20 Ifcfnas of tfoe 1Rofc, IRffle, anfc 6un 



to take a Goose or Gander or Duck : take one of the 

 Pike lines I have showed you before : tye the line 

 under the left wing, and over the right wing, about 

 the body, as a man weareth his Belt : turne the Goose 

 off into a pond, where Pike are, there is no doubt of 

 sport, with great pleasure, betwixt the Goose and the 

 Pike : It is the greatest sport and pleasure that a 

 noble gentleman in Shropshire doth give his friends 

 entertainment with." 



Barker does not specify in what the sport consists, 

 but I think the following anecdote will indicate the 

 nature of the pleasure (!) which "a noble gentleman 

 in Shropshire" and his friends derived from the 

 spectacle. 



Some years ago a farmer living near Lochmaben, 

 Dumfriesshire, kept a gander, who not only had the 

 trick of wandering himself, but also delighted in leading 

 his cackling harem to circumnavigate their native lake, 

 or to stray amidst the fields on the opposite shore. 

 Wishing to check this habit, the farmer one day seized 

 the gander just as he was about to spring into his 

 favourite element, and tying a large fish-hook to his leg, 

 to which was attached part of a dead frog, he suffered 

 him to proceed on his voyage of discovery. As had 

 been anticipated, this bait soon caught the eye of a 

 greedy pike, which, swallowing the deadly hook, not only 

 arrested the progress of the astonished gander, but forced 

 him to perform half a dozen .somersets on the surface 

 of the water ! For some time the struggle was most 

 amusing, the fish pulling, and the bird struggling with 

 all its might; the one attempting to fly, the other to 



