The subject of fish and fishing recalls some recollections of angling experiences on the mainland. In boyhood I used sometimes to assist at a ‘burning o’ the water,’ when all the shepherds, poachers, and idlers of the district assembled to take part in the fun and excitement of spearing salmon or grilse. The Gala Water on these nights presented a singularly picturesque sight--the lurid glare and smoke of the torches, the cautious movements of the men in the river, the shouts of those on the bank as a successful ‘leister,’ that had transfixed a fish, was handed over to them, and the chorus of shepherds’ dogs that were among the most active and excited of the spectators. The account of the night exploits at Charlie’s Hope in _Guy Mannering_ is as truthful as it is graphic. Among the lakes of Sutherland there is one not far from Beinn Griam which, an enthusiastic angler assured me, consists of ‘three parts of fish and one water.’ Another sporting friend, not to be outdone, lauded the extraordinary abundance of game in his native island. ‘There is a stream there,’ he would say, ‘once so stocked with trout that I never failed to fill a big basket. But now the feathered game has become so abundant that though the fish are as plentiful as ever, I can hardly get any, for almost every time I cast my line I hook a grouse in the air.’ A former well-known witty editor of an Edinburgh newspaper was fond of escaping to the banks of the Yarrow or the Ettrick for a few days’ fishing. One Monday morning he was accosted by the clergyman who had been preaching the day before, and who, though a stranger to him, asked a number of questions about his sport. The editor replied civilly to the battery of queries, and at last began to catechise in his turn. [Sidenote: A FISHER OF MEN] ‘And are you too a fisher?’ he asked. ‘Oh no, I have no time for angling. You see I am a fisher of men.’ ‘And have you had much success in your line?’ ‘Not nearly as much as I could wish.’ ‘Ay, I can believe that. I looked into your creel [the church] yesterday and there were very few fish in it.’[30] There is a story told of an amateur angler who with an attendant was fishing, from the English side, the Carham Burn, which at one part of the border separates the two kingdoms. His hook had caught under the opposite bank, and he was under the impression that it had been taken by a large fish which had run up from the Tweed. His old companion, however, disabused him by drily remarking, ‘Ay, ye hae got a big fish, nae doot; ye hae heukit auld Scotland.’