Halcyon Days. 295 



no sic fishen' in Coquet now as when I was a lad. It 

 was nowte then but to fling in and pull out by tweeses 

 an' threeses if ye had sae mony heuks on, but now a 

 body may keep threshin' at the water a' day atween 

 Hallysteun an' Weldon an' hardly catch three dozen, 

 an' money a time no that. Aboot fifty years syne I 

 mind o' seein' trouts that thick i' the Thrum below 

 Rothbury that if ye had stucken the end o' yor gad 

 into the waiter amang them it wud amaist hae studden 

 upreet." * 



These halcyon days, if they ever existed, have 

 gone, never to return, but still poaching in Coquetdale 

 is not a lost art. Gangs of men work the torches 

 and the leisters, while those who like to be solitary 

 prefer to work the gaff or the cleek. Mr. Dixon, in 

 his account of salmon poaching, gives this incident : 



" One dark November night about eight o'clock, a 

 few years ago, I was returning home from the country, 

 when, walking along the highway, a few miles from 

 Rothbury, I heard, but could not see, that some one 

 was approaching ; suddenly, with a bang and a rattle, 

 something was thrown into the roadside ditch ; then I 

 saw a form looming through the darkness. According 

 to the fashion of us country folk, I shouted, ' It's a dark 

 night ; ' immediately the well-known voice of a country- 

 man (who lived close by) replied, ' Oh ! that's ye, Mr. 

 Dixon, aa' thought ye war somebody else : wait a bit, 

 or aa' git thor things oot the dykeside.' Thereupon, 

 after grappling about in the dark, he produced a lantern, 

 a salmon gaff, and a poke : shouldering these imple- 

 ments, we went chatting along the road together until 

 we came to a small burn a tributary of the Coquet 

 the spot where my poaching friend was 'gan te try for 



* " Rambles in Northumberland,'' by Stephen Oliver, the younger. 



