CHAPTER XII
ÆLIAN—THE MACEDONIAN INVENTION, OR THE FIRST MENTION OF AN ARTIFICIAL FLY
“They knew ’e stole; ’e knew they knowed; They did not tell, or make a fuss, But winked at Ælian down the road, And ’e winked back—the same as us!”[426]
Ælian (170-230 a.d.), who, though born in Italy and brought up in the Latin tongue, acquired so complete a command of Greek that he could speak it as well as an Athenian gentleman (hence his sobriquet μελίγλωττος), composed his works in Greek.
His Natural History[427] soon became a standard work on Zoology, although in arrangement it is very defective: for instance, he skips from elephants (XI. 15) to dragons in the very next chapter, and from the livers of mice in II. 56 to the uses of oxen in II. 57. This treatment of things, ποικίλα ποικίλως, is asserted by the author to be intentional, so as to avoid boring the reader. For his part he avows that he prefers observing the habits of animals and fish, listening to the nightingale, or studying the migration of cranes, to heaping up riches![428]
(a) FISHERMAN AND SON. (b) SON SALUTING WAYSIDE HERMES.
From a Greek vase in Vienna. R. Schneider, Arch. epig. Mitth., iii., Pl. 3.
Whether as a Naturalist Ælian possesses any value, whether his work is “scrappy and gossiping, and largely collected from older and more logical writers,”[429] or “from the industry displayed, despite deficiency in arrangement, a valuable collection in Natural History,” to us fishermen matters little, for unto him has been ascribed the great glory of being the first author of all ages and of all countries specifically to mention and roughly describe an Artificial Fly.
And not only is he the first, but also (with possibly one exception) the only author during fourteen hundred years, who makes any reference to any such fly.[430] From Ælian until the Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle we find no mention of, or allusion to, the Artificial Fly, but that it was well known as a method of angling is easily deduced from the authoress’s abrupt introduction of the subject, “There ben the xij flies or dubbes with which ye shall angle.”[431]
The usually accurate Bibliotheca Piscatoria of Westwood and Satchell states under heading of ‘Ælian,’ that Stephen Oliver (Mr. Chatto), in his Scenes and Recollections of Fly Fishing, first pointed out this remarkable passage. Now the first edition of Oliver’s book is dated 1834; so, if the Bibliotheca Piscatoria be correct, Ælian’s statement apparently remained unknown to Anglers for nearly eighteen centuries.
I purposely set out a translation of the whole passage in Ælian, XV. 1, because short extracts are usually given, and because these vary greatly on a very important point. I adopt with some alterations the translation by Mr. O. Lambert in his Angling Literature in England (1881).
“I have heard of a Macedonian way of catching fish, and it is this: between Bercea and Thessalonica runs a river called the Astræus, and in it there are fish with speckled skins; what the natives of the country call them you had better ask the Macedonians. These fish feed on a fly peculiar to the country, which hovers on the river. It is not like flies found elsewhere, nor does it resemble a wasp in appearance, nor in shape would one justly describe it as a midge or a bee, yet it has something of each of these. In boldness it is like a fly, in size you might call it a midge, it imitates the colour of a wasp, and it hums like a bee. The natives generally call it the Hippouros.
“These flies seek their food over the river, but do not escape the observation of the fish swimming below. When then the fish observes a fly on the surface, it swims quietly up, afraid to stir the water above, lest it should scare away its prey; then coming up by its shadow, it opens its mouth gently and gulps down the fly, like a wolf carrying off a sheep from the fold or an eagle a goose from the farmyard; having done this it goes below the rippling water.
“Now though the fishermen know of this, they do not use these flies at all for bait for fish; for if a man’s hand touch them, they lose their natural colour, their wings wither, and they become unfit food for the fish. For this reason they have nothing to do with them, hating them for their bad character; but they have planned a snare for the fish, and get the better of them by their fisherman’s craft.
