A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle: Being a facsimile reproduction of the first book on the subject of fishing printed in England by Wynkyn de Worde at Westminster in 1496Berners, Juliana
Philosophy
A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle: Being a facsimile reproduction of the first book on the subject of fishing printed in England by Wynkyn de Worde at Westminster in 1496
Berners, Juliana
Fishing
Then follow directions how to dye and make lines and hooks. There
were evidently no manufacturers of hooks in the fifteenth century:
each angler made his own. The casting of plummets and forming of
floats succeed. The six methods of angling and the mode of playing a
fish are next treated, and the latter alone shows that Dame Juliana
must herself have been a proficient in the craft. No one but a
thoroughly good fisher could have summed up the art of playing a
fish in the words—“kepe hym euer vnder the rodde, and euermore holde
hym streyghte : soo that your lyne may susteyne and beere his lepys
and his plungys wyth the helpe of your croppe & of your honde.” The
place, the time of day, and the weather in which to fish, are next
particularly described after the exactitude peculiar to fishing
manuals of the olden time. These paragraphs are well worth the
consideration of a modern angler, especially the charge, “yf the
wynde be in the Eest, that is worste For comynly neyther wynter nor
somer y^e fysshe woll not byte thenne.”
The following part of the treatise, with what baits and how to angle
for each kind of fish, together with a brief description of each,
certainly furnished Walton with a model for some of his chapters.
This portion of her book is regarded by the authoress as most
necessary to be known and proficiency in carrying out her rules “is
all the effecte of the crafte.” She adds amusingly, “for ye can
not brynge an hoke in to a fyssh mouth wythout a bayte.” A few of
the quaint receipts of her age succeed; how to keep live baits, to
make pastes and the like, ending with a rule which is often given
to flyfishers for trout at the present day: “Whan ye haue take a
grete fysshe : vndo the mawe, & what ye fynde therin make that your
bayte : for it is beste.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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