NORTHUMBERLAND 



Tweed is not to be taken in by this death-bed repent- 

 ance, and everybody knows the little passage-of-arms 

 the two rivers engage in at their confluence : — 



Said Tweed to Till, 



* What gars ye rin sae still ? ' 

 Said Till to Tweed, 



* Though ye rin wi' speed 

 And I rin slaw, 



Whar ye droon ae man 

 I droon twa.' 



The world hears much of Tweed salmon, but nothing 

 of Tweed trout. They are noble but capricious 

 fellows, not scarce monsters, but fairly plentiful, and 

 strenuous pounders too, fighting as becomes the fish of 

 such a river. Between Kelso and Berwick, at any rate, 

 this usually implies a boat, and when Tweed trout 

 come on the feed it means an hour or two of sport 

 such as seems to live in the memory. Even within 

 four miles of Berwick such hours and moments are not 

 infrequent, and anglers well known to me are some- 

 times thus blest. For myself, fairly weU as I know 

 the river, opportunities for this further intimacy 

 have been withheld. Life, alas ! unless you have 

 nothing else to do, is much too short for all the pleasant 

 schemes that hope lays up for some future day. The 

 same, so far as I am concerned, applies to the Coquet, 

 though the disrepute as regards trout into which 

 that famous river has of late years fallen may alleviate 

 one's regrets. No river in the past has been so closely 

 identified with Northumbrian angling lore as the 

 Coquet. None have inspired such a garland of praise 

 in prose and verse from Northumbrian pens, and there 



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