to Manetho (Syncelli Chronicon, 40), by Mercurius Trismegistus.* Leaving these amusing fables, we find the earliest authentic mention of angling in the book of Job (according to the probable chronology of Usher, B.C. 1520), where the Lord asks him (xli., 1, 2): "Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou put a hook in his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?" The first verse clearly shows that angling, fishing with hook and line, was practised at that early day. The second verse has been a fruitful source of critical conjectures to both Jewish and Christian commentators, for the word translated hook signifies properly a reed, meaning, according to the Rabbi Salomon, an iron hook bent like a reed; Mercator calls it a hook made of a reed; the learned Bochart, in his Hierozoicon (treatise on the animals of Scripture), supposes that it is "a noose (capistrum) made of a pliant reed," as fish are sometimes snared among us; and that the word, rendered "thorn" in the second clause of the 66 verse, means a hook sharp as a * Janus had the credit of having taught the Italians among other useful arts that of fishing, venari pisces (Alexander Sardus, De Rerum inventoribus, ii., 16); but Janus was the Osiris of the Etrurians, who followed closely the eastern mythology, and the legend only throws back the invention to the primitive ages. The reader will find similar traditions among the Phoenicians by consulting Eusebius (Præp. Evan., 1), who had in his eye this passage of Sanchoniatho's Cosmogony: "In times long subsequent to these (those of the fourth in descent from Æon), were born of the race of Hypsuranius, Agreus and Halieus, the inventors of the arts of hunting and fishing, from whom huntsmen and fishermen derive their names. A son (of Halieus) called Chryson, who is the same with Hephaestus, exercised himself in words, charms and divinations; and he invented the hook, the bait and the fishing line, and boats of a light construction; and he was the first that ever sailed." "Quels souvenirs touchans cette ligne peut rappeler! Elle retrace à l'enfance, ses jeux; à l'âge mûr, ses loisirs; à la vieillesse, ses distractions; au cœur sensible, le ruisseau voisin du toit paternel; au voyageur, le repos occupé des peuplades, dont il enlève la douce quietude; au philosophe l'origine de l'art."—Lacépède, Histoire des Poissons. thorn;" but Pinda, Schmidt, and some others, discover a reference here to the method which fishermen had (and still have) of stringing their fish, after their backs were split open, along a reed, when offering them for sale, or hanging them up to be dried or smoked. If I might hazard a conjecture among the rest, it would be that the reference is to some mode of spearing fish with a sharp barbed reed. This will be more admissible, if we interpret the 26th verse (in our translation, "Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?" which is according to Bochart's reading) as Le Clerc and some others: "Canst thou put him bodily into a wicker pannier? or his head into a fish-basket:" vasculis vimineis piscatoribus portatis (Scottice, Creel)? Whatever interpretation we take (for the "reed" is a sore puzzle to the critics), the passage shows that various methods of fishing, certainly angling, were well known.* Spearing seems to me likely to be more ancient even than taking fish with a hook, as men would be tempted to thrust such a weapon at a good sized fish before they would go through the process of inventing and making a hook on which to fix bait. The Trident of Neptune, which aspiring mythologists have made to be a symbol of his power over three elements, is clearly a fish-spear a little out of proportion. His Oceanic majesty may find a copy of his sceptre on board any ship he visits as it crosses the line, and a salmon leister (waster, as the Scotch call it) is the same implement with two prongs added to the three. The other passage quoted by our author from the Old Testament is in Amos iv., 2 (B.C. 787), and not remarkable, except as showing that fish hooks were in common use. To these may be added, Isaiah xix., 8; Habakkuk i., 15. Indeed, the Jews were much addicted both to the net * Goguet (Book ii.) says with truth, that nets are known only to men advanced in the arts of life. So Plutarch De Soler. Anim. and the angle, as appears from many passages, none of which, however, throw any light on our subject. The farthest stretch of profane writers into the history of fishing is the mention made by Diodorus Siculus (Lib. i., 