Michael Drayton thus explains the etymology of Trent, and assigns to it a mystic significance when he tells the tale of ... A long-told prophecy, which ran Of Moreland, that she might live prosperously to see A river born of her, who well might reckoned be The third of this large isle: which saw did first arise From Arden, in those days delivering prophecies. * * * * * To satisfy her will, the wizard answers, Trent. For, as a skilful seer, the aged forest wist, A more than usual power did in that name consist, Which thirty doth import; by which she thus divined, There should be found in her of fishes thirty kind; And thirty abbeys great, in places fat and rank, Should in succeeding time have builded on her bank; And thirty several streams from many a sundry way Unto her greatness should their watery tribute pay. On the same side may be quoted Camden and Spenser and Milton, yet philology is too strong for poetry, and modern scholars declare that the name Trent has nothing to do with the Latin word for thirty or any of its modifications in the Romance languages, but is of Celtic origin, is only a contracted form of Derwent, and means river-water. The first of the two words which compose the dissyllable Derwent, and enter into the monosyllabic Trent, is that which appears in the Doire, Dora, Douro, Durance, and other European rivers; the second is indicated by the Latin Venta, a name borne by more than one riverside town in Roman Britain. The Trent and its tributaries were noted of old as fish-streams, and even now, after years of neglect and poaching, it would not be difficult to make up the "thirty kinds of fish" which were once said to people its waters. Isaak Walton has made the upper reaches of the Dove classic ground; and there, as in the Blyth, and in gravelly parts of the main river, one may yet see "here and there a lusty trout and here and there a grayling." Eels were and still are numerous in the more muddy parts of its bed; pike are also common, though the giants of olden days are vanished like the Rephaim; for in the last century, a county historian tells us, fish weighing more than twenty pounds were not seldom caught, and one monster of thirty-six pounds is said to have been found dead. The barbel also is a Trent fish, and the stream may claim the salmon. One was caught many years ago so far away from the sea as Rugeley, but it was white and out of season. Swans in several districts add to the beauty of its waters, and build their nests by its side among the willow-beds and reeds.