“They fasten red (crimson red) wool round a hook, and fix on to the wool two feathers which grow under a cock’s wattles, and which in colour are like wax. Their rod is six feet long, and their line is the same length. Then they throw their snare, and the fish, attracted and maddened by the colour, comes straight at it, thinking from the pretty sight to get a dainty mouthful; when, however, it opens its jaws, it is caught by the hook and enjoys a bitter repast, a captive.”
The lines which describe the making up of the fly—τῷ ἀγκίστρῳ περιβάλλουσιν ἒριον φοινικοῦν, ἤρμοσταί τε τῷ ἐρίῳ δύο πτερὰ ἀλεκτρυόνος ὑπὸ τοῖς καλλαίοις πεφυκότα καὶ κηρῷ τὴν χρόαν προσεικασμένα[432] are translated in Westwood and Satchell’s Bibl. Pisc., and by Mr. Lambert quite differently.
In the Bibl. Pisc.:
“Round the hook they twist scarlet wool, and two wings are secured on this wool from the feathers which grow under the wattles of a cock, brought up to the proper colour with wax.”
In Lambert:
“They fasten red wool round a hook and fit on the wool two feathers which grow under a cock’s wattles, and which in colour are like wax.”
It is asserted in the Bibl. Pisc. that the whole passage is therein “for the first time, accurately, translated,” but this proud boast must take a back seat, for Mr. Lambert translates with far nearer accuracy. One grave error springs from mistranslation in the former of προσεικασμένα as “brought up to,” instead of “like,” a meaning very common in Greek writers of the second and third century.
But, apart from the question which of the two be the better rendering, no doubt whatever can exist which of the flies described would be found the better, if not the only, killer. Application of wax to the hackles of a cock would certainly cause the fibre to stick together, entirely destroy their free play in the water, and render them useless as wings.
This passage, ever since its rediscovery by Oliver in 1834, has been acclaimed by most writers on Fishing as (A) being the first instance in literature, or for that matter in art, of the Artificial Fly, and as (B) ascribing to the Macedonians the credit of a “new invention” in Angling.
It is undoubtedly the first and only express mention of a specially made-up Artificial Fly down to 500 a.d., and probably even down to Dame Juliana’s Book (c. 1500). But I suggest and believe that this passage is intended, not as a description of a “new invention,” or of a striking departure from old methods of Angling. It merely instances the Macedonian’s adaptability to his environment, and his imitative skill in dressing from his wools and feathers a fly to resemble as closely as possible the natural fly on which the fish were feeding, a practice very common among anglers of the present day.
So far from the Artificial Fly being a “new invention,” it seems to me to have been for a long time in more or less regular use. The materials necessary or employed for dressing flies are set forth in two other places by Ælian in this same work. The Macedonian fly is described at length and in special detail, probably because it marked an advance in making up a fly.
I have not been able so far to find the passages in Bk. III. 43, and Bk. XV. 10, mentioned (except in Blümner’s general list of fishing weapons under “Fischfang”[433]) or alluded to in connection with fly-making, much less brought into the prominence which their special pertinence of a surety deserves and demands.
This omission may be due to previous writers being content with the authority and researches of Oliver and of Westwood and Satchell, and on the line of least exertion not pursuing the subject any further even in the pages of Ælian himself. If they had so pursued, they would have discovered in the first passage in Bk. XII. 43, which is separated by only three books, and in the second passage in Bk. XV. 10, which is separated by only nine chapters from the locus classicus in Bk. XV. 1, strong reasons for qualifying their statement as to the Macedonian “invention.”
In Bk. XII. 43, Fishing is divided into four kinds—by Nets, Spears, Weels, and Hooks; that by hooks (ἀγκιστρεία) is adjudged “the most skilful, and the most becoming for free men,” that by Weels (κυρτεία) the least so. In each class Ælian carefully enumerates the articles necessary or generally used.
