XIX NOVEMBER ON THE TILL o ^ 



" Says Tweed to Till, 



1 What gars ye rin sae still ?' 



Says Till to Tweed, 



* Though ye rin' wi' speed and I rin slaw, 

 Where ye droon ae man I droon twa.' " 



THE first day that I fished the Till I was too 

 busy comparing it with the kindly rivers of the 

 South to spare a thought for the Tweed, and, besides, 

 the Tweed was probably also blighted by the depress- 

 ing drizzle which damped my early reflections, filled 

 me with contempt for the sturdy North, and showed 

 me what misery can be caused by the use of the 

 dry fly. But I found out one memorable thing on 

 that inauspicious occasion, and that is that, no matter 

 where you find him, the grayling is a cause of stumbling 

 to the innocent of speech. In the Till this fish was, 

 probably is still, unsophisticated so far as the dry fly 

 is concerned. Nevertheless, on that rainy, dismal day 

 I enacted the same tragi-comedy that is so well known 

 in the South. The fish came up in one pool with great 

 regularity, rising at nothing, so to speak, for there was 

 no insect on the water, and they utterly and absolutely 

 disregarded my fly, though I changed it frequently, 

 though I put it over them even unto thirty times. 



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