The seas differ, but the gods precated are the same. If in the following verses you substitute for “Christ, King of the Elements” Poseidon, King of the Waters, for “brave Peter” ruseful Hermes, and for “Mary fair” Aphrodite, you have the tutelary deities of fishing. The spirit of the prayer and promise of the firstling remain unchanged.
For century after century the fishermen of the Isles have handed down orally to generation after generation the Gaelic prayer with which they set out to sea.[115]
“I will cast down my hook: The first fish which I bring up In the name of Christ, King of the Elements, The poor man shall have for his need: And the King of the Fishers, the brave Peter, He will after it give me his blessing. Columba, tender in every distress, And Mary fair, the endowed of grace, Encompass ye us to the fishing bank of ocean, And still ye to us the crest of the waves!”
The rarity—I have not met its mention—and curious nature of a volume published at Frankfort in 1611, even if more than a century after The Boke of St. Albans, compels some reference.
Conjecturæ Halieuticæ by Raphael Eglinus consists of a long dissertation based on the strange markings of three fishes (pictured on its title-page), two caught in Scandinavia on the same day, November 21, 1587, and the third in Pomerania on May 21, 1596. These markings, supposedly chronological, provide their author with a basis for various prophecies and warnings of the evils to come in Central Europe, especially in Germany.
As neither text nor type peculiarly tempt to perusal, I have not found it easy to disentangle the disasters or allot to each country its individual woe. Deductions from Daniel, the patriarch Joseph, and of course the Apocalypse enable Eglinus to establish definitely to his own satisfaction the future advent, in one or other of the Central Kingdoms, of Antichrist.
Nor, again, is it easy to gather whether a time-limit is set for his appearance, or whether the prophecies apply to twentieth-century events. Alas! also, the data do not enable me with certainty from the very promising entries from Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria to single out the precise potentate who best fills the bill, or closest answers to the author’s Antichrist.[116]
Space debars from one fascinating branch of my subject—the superstitions of Fishing. Their far-flung web enclosed the ancient piscator more firmly than his brother venator, or, indeed, any class save only the “medicine men” of Rome.
Nor could their successors disentangle themselves, as witness the recipe given above by Bassus for inscribing on the limpets’ shell the Gnostic formula, and Mr. Westwood’s words, “There is, in fact, more quaint and many-coloured superstition in a single page of Old Izaak than in all the forty-five chapters of the twentieth Book of the Geoponika. Silent are they touching mummies’ dust and dead men’s feet—silent on the fifty other weird and ghastly imaginations of the later anglers.”[117]
And even the modern angler, if he thoroughly examine himself, must confess that some shred of gossamer still adheres. Does he not at times forgo, even if he boast himself incredulous of consequence, some act, such as stepping across a rod, lest it bring bad luck? If particular individuals rise superior, the ordinary fisherman in our present day still avows and still clings to superstitions or omens. Let him in the South of Ireland be asked whither he goes, meet a woman, or see one magpie, and all luck vanishes.[118] A dead hare (manken) regarded as a devil or witch a century ago brought piscator nigh unto swooning.[119]