This mode of fishing is also peculiar to the Wye and Severn. The boat is fixed by two long stakes sideways across the eddy, and a wide net, like a bag with its open end stretched between two poles, is let down so as to offer a wide open mouth to the stream which carries the closed end of the bag-net under the boat. When a salmon strikes the net the open end is raised out of the water, and the fish is taken out behind. This clumsy process of catching salmon is the ancient traditional method used in the Wye and Severn fisheries, and so tenaciously is it adhered to that the fishermen can hardly be induced to substitute more efficient modern improvements.
So much for the cytweras and the hæcweras.
The fisheries are now almost exclusively devoted to salmon. About the date of the Norman Conquest [p154] the manor of Tidenham was let on lease by the Bishop of Bath to Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury,[185] and as a portion of the rent reserved was 6 porpoises (merswin) and 30,000 herrings, it would seem at first sight that the main fisheries there were for herrings rather than salmon, but it is more probable that the lease was a mutual arrangement whereby the archbishop's table was provided with salmon from the west, and the monks of Bath with herrings from the east.
Turning from the fisheries to the services, they are described as follows:[186]—
General services of geneats.
Of Dyddanhamme gebyreð micel weorcrǽden.
Se geneát sceal wyrcan swá on lande, swá of lande, hweðer swá him man byt, and ridan and auerian, and láde lǽdan, dráfe drífan, and fela óðra þinga dón.
To Tidenham belong many services.
The geneat shall work as well on land as off land, whichever he is bid; and ride, and carry and lead loads, and drive droves, and do other things.
And after thus stating, to begin with, the general services of all geneats, the document proceeds, like the 'Rectitudines,' to describe the special services of the gebur, or holder of a yard-land.