various destructive methods of capturing the fish declared to be
illegal, and many a practice that in earlier days was regarded as
"sport" may now be indulged in not at all. Some of those practices were
picturesque enough in themselves, and brimmed over with excitement and
incident; indeed, as portrayed in the pages of _Guy Mannering_, they
were, to use Sir Walter's own words, "inexpressibly animating." Such,
for instance, were "burning the water" and "sunning." Others, such as
rake-hooking, cross-lining, and decking salmon out of shallow water,
were mere poaching devices with little redeeming virtue, commending
themselves to nobody, except as a means of filling the pot.
Then there was the taking of salmon from the "redds" as they spawned, of
all methods of capture the least allied to "sport," for the fish then
were soft and flabby, and almost useless as food. Nevertheless, there
was in that, too, a strong element of excitement, for the weapon used,
the clodding or throwing leister, required no mean skill in the using.
This throwing leister was a heavy spear, or rather a heavy "graip,"
having five single-barbed prongs of unequal length but regularly
graduated. To the bar above the shortest prong was lashed a goats'-hair
rope, which was also made fast to the thrower's arm, carefully coiled,
as in a whaling-boat the line is coiled, so that it may run free when
the fish is struck. This leister (or waster) was cast by hand at fish
lying in not too deep water--generally, in fact, when they were on the
spawning beds. It was with this weapon, as one may read in Scrope's
_Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing_, that Tam Purdie--Sir Walter's
Purdie--when a young man captured that "muckle kipper" that seemed to
him to be the "verra de'il himsel'," so big was he. One Sunday forenoon,
as he daundered by the waterside (instead of being, as he should have
been, at church) Tam saw him slide slowly off the redd across the
stream.
"Odd! my verra heart lap to my mouth whan I gat the glisk o' something
mair like a red stirk than ought else muve off the redd. I fand my hair
creep on my heid. I minded it was the Sabbath, and I sudna hae been
there. It micht be a delusion o' the Enemy, if it wasna the de'il
himsel'."
All that peaceful Sabbath day Tam's meditations were disturbed by
visions of great salmon. And as at family worship that night his master
read aloud from "the Word," Tam quaked to realise that no syllable had
penetrated his dulled ears, but that, with the concluding solemn "Amen,"
had come to his mind the resolution to clip the wings of the Sabbath,
and at all costs to capture that fish before anyone could forestall him.
According, as soon as his too ardent mind judged that the hands of the
clock must be drawing near to midnight, Tam arose, and, rousing a farm
boy to bear the light for him as he struck, with "clodding waster" in
hand set off for the river. Now this clodding waster (or leister) was a
possession of which Tam was inordinately proud; amongst his friends its
temper and penetrating power were proverbial. It had been made for him
by the Runcimans of Yarrowford, smiths celebrated far and wide for the
marvellous qualities they imparted to all weapons made by them. As
Purdie said: "I could hae thrawn mine off the head o' a scaur, and if
she had strucken a whinstane rock she wad hae been nae mair blunted than
if I had thrawn her on a haystalk." Yet when anon he came to cast this
leister at the muckle kipper, "the 14 lb. waster stottit off his back as
if he had been a bag o' wool." That was proof enough, if any were
needed, that a fish so awesome big must be something uncanny and beyond
nature. In a cold sweat, Tam and the boy fled from the waterside and
cast themselves shivering into their beds over the byre at home. But as
he lay awake, unable to close an eye, Purdie's courage crept back to
him, and again he resolved that have that fish he would, muckle black
de'il or no. So again he roused his now reluctant torch-bearer, and
having with difficulty convinced him that the fish was actually a fish,
and not the devil let loose on them for their sin in having broken the
Sabbath--"Irr ye _sure_, Tam, it wasna the de'il?" the boy
quavered--before daylight they again found the spot where the great
kipper lay. And whether it was that this time, knowing that it really
was Monday morning, Purdie threw with easier conscience and consequently
with surer aim, or to what other cause who may say, but certain it is
that the man and the boy, soaked to the skin and chilled to the marrow,
triumphantly bore home that morning to the mill, where Purdie's father
then lived, a most monstrous heavy fish.
The leister used in "sunning" or in "burning the water" differed
somewhat in shape from the weapon with which Tam Purdie secured his big
kipper. It, too, had five single-barbed prongs, but these were all of
equal length, and the wooden handle of this implement was straight, and
very much longer than that of the throwing leister; sixteen feet was no
unusual length for the handle of the former weapon.
