xii Preface. 



of this century, for large falmon and pike. An angler who 

 hooked a filh when armed with this ponderous rod (which mufl 

 from its description have been nearly eighteen feet long, as 

 large as a modern falmon rod), would adl as Izaak Walton 

 would have done in the like predicament, — throw the rod in to 

 the fifh and recover it when he could. But the lady is won- 

 derfully pleafed with this mighty rod, and thus concludes — 

 "Thus fhall ye make you a rodde foo preuy that ye maye 

 walke therwyth : and there Ihall noo man wyte where abowte 

 ye goo. It woll be lyghte & full nymbyll to fyffhe wyth at 

 your lufle. And for the more redyneffe loo here a fygure," 

 and fhe adds the curious woodcut which the reader may fee 

 reproduced at page 5. 



Then follow diredions 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 

 carting of plummets and forming of floats fucceed. The 

 fix methods of angling and the mode of playing a fifli 

 are next treated, and the latter alone fhows that Dame 

 Juliana muft herfelf have been a proficient in the craft. No 

 one but a thoroughly good fifher could have fummed up 

 the art of playing a fifli in the words — " kepe hym euer 

 vnder the rodde, and euermore holde hym flreyghte : soo 

 that your lyne may fufteyne 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 fifli, 

 are next particularly defcribed after the exaditude peculiar 

 to fifhing manuals of the olden time. Thefe paragraphs are 

 well worth the confideration of a modern angler, efpecially 

 the charge, "yf the wynde be in the Eeft, that is worfte 

 For comynly neyther wynter nor fomer y^ fyfflie woll not 

 byte thenne." 



