ZTbe jfatbcrs of Bugling 9 



and that it cannot claim to be written by a woman for 

 women is evident from such passages as the following : 

 " He that would be a compleat sportsman must first 

 acquire to himself the noble art of Patience. His 

 temper must be calm and serene, and his constitution 

 strong enough to bear the vicissitude of all weathers. 

 He must rightly understand the practical part, as well 

 as theory," etc., etc. From which it will be seen that 

 the compiler, though ostensibly appealing to " female 

 anglers," did not take the trouble to alter the gender 

 in copying from the works of male anglers addressed 

 to their own sex. 



That the author of the " Treatyse of Fysshinge " 

 was a man I cannot doubt, for it is against reason to 

 suppose that any woman should have so completely 

 mastered the technicalities of angling in an age when, 

 so far as there is any evidence to show, women 

 never practised the sport. And that the prioress of 

 a nunnery, the rules of which were exceptionally 

 strict, should have been such an accomplished and 

 experienced sportswoman as to be capable of writing 

 a mediaeval " Badminton " on angling is rather more 

 than the present writer, at any rate, is able to 

 swallow. 



Those who credit Dame Juliana Bernes with the 

 authorship of the " Treatyse of Fysshinge with an 

 Angle" would have us believe that the Prioress of 

 Sopwell Nunnery, with the necessity of providing fish 

 for fast-days ever before her, cultivated the art of 

 angling to meet that necessity. But then every mon- 

 astery and convent had its fish-ponds, which were netted 