Burning the water, as its name implies, was a sport indulged in at night
by torchlight. Sunning, on the other hand, was the daylight form of
"burning," but it could be practised only when the river was dead low,
and then not unless the weather were very calm and bright. The salmon,
as they lay in the clear, sun-lit water, were speared from a boat, and
vast numbers were so killed; indeed, the frightened fish had small
chance of escape, for spearing began at the pool's foot, and men with
leisters blocked the way of escape up stream. No doubt into this, as
into its kindred sport "burning," excitement in plenty, and boisterous
fun, entered largely; many a man, miscalculating the depth of water in
which a fish lay, to the unfeigned delight of his comrades, took a
rapid and involuntary header into the icy stream. But both sports
partook too much of the nature of butchery--carts used to be needed to
carry home the spoil--and they are "weel awa' if they bide." "Bide" they
must, though in times not remote one has heard faint whisperings of the
burning of the waters in some far-off district of the Border. Nor are
there wanting those who yet openly defend the practice, deeming it
indeed no sin, but rather a benefit to the water, to take from it some
of the superfluous fish, which, say they, would otherwise almost
certainly die of disease and contaminate the stream.
Yet, if in our day the water has been burned, it cannot have been
oftener than once in a way, and probably no great harm has resulted. Nor
can the game be worth the candle, one could imagine, for watchers now
are many and alert, in the execution of their duties much more
conscientious than was common in days gone by. There are none now, we
may hope, like the bailiff of Selkirk in the early part of last century,
who constantly find salmon in close time mysteriously appearing on their
dinner-table. Yet this early nineteenth-century bailiff could truly
swear that such a thing as salmon on his table he never had seen. For it
appears that his wife, canny woman, having first brought in a platter of
potatoes, was wont to tie round his eyes a towel before she brought in
the boiled fish; and before she again took away the towel, every vestige
or trace of salmon had been carefully removed from the room. Obviously
that bailiff, honest man, could not report a breach of the law which had
never come under his observation!
Of various forms of netting which in olden days were legal, but now,
happily, are forbidden, there was that by means of the Cairn net, a most
destructive form, and that by the Stell net, which was worse; but to
describe these obsolete instruments is unnecessary, and might be
tedious. There was also the Pout net, an implement somewhat like a very
large landing-net, wherewith a man might readily whip many a fish out of
flooded water. That, however, need not be considered as in these days a
serious form of poaching.
Of all poachers of salmon, perhaps that one with whom one is least out
of sympathy was the man--is he now extinct, one wonders?--who, fishing
with trout-rod and fly, and bearing on his back the most modest of trout
creels, instantly, when he came to a likely cast for a fish, was wont to
change his trout fly for a salmon one. If he hooked a salmon and a
watcher appeared on the scene, invariably the fish "broke" him. If no
watcher put in an appearance, generally the angler found that he had
sudden and pressing business at home, and that fish left the riverside
snugly smuggled inside the lining of a coat, or in a great circular
pocket made for the purpose. It was such an one that, nigh on a hundred
years ago, Mr. Scrope caught red-handed one day on his rented salmon
water near Melrose. The man was a guileless creature from Selkirk, too
innocent, it appeared, to be able to account for the salmon flies in the
inside of his dilapidated hat, or for the 10 lb. salmon reposing in his
pocket.
"Dodd! I jalouse it's mebbes luppen in whan I was wadin' the watter," he
said with artless smile. "They're gey queer beasts, fish."
Still to this day there may perhaps be found instances where they have
"luppen in" to a too capacious pocket; for the nature of the salmon has
not changed, and they are still "gey queer," and are found occasionally
in "gey queer" places. There was, one remembers, not so long ago, a
certain boy from Eton, or from some other of the great public schools,
who, with a sister, wandered one lowering autumn evening by the brown
waters of a Border stream. And how it happened there is none to say,
save those who dimly saw it, but there came a vision of a water-bailiff,
scant of breath, pounding heavily across the fields, whilst a maiden,
fleet of foot, sped away through the gloom, sore handicapped by the
antics of a half-dead and wholly slippery fish that nothing would induce
to stay inside her jacket. And whether she won free, I know not. But it
is said there was salmon steak for breakfast next morning in that
maiden's home.