The list of those necessary for fishing with hooks, or Angling, recounts “natural horse-hair, white, and black, and flame-coloured, and half-grey; but of the dyed hair, they select only those that are grey, or of true sea-purple, for the rest, they say, are pretty poor. They use, too, the straight bristles of swine, and thread, and much copper and lead, and cords.” Now follow the important words—“and feathers, chiefly white, or black, or various. They use two wools, red and blue.”[434]
Further requirements are “corks, and wood, and iron, and of things they need, are reeds well-grown, and nets, and soaked rushes, a shaved wand, and a dog-wood Rod, and the horns and hide of a she-goat.” The equipment is as ample as amazing. What use, in the name of every fishing Deity, unless the author is referring to Oppian’s method, did the Angler make of the “horns and hide of a she-goat”?
Ælian concludes with ἄλλος δὲ ἄλλῳ τούτων ἰχθὺς αἱρεῖται, which antedates the tale of the millionaire, who, reproached with having brought a thousand times too many flies, ejaculated, “with some of these, if I can’t get a salmon, maybe I’ll strike a sucker”!
In XV. 10, which deals with the capture of pelamyde or young tunny fish, one of the crew sitting at the stern lets down on either side of the ship lines with hooks. On each hook he ties a bait (perhaps not a bait in our modern technical sense, but rather a lure) wrapped in wool of Laconian red, and to each hook attaches the feather of a seamew.[435]
Let us set aside, because of Ælian’s haphazard method of arrangement, any argument which might otherwise fairly be adduced from the following facts. (A) He expressly sets forth in XII. 43 (three books before he mentions the Macedonian device) red and other wools and feathers as part of the ordinary tackle of an Angler—most probably in river or lake, for here, unlike XV. 10, where the prey is a sea-fish, we have no mention of a ship, oars, etc. (B) When he does mention the Macedonian device, he does not announce it in any way as a new invention or a striking departure from the old methods of fishing, but quite simply, in the words: “I have heard of the Macedonian way of fishing, and it is this.”
Setting aside, I repeat, any arguments thus to be deduced, we are face to face with the hard and curious fact, that in all three passages the materials, out of which the lures are constructed, are the same; they are wools of various colours, and feathers taken from birds, in XV. 1, from a cock, in XV. 10, from a seamew.
Any assertion or suggestion that these wools and feathers were used, and are specially stated to have been used for tying only the Macedonian fly, and that this special statement of such uses is meant expressly to differentiate the Macedonian from all other ways of fishing, and thus constitutes the first mention of an Artificial Fly, I counter by a couple of queries.
Why in XII. 43, and XV. 10, are these self-same wools and feathers set out among the necessary ordinary requisite tackle of a fisherman, if they were not used for dressing a fly, perhaps more primitive but still Artificial? And, if they were not so used, to what other fishing purpose can they be fairly applied?
Again, let us for a moment grant that the Macedonian device was the absolutely new invention or the striking departure from all preceding angling methods, which, had artificial flies not previously been well known, it most certainly would have been. In this case, surely Ælian, meticulous in his examination and classification of the tackle, etc., needed for each of the four stated kinds of fishing, would have employed, when about to tell of this invention, words calling more instant attention to and far worthier of this great revolution than the simple, “I have heard of the Macedonian way of fishing, and it is this”!
As supporting my contention, a further point must be noted. In the list of tackle in XII. 43, wools and feathers are mentioned in a general manner, but in XV. 1, their use is particularised and elaborated. Similarly in the first passage the making and material of Rods are given, but in the second (and here only) the particular length of rod is stated.
It is on these passages (XII. 43, and XV. 10) and on their natural implication, that I chiefly found my conclusion that (A) the practice of making up and fishing with some kind of artificial fly had been in more or less general use for a long time previous to the Macedonian device, and (B) that the device is quoted merely as an instance of a special, local, and improved adaptation of such usage—in a word as le dernier cri in flies![436]
If in Martial (Ep., V. 18. 8) musco, not musca, should be read, then to Ælian would belong the credit of being the first to mention not only the use of the artificial fly, but also the use of the natural fly.
