FISH AND ANTICHRIST— SUPERSTITIONS 59 



potentate who best fills the bill, or closest answers to the 

 author's Antichrists 



Space debars from one fascinating branch of my subject — 

 the superstitions of Fishing. Their far-flung web enclosed the 

 ancient piscator more firmly than his brother venator, or, 

 indeed, any class save only the " medicine men " of Rome. 



Nor could their successors disentangle themselves, as 

 witness the recipe given above by Bassus for inscribing on the 

 limpets' shell the Gnostic formula, and Mr. Westwood's words, 

 " There is, in fact, more quaint and many-coloured super- 

 stition in a single page of Old Izaak than in all the forty-five 

 chapters of the twentieth Book of the Geoponika. Silent are 

 they touching mummies' dust and dead men's feet — silent on the 

 fifty other weird and ghastly imaginations of the later anglers." 2 



And even the modern angler, if he thoroughly examine 

 himself, must confess that some shred of gossamer still adheres. 

 Does he not at times forgo, even if he boast himself incredulous 

 of consequence, some act, such as stepping across a rod, lest 

 it bring bad luck ? If particular individuals rise superior, the 

 ordinary fisherman in our present day still avows and still 

 clings to superstitions or omens. Let him in the South of 

 Ireland be asked whither he goes, meet a woman, or see one 

 magpie, and all luck vanishes.^ A dead hare {manken) regarded 

 as a devil or witch a century ago brought piscator nigh unto 

 swooning.4 



Women seem usually fatal to good catches ; as one instance 

 out of many we read in HolUnshed's Scottish Chronicle, that 

 " if a woman wade through the one fresh river in the Lewis, 



^ S. Bochart, Hierozoicon (Leipzig, 1796), p. 868, telling of a fish whose 

 right ear bore the words. There is no God, but God, and left, Apostle of God, 

 and neck, Mahomet, concludes with a parody of Virgil, Buc, iii. 104. 



" Die quibus in terris inscripti nomina Divum 

 Nascantur pisces, et eris mihi magnus Apollo ! " 



A magnus Apollo to graduate the claims of the different potentates would 

 indeed be a boon. The capture of a fish some two years ago near Zanzibar 

 with Arabic inscriptions — legible only by the faithful — caused immense excite- 

 ment, as possibly foretelling the speedy end of the world. 



* Angler's Note-Book, ii. p. 116. 

 ^ Angler's Note-Book, i. 44. 



* Dougal Graham, Ancient and Modern Hist, of Buckhaven (Glasgow, 

 1883), vol. ii. p. 235. 



