THE IRISH FISHERIES 



water, makes some unintelligible remarks, and then a 

 young fisherman leans over the bulwarks, grabs the 

 drenched man by the neck and shouts laughingly, "Tve 

 got the old chap ! " and in a minute he is hauled on deck. 

 But such easy escapes are not necessarily the rule. 



If the torn net cannot be repaired, or if the ground is 

 too hopelessly rocky to risk another shot with the trawl, 

 the men will sometimes make good their day's work by 

 throwing in what lines they have on board, hastily baited 

 with the most likely fish they happen to have caught. 



Line-fishing here is fairly lucrative, for it can be done 

 at almost any time ; and in Ireland, as in other Catholic 

 countries, the demand for fish is very great greater than 

 the trawlers alone could supply, even if they went off 

 more regularly ; and the huge halibut and ling that come 

 up on the hooks are easily gutted and salted. Ling are 

 not quite so common here as further north ; the Hebrides, 

 and perhaps the Orkneys, are the best grounds; still, a 

 very large number may be taken by the Cork and Water- 

 ford men. " Ling " is simply another form of the Dutch 

 or Saxon " lang," and the name was applied to this fish 

 because it was regarded as merely a long hake; the 

 Germans still call it the " long fish." It is of the same 

 family as the cod, and is from three to four feet long ; its 

 markings are rather pretty ; the belly is silvery, and the 

 back anything from grey to olive-green ; all its fins are 

 tipped with white, and the tail has a black bar across it. 



Halibut are a much larger fish, and weigh anything up 

 to three and even five hundred pounds, and sometimes 

 measure six feet from tip to tail. They are flat, ugly 



199 