In XIV. 22, we read of the Thymalus (a kind of grayling), which alone of all fishes gives out after capture no fishy smell, but rather so fragrant an odour that one would almost swear that in his hand he held a freshly gathered bunch of thyme (“that herb so beloved by bees”), instead of a fish. Ælian then lays down that, while it is easy to catch this fish in nets, it is impossible to do so with a hook baited with anything except theκώνωψ, i.e. the gnat, or more probably from the vivid description by one who has evidently suffered, the mosquito, “that horrid insect, a foe to man, both day and night, alike with his bite and his buzz.”[437]
Here then, in XIV. 22, we get, if the conjecture musco should be held to deprive Martial of his priority, the first mention of angling with a natural fly.
The difficulty, obvious at once to the practical angler, of how the ancients (or even the moderns with all the elaborate perfections of Redditch) could manufacture a hook little enough to impale a mosquito did not escape Aldrovandi.[438] But the κώνωψ, said to spring from the σκώληκες, i.e., larvæ found in the sediment of vinegar, was apparently even smaller than his brother mosquito, the ἐμπίς.[439]
As only with great care, and even then only on very fine wire, can the smallest modern hook, No. 000, be coaxed to impale a big gnat, the problem before the Ancients of impaling with a hook one, and this not even the largest, of the mosquito tribe seems insoluble. But perhaps Ælian’s κώνωψ (as probably also his ἵππουρος) was far larger than its descendant of the present day, or perhaps our author has substituted by mistake the mosquito for some larger but similar gnat.
CHAPTER XIII
AUSONIUS—SALMO, SALAR AND FARIO—FIRST MENTION OF THE PIKE
Ausonius (c. 310-c. 393 a.d.) is practically the last Latin writer within my time-limit (a.d. 500) who has allusions of interest to Fishing. In the fifth century, however, Sidonius, whose fishing and hunting interest apparently equalled his diocesan—his ‘Nolo Episcopari’ was, if fruitless, at once exceptional and genuine, for the see of Clermont had to be forced on his acceptance—tells us in a letter and in his poems of the catching of fish, especially by night lines in a lake on his wife’s property in the Auvergne.[440]
The tenth Idyll of Ausonius (“Ad Mosellam,” a great favourite with Izaak Walton), ranks, according to Mackail, “the writer not merely as the last or all but last of Latin, but also as the first of French poets.” It demands mention, quite apart from the vividness of its pictures, because it is the only fisher poem of any length in classical Latin, and because in it occurs the first mention of the Salar and the Fario.
Of the Salmo Pliny three hundred years previously was the first to speak.[441] The Greeks knew not the Salmon: at any rate, no opsophagist or other author notices the fish. Their silence is natural; the high temperature of the water forbids its frequenting the Mediterranean or its inflowing rivers.[442]
The length of the whole poem (483 lines) prevents entire quotation, although the touch and movement all through display fully the instinct and feeling for sport.
Pictures of the scenery along the banks of the Moselle are followed by the enumeration and characterisation of the fish in its waters rendered after the manner of the didactic epic. The poem furnishes a lively description of the fishermen of the Moselle, made from actual observation. Men in boats drag nets in midstream; men watch the corks of little nets in shallower water; men perched on banks or on rocks armed with rods scan the floats bobbing on the water, or jerk in the prey. But we search for fly-fishing in vain.
“And now, where the bank gives easy access, a host of spoilers are searching all the waters.[443] Alas! poor fish, ill sheltered by thine inmost stream! One of them trails his wet lines far out in mid-river, and sweeps off the shoals caught in his knotty seine; where the stream glides with placid course, another spreads his drag-nets buoyed on their cork-floats.