52), of Maris the immediate predecessor of Sesostris (see Larcher, Chron. d'Herodote, and Bähr on Herodotus ii., 100), which, according to Champollion Figeac, would put him about B.C. 1500 (perhaps a hundred years too soon). This Maris, the historian says, constructed the famous artificial lake called by his name, which was eighty stadia long and pinλepov (say four hundred feet) broad; and it cost fifty talents to open and shut the flood gates. In the middle he erected two sepulchral pyramids, one for himself and the other for his wife, with marble statues of them both on a throne. But it was also a vast fish pond, having in it twenty-two different kinds of fish, which increased so fast, that the most extensive preparations for salting them were not sufficient for the purpose. The revenue derived from the fishing he assigned to his wife, who had thus out of that source a talent ($10,000) a day for pin money. The passage is curious, as showing the importance of fish as an article of food.* Homer speaks distinctly of angling in the sea, Iliad xxiv., 80-82; and as his text has puzzled not a little both ancient and modern writers, I give the original; he is speaking of Iris plunging into the sea: 'Η δὲ, μολυβδαίνῃ ἰκέλη, ἐς βυσσὸν ὅρουσεν, The difficulty is to know what the ox-horn had to do with the angling apparatus. Pope shuns it altogether, unless he mistook it for an angling rod: Calmet on Numbers xi., 32, thinks that the Israelites practised the salting of fish for food, having learned it in Egypt. "As, bearing death in the fallacious bait, From the bent angle sinks the leaden weight." The other translators do no better. Clarke, in his Latin, puts the lead into the horn. Plutarch (On the Comparative Craftiness of Water and Land Animals) says, that "some gather from it a practice of the ancients to use bull's hair in making fishing lines; kipas then signifying hair, whence Kepaobai, to be shaved. But this is not so, for they used horse hair, the best that of stallions, as the hair of mares' tails is rendered brittle by their urine." A writer in a late magazine (see Gentleman's Mag., April and June, 1846) thinks that some kind of a float was made of the horn; a not very probable conjecture, when there are so many substances better for the purpose. Aristotle (in some work now lost) supposed, that the lower end of the line was armed with a small piece of hollow horn, which the fish had to swallow to get at the bait. Suidas, on the word kipas, says that it was a "pipe of horn to guard the line from the teeth of the fish," which is no doubt nearest the truth, as there was no necessity for making the fish swallow it (see the Scholia on the passage, and Dammii Lexicon). A passage, having the same difficulty, occurs in the Odyssey, xii., 251–254,* which for want of a better translation I give rather closely thus: As when the angler, his long rod in hand, * There is a good imitation in the European Magazine, April, 1790. "On a rock's protruded side, Scooped and hollowed by the tide, Here are three points settled, 1. The horn was distinct from the bait; 2. It was cast deep into the sea; 3. It could not have been otherwise than light, for it was suspended from the tip of a long (zspiμńkei) rod; all of which confirmed our opinion already expressed as to what was meant by the stately old chronicler of heroic deeds in the grandiloquent periphrasis. He would not have omitted the sonorous ǎypavλoto Boòs had he been speaking of a horn spoon. While here we may cite for what they are worth some lines from the Paraleipomena (xi., 61–64) of Quintus Calaber (about 500 A.D.), where speaking of Cleon and Eurymachus, two heroes of Syma slain by Polydamas, he says, that they were Both skilled in all the angle's treachery, The word we have rendered by spear, is rpiain or trident. The Smyrnæan imitator is true to the habits of the times he describes, as may be seen by another reference to the Odyssey (xii., 330), where godlike men, when pinched for a dinner, fished with crooked hooks, yvaμrõis üymorpōloi;* nay, they even dived for oysters, as we learn from the Iliad (xvi., 747), where Patroclus, having with a stone struck down the charioteer of Hector, who pitches in an unseemly fashion on the plain, scoffingly compares his fall to one diving for oysters: As divers plunge into the stormy main The luscious oyster from his bed to gain. (I give a rough rhyme, as Pope despaired of getting the Billingsgate into English heroics.) "Crooked fishing hooks occur also in the Odyssey, iv., 369. |