Superstitions of every sort and almost incredible dictate to the ancient and to the modern fisherman what are the good and what the bad days for plying his craft, or setting his sail. Their cousin, imitative magic, plays no small part in deciding his bait. But enough here of fishing superstitions. Are they not writ large in Pliny, Oppian, Plutarch, in the _Folk Lore Records_, and larger, geographically, in that masterpiece, _The Golden Bough_? The most incredulous, if there were one chance in a hundred of the operation ensuring adeptness in our craft, would willingly sacrifice in conformity with Australian superstition the first joint of his little finger.[120] Nor, again, if only the most moderate success resulted, would any of us utter a belated plaint at his mother imitating her Fijian sister and throwing, when first a-fishing after childbirth, his navel-string into the sea, and thus “ensuring our growing into good fisherfolk.”[121] FOOTNOTES: [82] Jowett’s _Translation_, vol. iv. p. 343. The whole passage, which is too long for quotation, is fairly typical of Platonic methods. [83] The _italics_ are mine. [84] 23 Law Times, 439. [85] In H. Grassmann’s _Wörterbuch zum Rig-Veda_, twice. One cannot indict a whole sex for inebriety on the strength of a single passage, but fish, despite _matsya_ being masculine in Sanskrit, are always feminine according to the _Avesta_ (vol. v. p. 61, of _Sacred Books of the East, Pahlavi Texts_): “Water, Earth, Plants, and Fish are female, and never otherwise.” [86] For help and guidance as to India I am greatly in debt to my old Oxford friend, Dr. A. Macdonell, Boden Professor of Sanskrit, and to his two books, _History of Sanskrit Literature_, p. 143, and Macdonell and Keith, _Vedic Index of Names and Subjects_ (London, 1912), vol. ii. p. 173. [87] _The Story of the Flood in the Catapatha Brāhmana._ [88] _Sacred Books of the East_, xx. 252. Cf. x. 41. [89] _Ibid._, xvi. 7. Cf. xxiii. 239, and v. 65. [90] De Gubernatis, _Zoological Mythology_ (London, 1872), vol. ii. 331, f. [91] De Gubernatis, _Zoological Mythology_ (London, 1872), vol. ii. 331, f. [92] _The Pancatantra_, I., Story 17. [93] _A Group of Hindoo Stories_, by an Aryan (really F. F. Arbuthnot) (London, 1881), p. 35. [94] Book I., Story 12 and 15. Book XI., Story 4. Here the fisherman, when asked by the king the sex of a fish, saves the situation and collars 2000 dinar by ejaculating the blessed word, not Mesopotamia, but “Hermaphrodite,” which he had once overheard two students casually employ. [95] Sir William Jones holds that this collection of Fables “comprises all the wisdom of Eastern nations, and was surpassed in esteem and popularity by few works of Oriental literature.” [96] No Quatrain of Omar Khayam sings of the craft. [97] See _Idyll_ XX. of Theocritus, _postea_ 135, note 1, for another example.