SPILLET FISHING. 141 



am probably the happiest of all, for I trust that the pleasant 

 narratives which for two nights robbed me of my rest, like 

 *' the thousand and one" of Scheherazade, have at last drawn 

 to a close. 



Did a man wish to moralize upon the unrealities of human 

 expectations, let him hang over a spillet, and be interested in 

 its success. Conceive an eternity of line with a thousand 

 hooks at given distances as every snoud is placed a fathom 

 apart, a person less conversant with figures than Joe Hume, 

 may guess the total. This endless continuity of hemp must 

 be carefully taken up. Do it slowly, and the thing is worse 

 than a penance to Lough Dergh ; and if you attempt rapidity, 

 the odds are that the back-line breaks, and a full hour will 

 scarcely remedy the mischief. 



It would puzzle a philosopher to determine the state of 

 affairs in ten-fathom water ; and if you shoot in foul ground, 

 you will probably lose the spillet, or with a world of labour 

 disentangle a moiety from rocks and sea- weed. Should it, 

 however, have escaped those casualties, after a two hours' 

 probation, while you listen to a Drimindhu* from the skipper, 

 and the exact state of the herring- market from the crew, you 

 proceed to raise it. Up it comes that vibratory motion 

 announces that a fish is fast upon the snoud ; conjecture is 

 busily at work, and there is a difference of opinion, whether 

 " the deceived one" be a ''codling or red-gurnet. It appears 

 a worthless, rascally, dog-fish ! A succession of line comes 

 in star-fish, and "few and far between," some solitary 

 plaices and flounders at last a victim heavy and unresisting. 

 An indistinct" glance of a dark object broad as a tea-tray, 

 brings the assistant spilleteer, gaff in hand, to the quarter. 

 Alas ! the turbot in expectation, turns out to be a ray ! Often 

 have I shot a spillet under favourable circumstances and in 

 approved ground, and lost time, hooks, and snouds, and my 

 whole reward was a boat-load of skates and dog-fish. 



We ran quickly with a leading wind, to the fishing-bank, 

 and having shot the spillets a tedious thing enough stood 

 for a rocky part of the coast, where the coal-fish are always 

 abundant. This water- sport (viz., coal-fishing) is unknown 

 ** to the many/' and yet to him whose hands are not unac- 



* A melancholy Irish ditty. 