“A third, leaning over the waters beneath the rock, lowers the arching top of his supple rod, as he casts the hooks sheathed in deadly baits. The unwary rovers of the deep rush on them with gaping mouth—too late, their wide jaws feel through and through the stings of the hidden barb—they writhe—the surface tells the tale, and the rod ducks to the jerky twitch of the quivering horse-hair. Enough—with one whizzing stroke the boy snatches his prey slant-wise from the water; the blow vibrates on the breeze, as when a lash snaps in the air with a crack, and the wind whistles to the shock.
“The finny captives bound on the dry rocks, in terror at the sunlight’s deadly rays; the force which stood to them in their native stream languishes under our sky, and wastes their life in struggles to respire.[444] Now, only a dull throb shudders through the feeble frame, the sluggish tail flaps in the last throes, the jaws gape, but the breath which they inhale returns from the gills in the gaspings of death: as, when a breeze fans the fires of the forge, the linen valve of the bellows plays against its beechen sides, now opening, and now shutting, to admit or to confine the wind.
“Some fish have I seen who, in the last agony, gathered their forces, sprang aloft, and plunged head foremost into the river beneath, regaining the waters for which they had ceased to hope. Impatient of this loss, the thoughtless boy dashes in after them from above and strikes out in wild pursuit. Even thus Glaucus of Anthedon, the old man of the Bœotian Sea, when, after tasting Circe’s deadly herbs, he ate of the grass which dying fish had nibbled,[445] passes, a strange denizen, into the Carpathian deep. Armed with hook and net, a fisherman in the depths of that realm whose upper waters he had been wont to plunder, Glaucus glided along, the pirate of those helpless tribes.”
Whether the Salar and the Fario of the Idyll are, or are not, identical with the burn trout or salmon trout of modern days affords a problem for ichthyologists, not for me.
Ausonius is the first to mention not only the Salar and Fario[446] but also our Pike—Esox Lucius.[447]
“Lucius obscuras ulva cænoque lacunas Obsidet; hic nullos mensarum lectus ad usus Fervet fumosis olido nidore popinis,”
which Badham has loosely translated:
“The wary luce, midst wrack and rushes hid, The scourge and terror of the scaly brood, Unknown at friendship’s hospitable board, Smokes midst the smoking tavern’s coarsest food.”
The striking silence as to a fish so far-spread in his habitat and so notable in his habits as Esox lucius in all preceding Greek and Latin literature must excuse a semi-excursus.
Cuvier writes: “We are necessarily astonished that the Ancients have left us no document, so to speak, on a fish so abundant in Europe as the Pike ... a fish which the Greeks must have known. The word Esox occurs only once (Pliny, IX. 17) as an example of a large fish[448] comparable to the Tunny in form. In spite of Hardouin, I do not see that Esox of the Rhine is the Pike, or believe with Ducange that it is the Salmon. The name Luccio or Luzzo, by which we still call the Pike in this country, gives force to the supposition that the Latins of the time of Ausonius called it Lucius.”[449]
The astonishment at the absence of all reference to the Pike would be greatly increased, if the authors, or really Valenciennes, had lived to read later writers. Parkyn (op. cit., p. 131) cites the fish among those represented by the craftsmen of both Palæolithic and Neolithic Art in the caves of France and Spain. G. de Mortillet (op. cit., p. 220) claims that the remains of Pike in the Palæolithic age occur not infrequently. F. Keller (op. cit., vol. I. 537, 544) notes their presence in Neolithic finds at Moosseedorf, etc. Meek, Migration of Fish, p. 18 (London, 1917), states that the Pike “occupied the European region in Oligocene and Miocene times, and that the remains of Pike are found in the Pleistocene of Breslau.”