Surely the devil played but an amateur part when he essayed to break
down the stern virtue of St. Anthony with temptations no stronger than
those over which the good Saint so easily triumphed. Had he clapped the
holy man down by the banks of a Border stream when fish were running in
the autumn, there might have been another tale to tell--that is, if a
close season had existed in mediæval times. I trow we should have seen
St. Anthony nipping hot-foot over the hill, with the bosom of his monk's
gown protruding in a way at which no honest water-bailiff could possibly
have winked. Things as strange have happened in our own day; but maybe
they were due to that drop of reiver blood which courses more or less
swiftly through the veins of most Border folk, and which, now that there
are no cattle to "lift" from the English side, impels them for want of
better to lift from the water a salmon whenever opportunity may offer.
There was lately, it is said, a lady of ancient Border lineage, who sat
one day with a grown-up daughter in the library of her ancestral home.
It was the hunting season, and at intervals the two glanced anxiously
from the windows in full expectation of seeing the hounds sweep in full
cry over the fields of which the library commanded a view.
"They must be coming," cried the daughter, starting up. "There's one of
the stable-boys running over the lawn."
And, indeed, past the old trees a youth was to be seen skirting the
lawn, flying down terraces, making towards a burn which ran through the
grounds before joining a small tributary of Tweed. At best speed mother
and daughter followed the boy, who had halted excitedly by the burn
side. But what the cause of his agitation might be they could not for
the moment conjecture; certainly the burn had no apparent connection
with hunting, nor indeed was there sign of horse or hound. What they
found was something very different. A mile or so up the rivulet there
was a farm-steading, and in that steading was the usual water-driven
threshing-mill. It happened that this particular day had been selected
by the farmer as one on which he might advantageously thrash part of his
crop. Consequently, the water from his mill pond was now making a
temporary spate in the little stream, which, in the course of nature,
had caused many salmon to run their noses into the burn's unexplored
meanderings. When the two ladies reached the stream's bank, they found
the stable-lad up to his knees in the water, and a fish, not over
silvery, already floundering high and dry, far from its native element;
in shallow, broken water, two or three others vainly struggled to gain
higher latitudes.
"Oh-h! _mother!_" cried the daughter excitedly.
And said the elder lady with little hesitation:
"Get them out, Jim; get them out. We'll kipper them." Then, after a
thoughtful pause: "I think I'd like to catch one myself."
So into the water she plunged, and the three--the lady and her daughter
and the stable-boy--were so busily and excitedly plowtering in the burn,
engaged in this most nefarious and illegal capture of fish, that they
failed to hear or to see that hounds and a full field had swept over the
hill in front, and had checked, in full view of them, at a small strip
of wood in their immediate neighbourhood; in fact, there was little
doubt these poachers must, a few minutes before, have headed the fox.
Most embarrassing of all, however, was the fact that amongst the riders
was one in immaculate pink, whose face flushed a deeper shade than his
coat as he pulled up not a hundred yards distant. For what must be the
feelings of a Justice of the Peace, of strictest principles, who,
without warning, lights upon the wife of his bosom, his innocent
daughter, and one of his servants, all engaged in the most barefaced
poaching?
"Good _Gedd!_" he was heard to say--if indeed the words were no
stronger--as, mercifully, the hounds picked up the scent again at that
moment, and the chase swept on.
There are none so blind as those who will not see, however, and nothing
more was ever heard of this episode. But report has it that the lord of
that manor has no great partiality for kippered salmon.
But salmon-poaching is perhaps not entirely confined to the human
species. There have been instances known where dogs have been the most
accomplished of poachers--generally, it must be said, in conjunction
with a two-legged companion. The lurching, vagabond hound that one sees
not infrequently in certain parts of the country, following
suspicious-looking characters clad in coats with suspiciously roomy
pockets, might, no doubt, be easily trained to take salmon from burns,
or from the shallow water into which, in the autumn, the fish often run.
And, to the present writer's mind, a black curly-coated retriever
recalls himself as a poacher of extreme ability. A most lovable dog was
"Nero," but--at least as regards salmon--he was a most immoral breaker
of the law. It was well, perhaps, that he lived in days when
water-bailiffs were neither so numerous, nor so strict in the execution
of their duties, as they now are, for nothing could cure him of the
habit, when he saw a fish struggling up a shallow stream, of dashing in,
seizing that salmon in his teeth, and laying it at the feet of his
embarrassed master, who, far from being connected with the poaching
fraternity, was, indeed, a magistrate, to whom the gift of a salmon in
such circumstances brought only confusion.
