NET BEFORE ROD— ANGLING 455 



to our aid by his assurance that " the allusion to silk threads 

 twisted into fishing lines would seem simply to be to the 

 marriage of the princess and the young noble — not to the 

 lady's holding fast of wifely ways to complete the virtues of 

 reverence and harmony." i Another interpretation — " the 

 metaphor indicates that the union of man and wife, like the 

 silk twisted into fishing lines, is a lasting one " — recks not of 

 post-war divorce courts, or post-war tackle. 



The next reference in the Shih Ching strikes a sad note. 

 Unless we knew that it was not the grand-daughter of the 

 peaceful King, we might almost fancy we hear the heroine of 

 the silk-line boast bewailing her virginal home, 



" With your long and tapering ^ bamboo rods you angle in 

 the Ch'i " (a river in Honan). " How should I not think of 

 you ? But I am too far away to reach you. When a maiden 

 leaves her home to be married, her parents and brethren are 

 left behind. Calmly flows the current of the Ch'i. There are 

 oars of cypress and boats of pine. Would that I might drive 

 thither and rid me of my sorrow." 



The third reference strikes also a note of sadness, caused 

 now by the absence of a husband. " When he went a-hunting, 

 I put the bow in the case for him. When he went a-fishing, 

 I arranged his hne for him. What did he take in Angling ? 

 Bream and tench — bream and tench, while the people looked 

 on to see." ^ 



Angling appears in the Mu t'ien tzii chuan, a work assigned 

 to the tenth century B.C., but probably of much later date. 

 " The pith of the ti, tied half-way up the iishing-line," about 



1 op. cit., vol. IV., Pt. I., 36. 



"^ Ibid., IV. 5, V. " Tapering " according to Prof. Giles should be " very 

 long." To judge from representations, the rod was about six feet long, 

 although for fresh-water turtles a stouter one of four feet was more 

 usual. 



^ Ibid., II. 8, ii. (3, 4). Neither the value nor the valour of the fishes 

 seem worthy of onlookers. Perhaps the husband had invented — China seems 

 to have anticipated most of our inventions — and was displaying the Double 

 Spey or Steeple cast. But a rod, like a wedding, invariably attracts a crowd, 

 as a stroll on. the Seine any Sunday will verify. Some years ago Mr. Kelson 

 and I were trying a new salmon rod, faute de mieux, from the south bank of 

 the Thames. In ten minutes the Surrey side of the Waterloo Bridge was 

 black with folk, hoping, perchance, to witness a capture of the mythical 

 Thames salmon. 