Attempts have been made to explain the absence of this fish previous to Ausonius by identifying Esox lucius with (A) the Oxyrhynchus, and (B) the Lupus. These seem to me unsuccessful.[450]
Petrus Bellonius among the early writers upholds the first identification. In his Observations de Plusieurs Singularitëz, Book II. ch. 32 (published 1553), “Le fleuve du Nil nourrit plusieurs autres poissons, lesquelz toutes fois ie ne veul specifier en ce lieu, sinon entăt que le Brochet y est frequent, et que nous avons difficulté de luy trouver une appellation antique, ie veul mŏstrer qu’il fut ancieňement appellé Oxyrynchus.”
His effort breaks down for three reasons. First, Ælian says that the Oxyrhynchus,—a fish supposed to have sprung from the blood of the dead Osiris, or to be the impiscation (if the word may be coined) of Osiris—although caught in the Nile (X. 46, 1, 12.), dwells mainly, or according to Plutarch, de Iside et Osiride, 7, altogether in the sea, whereas our Esox cannot endure sea-water. Second, the sharp pointed form of beak (whence the name) cannot possibly represent the broad goose-like mouthpiece of our Pike. Third, the size of the Oxyrhynchus, often 8 cubits or 12 feet in length,[451] proscribes the Pike.
Against the identification suggested by Franciscus Philadelphus of Esox lucius with Lupus two reasons lean heavily: (A) the etymological impossibility of λύκος (because of the wolflike nature of the Pike[452]) changing into Lucius, and (B) the Lupus is always in Greek called λάβραξ, never λύκος.[453]
The story of how the Lupus comes to his death by the Prawn can be read in Oppian[454] and in Ælian.[455] The fish, ever voracious, takes the prawns into his mouth by the thousand; these, unable to resist or retreat, jump about and puncture his throat and jaws so seriously that he soon dies of poison and suffocation.
Pliny (IX. 17), it has been claimed, under the word Esox intends our Esox lucius; but Cuvier maintains, and rightly, that his Esox signifies some very large fish, perhaps a Tunny.
Sulpicius Severus, a presbyter who lived in Aquitania (c. 365-425 a.d.) and penned an enthusiastic Life of S. Martin of Tour,[456] writes: “ad primum jactum reti permodico immanem Esocem extraxit.” It is not for me to discuss or decry this amazing statement of a very small net holding this monstrous Esox. But as the growth of a Pike under the most favourable circumstances is probably not more than 2 lbs. a year for twelve years when usually it lessens materially, I do suggest that the adjective immanem is hardly applicable (unless St. Martin’s biographer, perhaps also a fisherman, has lapsed unconsciously into a “fish story”) to a fish of about 20 or 30 lbs., and so would seem to confirm Cuvier.[457]
Pike, Carp, and Grayling were not apparently indigenous in England. They were introduced from the Continent at some undetermined date by one of the earlier religious orders for the better keeping of Fast Days, which as enjoined by the Church, even in Queen Elizabeth’s time, amounted to no less than 145 in number.[458]
The Pike, though known in the thirteenth century, was very scarce. Its price (as fixed by Edward I.) doubled that of the salmon, and exceeded ten times over that of either the turbot or cod. Even as late as the Reformation a large pike fetched as much as a February lamb, and a very small pickerel more than a fat capon. This ratio of prices recalls the rebuke administered by Cato the Censor to those prodigal Romans who were willing to pay more for a dish of fish than for a whole ox.
In view of the necessity for fish on the fast days, which claimed nearly half the year, the situation of twenty Sees (two Archbishoprics and eighteen Bishoprics) out of twenty-seven on what were then salmon rivers can hardly have been a geographical accident.
The Carp must also have been a scarce fish in Tudor England. Dame Juliana Berners writes, “Ther be fewe in Englande.” Holinshed, à propos of its scarcity in the Thames, states, “It is 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 introduction of carp.
A hackneyed couplet, frequently quoted for the purpose of 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 supper is said to have caused the end of Theodoric the Goth. In it he imagined he saw the face and head of Symmachus, whom he had just put to death; straightway he became so terror-stricken that within three days he had joined his victim.
THE NAKED FISHERMAN
OF THE VATICAN.