After all, is there not generally a something lovable in the man who
poaches purely for _sport's_ sake? Who can fail to mourn the end of
poor, harmless, gallant, drucken Jocky B----, who gave his life for his
love of what he conceived to be sport? "Here's daith or glory for
Jocky," he cried, when the watchers surrounded him, leaving but the one
possibility of escape. And in that swollen, wintry torrent into which he
plunged, the Bailiff Death laid hands on Jocky. Perhaps even now in the
shades below, his "ghost may land the ghosts of fish"; mayhap, with a
cleek such as that to which his cold fingers yet stiffly clung when they
found him in the deep pool, he may still, now and again, be permitted
with joyous heart to lift from the waters that ripple through Hades
spectral fish of fabulous dimensions.
Salmon do not now appear to be so numerous in Tweed as apparently they
were eighty or a hundred years ago; it is said that in 1824, when the
nets had been off the lower reaches of the river for the Sunday,
sometimes as many as five hundred salmon and grilse would be taken at
Kelso of a Monday morning by the net and coble. It is a prodigious haul
of fish. One's mouth, too, waters as one reads of the numbers that were
in those days taken in most stretches of the river by rod and
line--though probably a goodly number of them were kelts.
Yet, even now, if in the month of November, when waters are red and
swollen, one stands by Selkirk cauld, the fish may be seen in numbers
almost incredible. By scores at a time you may see them, great and
small, hurl themselves into the air over the great wave which boils at
the cauld-foot. And the bigger fish, landing--if one may use the
term--far beyond the first upheaval of the wave, will rush stoutly up
the swirling, foaming rapid, perhaps half-way to the smooth water above
the cauld, ere they are swept back, still valiantly struggling, into the
seething pool below. The smaller fish less frequently succeed in
clearing the wave, but generally pitch nose foremost into the water
where it begins to rise, and are hurled back head over tail in impotent
confusion. Some of the heavier fish, too, after their jump may be seen
to come down with portentous skelp on top of the retaining wall of the
salmon-run in mid-stream, thence--apparently with "wind bagged"--to be
ignominiously hurried back into the deep pool from which they have but
the moment before hurled themselves. The general effect of the spectacle
is as if one watched an endless kind of finny Grand National
Steeplechase; one grows dizzy with the constant rise and fall of
innumerable fish over the big jump, and it is almost a relief to turn
and watch the bailiffs with their landing-nets lift from the shallow,
rushing water at the cauld-side fish after fish, which they carry up and
carefully put in the smooth water at top of the cauld. How many hundreds
of salmon one may thus see in the course of a couple of hours, on a day
when the river is in spate too heavy for the fish to succeed in
ascending the cauld, it is impossible to estimate.
Big fish do not seem to have been so common in olden days as they are
now. Mr. Scrope mentions that in all his twenty years' experience he
never caught one above 30 lbs. weight, and very few above 20 lbs. Fish
of that size are common now almost as sparrows in a London street, more
especially in the lower stretches of Tweed. Thirty pounds hardly excites
remark, and salmon up to 40 lbs. or over are caught with fly nearly
every autumn. Much larger fish, too, have been taken of recent years;
one of 57 lbs. was landed in 1873, one of 57-1/2 lbs. in 1886, and
various fish of over 50 lbs. weight at later dates, whilst in December
1907 a dead fish of 60 lbs. was found in Mertoun Water.
Then there was that giant fish lost near Dryburgh by Colonel Haig of
Bemersyde, "perhaps the greatest salmon ever hooked in Tweed," as Sir
Herbert Maxwell remarks in his _Story of the Tweed_. Lost fish are
proverbially the largest fish, but in this instance it was not the
fisher who boasted of the weight. Late one evening, fishing in the Haly
Weil, the Colonel got fast in something heavy which, resistless as fate,
bored steadily down the river a full half mile to the Tod Holes in
Dryburgh Water. Here, heavy and sullen, and never showing himself, he
ploughed slowly about, and Colonel Haig, already overdue at home, became
impatient, believing that he must have foul-hooked a moderate-sized
fish. Darkness was fast coming on, and at last the Colonel told his
attendant to wade in and try to net the fish.
