Before quoting or dealing with it, I may be allowed a few words as to my running it to ground and the curiosity it excited among Angling scholars. Some years ago I read in an article that “fishing with the hair of a dead person, ἔδησεν νεκρᾷ τριχὶ δέλεαρ, was practised by the Egyptians, as is shown by discoveries during the last thirty years.” No authority, no reference was given. “Thirty years” opened up a search too extensive to waste on an anonymous statement. Even so this fishing with an unknown gut, dead men’s hair, kept worrying me. Aristotle and others had written of the use of horse-hair, but none of my friends or I had ever come across this Egyptian tackle. A great authority suggested that it was possibly taken from a body of which the hair continued to grow after death, and thus possessed much value because of length and strength. Instantly floated before us visions of obtaining by a new _Rape of the Lock_ this most desirable gut. Two nefarious courses were discussed. First, to rifle the coffin of Edward I., which when last opened in Dean Stanley’s time revealed (_teste_ the Verger) long hair still growing. Second, to raid the tomb of the Countess of Abergavenny (_née_ Isabella Despencer) in Tewkesbury Abbey, in which (to use Canon Ernest Smith’s words) “at the restoration of the Abbey in 1875 was disclosed bright auburn hair, apparently as fresh and as plentiful, as when the body was buried four and a half centuries ago.”[878] Do the Sagas or other ancient Scandinavian literature, in which descriptions of fishing frequently figure, allude to such use of dead men’s hair? Two of the foremost Scandinavian scholars could recall none. _The Kalevala_—the great Finnish epic—yielded no help. Nearest comes the account of “Gunnar’s Slaying” in _Story of the Burnt Njal_.[879] After his bowstring has been cut by his foe, Gunnar said unto his wife, Hallgerda, ‘Give me two locks of thy hair, and ye two, my mother and thou, twist them together into a bowstring for me.’ ‘Does aught lie on it?’ she says. ‘My life lies on it,’ he said; ‘for they will never come to close quarters with me, if I can keep them off with my bow.’ ‘Well,’ she says. ‘Now will I call to thy mind that slap in the face thou gavest me,’ and refused him her hair. Gunnar, just ere he falls, sings: “Now my helpmeet, wimple hooded, Hurries all my fame to earth. Woman, fond of Frodi’s flour Wends her hand, as she is wont.”[880] The passage containing the Greek words quoted in the article was eventually discovered on p. 82 of _Fayum Towns and their Papyri_, by Grenfell, Hunt, and Hogarth. καὶ δὴ χθόνα δυσπράπελον φθάσας ασχήμονας ἦλθε παρ’ ἠόνας ἒνθεν δὲ πέτραν καθίσας ὅτε κάλαμον μὲν ἔδησεν νεκρᾷ τριχὶ δέλεαρ δὲ λαβὼν καὶ ψωμίσας ἂγκιστρον ἀγῆγε βύθει βυθῷ * * * * * ὡς δ’ οὐδὲν ὅλως τότ’ ἐλαμμένον[881] I subjoin a translation:—