“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.”