ffatbers of BnoUno 3 



coming to more modern times, I shall introduce the 

 reader to several " veterans practised in war's game " 

 who have found delight in the most peaceful of sports. 

 There was, for example, that stalwart warrior and 

 devoted patriot, Scotland's national hero, Sir William 

 Wallace. If we are to believe his minstrel trumpeter, 

 " Blind Harry," Wallace was a keen fisherman, and 

 it was on one of his fishing excursions that he fell 

 in with certain minions of Earl Percy, who "was 

 captain then of Ayr." Percy's men demanded the 

 whole of "Wullie's" well-filled creel. He good- 

 naturedly offered them part, but they would have 

 "all or nothing." Whereat the stalwart Scot's temper 

 rose, and when one of Percy's men drew a sword 

 to enforce his demand, " Wullie," with no weapon but 

 a " pont-staff," floored him and disarmed him. Then 

 the row began ; and when it ended the big Scotsman 

 stood unvanquished, with three of his assailants stretched 

 dead before him. A tragic ending to a day's angling, 

 and the precursor of many still bloodier days, both 

 for Scot and Southron ! 



More ardent anglers, however, than the men of the 

 sword have been they of the gown and cassock. Their 

 name is Legion, and the first of them that comes under 

 the historian's ken is Piers of Fulham, whose manuscript 

 treatise on fishing the earliest known I have seen in 

 the library of my own old college, Trinity, Cambridge. 

 The date assigned to it is 1420, and the author's 

 address to his readers, stripped of archaisms in 

 spelling, runs thus : " Lo, worshipful sirs, hereafter 

 followeth a gentlemanly treatise full convenient for 