"He's that muckle I cannot get him in, sir," cried the lad after a time.
But the Colonel could not wait.
"Nonsense," he said. "Get his head in. I can't stop here all night."
Then came the not uncommon result of trying to net a big fish in an
uncertain light; the rim of the net fouled the gut cast, and away went
the fish. It would spoil the story not to tell the rest of it in Sir
Herbert Maxwell's own words.
"The Colonel did not realise the magnitude of his disaster until two or
three weeks later, when he happened to be waiting for a train at St.
Boswells Station. The porter came to him and said:
"'Hae ye ony mind, Colonel, o' yon big fush ye slippit in the Tod Holes
yon nicht?'
"'Oh, I mind him well,' replied the Colonel; 'a good lump of a fish he
was, I believe, but I never saw him rightly.'
"'Ay,' said the other dryly; 'yon wad be the biggest sawmon that ever
cam oot o' the water o' Tweed, I'm thinking.'
"'Why, what do you know about him?' asked the Colonel.
"'Oh, I ken fine aboot the ae half o' him, ony way,' replied the porter.
'Ye see, there was twa lads clappit amang the trees below the Wallace
statue forenenst ye, waiting till it was dark to set a cairn net, ye
ken. Weel, didna they see you coming doun the water taigled wi' a fish?
And when ye cam to the Tod Holes, they saw ye loss him, and they got a
visee o' the water he made coming into the east bank, ye ken. There's a
wee bit cairn there, ye ken, wi' a piece lound water ahint it, where
they jaloused the fish wad rest himsel a wee. Weel, they waited till it
was mirk night, and then they jist whuppit the net round him, and they
sune had him oot. He was that big he wadna gang into the bag they had
wi' them; so they cuttit him in twa halves; and the tae half they brocht
to the station here to gang by rail to Embro'. Weel, if the tither half
was as big, yon fish bud to be seeventy pund weight; for the half o' him
I weighed mysel, and it was better nor thirty-five pund. Ay, a gran'
kipper!'"
Yet occasionally, in olden days, a salmon big as Tam Purdie's muckle
kipper was got by rod and line. In 1815 Rob Kerss, the famous "Rob o'
the Trows," hooked a leviathan in Makerstoun Water--the biggest fish, he
said, that ever he saw; so big that it took even so great a master as
Rob hours to land, and left him "clean dune oot." At last the fish lay,
a magnificent monster, stretched on the shingle. With aching arms but
thankful heart, Rob moved away a trifle to lift a stone wherewith to
smite his captive over the head. And with that, Rob's back being partly
turned, from the tail of his eye he saw the salmon give a wammle. In
novels, it is usually "but the work of a moment" for the hero to turn
and perform some noted feat. Here, alas! it was different. It was but
the work of a moment, certainly, for Rob to turn, and to jump on the
huge salmon. But there all resemblance to the typical hero ceased, for
the line fouled his foot, and broke as it tripped him up; and before the
fisherman knew where he was, he and the salmon were struggling together
in deep water. It was only Rob that came out. _Sic transit_. Trust not a
fish till the bag closes on him.
THE GHOST THAT DANCED AT JETHART
Six centuries before Edward the Peacemaker reigned over Britain, the
people of Scotland knew the blessing of having for a King one who was
known as "The King of Peace."
Alexander the Third was a child of eight when he inherited the Scottish
crown, and was only two years older when he married the Princess
Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry the Third of England. Even in his
early boyhood the young King displayed a wisdom, an energy, and a
forcefulness in his management of affairs that marked him for a great
ruler, and made his royal father-in-law's fond vision of gradually
gaining such an ascendancy over Scotland, that he might in time be able
to claim that kingdom as an appanage of England, fade altogether away.
Alexander had only recently come of age when he had to defend his
country against her old enemies, the Norsemen, and his complete victory
was a triumph for him and for his people. Nineteen years later, his only
daughter, Margaret, married Eric, King of Norway, and the Scots saw
peace for them and for their children smiling on them from every side.
But if prosperity as a monarch was his, misfortune overshadowed King
Alexander's private life. His wife died; his children died. His eldest
son, born at Jedburgh, and married, as a lad, to a daughter of the Count
of Flanders, died childless. His daughter, the young Queen of Norway,
died the year after her marriage, leaving behind her the baby who has
come down to us, even through chilly history, as a pitiful little
figure, known as "The Maid of Norway."