidge Trout (of which kind of fish none had ever been known to be taken with an angle) which he caught, and supposed it bit for wantonness.-H. † No portion of this chapter occurs in the first, but was added in the second and subsequent editions. It should be Dr Heylin's Cosmography. Buckinghamshire, and the latter near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, meet together about Dorchester in Oxfordshire; the issue of which happy conjunction is the Thamisis, or Thames ; * hence it flieth betwixt Berks, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, and Essex and so weddeth itself to the Kentish Medway, in the very jaws of the ocean. This glorious river feeleth the violence and benefit of the sea more than any river in Europe; ebbing and flowing, twice a day, more than sixty miles; about whose banks are so many fair towns and princely palaces, that a German† poet thus truly spake Tot campos, &c. We saw so many woods and princely bowers, 2. The second river of note is SABRINA or SEVERN: it hath its beginning in Plinlimmon Hill, in Montgomeryshire; and his end seven miles from Bristol; washing, in the mean space, the walls of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester, and divers other places and palaces of note. 3. TRENT, so called from thirty kind of fishes that are found in it, or for that it receiveth thirty lesser rivers; who having his fountain in Staffordshire, and gliding through the counties of Though the current opinion is that the Thames had its name from the conjunction of Thame and Isis, it plainly appears that the Isis was always called Thames, or Tems, before it came near the Tame. Gibson's Camden, edit. 1753, p. 99. And although the head of the Thame is generally supposed to be in Oxfordshire, Camden (whom Walton probably followed), Brit. 215, says it is in Buckinghamshire. Lambarde, however, adopting the authority of Leland, says, "Tame springeth out of the hilles of Hertfordshire, at a place called Bulburne, a few myles from Penlye (the house of a family of gentlemen called Verneys); it runneth from thence to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and to Tame (a market-town in Oxfordshire, whearunto it gyveth the name), then passinge under Whetley Bridge, it cometh to Dorchester, and hard by joyneth with Isis, or Ouse, and from that place joyneth with it in name also."-Dictionarium Topographicum, voce THAME. Unfortunately, Leland's manuscript has lost twenty-five leaves in that part of it where one might expect to find this passage. But the following extract from an author of great authority, and who had a seat in the county of Hertford, will determine the question: "The Thame (the most famous river of England) issues from three heads in the parish of Tring: the first rises in an orchard, near the parsonagehouse; the second in a place called Dundell; and the other proceeds from a spring named Bulbourne, which last stream joins the other waters at a place called New Mill; whence all, gliding together in one current, through Puttenham in this county, pass by Aylesbury (a fair market-town in Buckinghamshire) to Etherop (an ancient pleasant seat of that noble family of the Dormers, Earls of Carnarvon); and crossing that county, by Notley Abbey, to Thame (a market-town in Oxfordshire, which borrows its name from this river), hasteneth away by Whately Bridge to Dorchester (an ancient episcopal seat), and thence congratulates the Isis; but both emulating each other for the name, and neither yielding, they are complicated by that of Thamisis."-Sir Henry Chauncy's Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, p. 2.-H. Who this German poet was is not known; but the verses, in the original Latin, are in Heylin's Cosmography, page 240, and are as follow: Tot campos, sylvas, tot regia tecta, tot hortos, Nottingham, Lincoln, Leicester, and York, augmenteth the turbulent current of Humber, the most violent stream of all the isle. This Humber is not, to say truth, a distinct river having a springhead of his own, but it is rather the mouth or æstuarium of divers rivers here confluent and meeting together, namely, your Derwent, and especially of Ouse and Trent; and, as the Danow, having received into its channel the river Dravus, Savus, Tibiscus, and divers other, changeth his name into this of Humberabus, as the old geographers call it. 4. MEDWAY, a Kentish river, famous for harbouring the royal navy. 5. TWEED, the north-east bound of England; on whose northern banks is seated the strong and impregnable town of Berwick. 6. TYNE, famous for Newcastle, and her inexhaustible coalpits.* These, and the rest of principal note, are thus comprehended in one of Mr Drayton's Sonnets: Our floods' queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd; Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee; York many wonders of her Ouse can tell ; Cotswold commends her Isis to the Tame; Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood; And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.† It is unnecessary to give here such a description and history of the rivers of this kingdom as some readers would wish for. They may, however, find a great variety of curious and useful learning on the subject in Selden's Notes on the Polyolbion.-H. "LEE fu. Ly3an, Saxon. Luy, Mar. [forsan Marcellinu-], Lea, Polydoro. The name of the water which (runnyn betwene Ware and London) devydethe, for a great part of the way, Essex and Hertfordshyre. It begynnethe near a place called Whitchurche; and from thence, passinge by Hertford, Ware, and Waltham, openethe into the Thamise at Ham in Essex; wheare the place is, at this day, called Lee Mouthe. It hathe, of longe tyme, borne vessells from London, 20 myles towarde the head; for, in tyme of Kinge Alfrede, the Danes entered Leymouthe, and fortified, at a place adjoyninge to this ryver, 20 myles from London; where, by fortune, king Alfrede passinge by, espied that the channell of the ryver might be in such sorte weakened, that they should want water to returne withe their shippes: he caused therefore the water to be abated by two greate trenches, and settinge the Londoners upon theim, he made theim batteil; wherein they lost four of their captaines, and a great nomber of their common souldiers; the rest flyinge into the castle which they had builte. Not longe after, they weare so pressed that they forsoke all, and lefte their shippes as a pray to the Londoners; which breakinge some, and burninge other, conveyed the rest to London. This casile, for the distance, might seme Herforde; but it was some other upon that banke, which had no longe continuance for Edward the elder, and son of this Alfrede, builded Hert orde not longe after."-Vide Lambarde's Dictionarium Topographicum, voce LEE. Drayton's Polyolbion, Song the Twelfth, and the first note thereon. Other authors, who confirm this fact. also add, that for the purpose aforesaid he opened the mouth of the river. See Sir William Dugdale's History of the embanking and draining the Fens, and Sir John Spelman's Life of Alfred the Great, published by Hearne, in 8vo, 1709; : |
