The Geoponika, whether written or redacted by Cassianus Bassus or Cassius Dionysius, or merely translated from a treatise by an ancient Carthaginian author, treats generally of agriculture. The twentieth book, however, deals with fish-ponds, fishing, and baits: unlike the Roman writers on vivaria, who tell us nothing as to the capture of the fish in them, the writer gives us instructive tips on baits.
One infallible recipe in chap. xviii. for collecting the fish—on the lines of Baiting the Swim—from its superstitious naïveté compels quotation: “Get three limpets, and having taken out the fish therein, inscribe on the shell the words, Ἰαώ Σαβαώθ, or ‘Jehovah, Lord of Hosts’; you will immediately see the fish come to the same place in a surprising manner.”[105] The two Greek words formed the so-called Gnostic formula and occur frequently on amulets, etc. The Geoponika adds immediately, “this name the Ichthyophagi use.”
About the fourteenth century a poem entitled De Vetula, attributed to R. de Fournival, got translated or imitated by Jean Lefevre. The fishing portion (68 lines) awakes our interest, as it shows that “more than six hundred years ago, and probably two hundred years before the date of The Boke of St. Albans, most of the modern modes of fishing were practised; for instance, the worm, the fly, the torch and spear, the night line, the eel-basket and fork,” etc.
This quotation from Westwood and Satchell might cause a casual reader to suppose that (α) from De Vetula, written only some two centuries before The Boke of St. Albans, we gain our first information “of these modes of fishing,” and (β) that these were “modern,” whereas Oppian had described them all, some thirteen hundred years before The Boke of St. Albans saw light.
With the exception of de Fournival and the elusive MS. of Dom Pichon,[106] which (written about 1420 but only rediscovered about 1853) probably stamps this monk as the first to practise artificial hatching, the Continent produced practically nothing till the appearance at Antwerp in 1492 of the first printed original book on Fishing, which as regards printing precedes The Boke of St. Albans.
This little Flemish work by an unknown author contains twenty-six chapters of a few lines, gives recipes for artificial baits, unguents, and pastes, and in the last two pages notes the periods when certain fish eat best. As its title sets out, it teaches “how one may catch birds and fish with one’s hands, and also otherwise.”[107]
The earliest description of fishing in the English language meets us in The Colloquy of Aelfric, a.d. 995, which Skeat first brought to notice and first “Englished” in The Oldest English Treatise on Fishing.[108] This takes the form of a short dialogue introduced into the Colloquy written by Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the purpose of teaching his pupils Latin, and therefore written in Anglo-Saxon with a Latin translation beneath. “It is arranged as a conversation between the master and his pupil; the latter in turns figuring as huntsman, fisherman, falconer.”
The length of the Colloquy, even of the fishing portion, prevents inclusion here, but the pupil’s objection to fishing in the sea, “because rowing is troublesome to me,” and to going a-whaling, “because I had rather catch a fish I can kill than one that can, with one stroke, kill both me and my comrades,” strikes me as well taken and pertinent.
A poem by Piers of Fulham, written about 1420 (the original MS. of which can be seen at Trinity College, Cambridge) claims next our notice. The author, judging from Hartshorne’s rendering, fully justifies the description of him as a somewhat pessimistic angler. He seems to have anticipated De Quincey’s “fishing is an unceasing expectation and a perpetual disappointment.” He fully appreciated its difficulties and disappointments, but clearly possessed some sportsmanlike instincts, as the following, among other, verses show[109]:—
“And ete the olde fishe, and leve the yonge, Though they moore towgh be uppon the tonge.”