FISHING ETCETERAS. 119 



over rivers are made of twigs, they (the boats) not oblong, nor 

 pointed, but almost round, or rather triangular, covered within 

 and without with raw hides.' [Now canvass painted or pitched.] 

 ' When a salmon, thrown into one of these boats, strikes it 

 hard with his tail, he often oversets it, and endangers both the 

 vessel and the man.' 1 



This beats the hitherto undefeated record of the Mullingar 

 boats, which were described by my dear old friend Dr. Peard, 

 in his ' Year of Liberty,' as ' perfectly safe provided you didn't 

 cough or sneeze ' ! . . . It is seldom that the medio tutissimus 

 ibis maxim finds more apt illustration. 



It appears, however, that they can manage, on occasion, to 

 get two people into one of these * tarred clothes-baskets,' as a 

 ducked cockney once sarcastically described the nautilus of 

 Wales. Whether either of these navigators could really wield 

 and cast with a salmon rod 2 and a fly is a problem in hydro- 

 statics I have never presumed personally to solve, but that 

 plenty of salmon are or used to be killed in them without the 

 rod, I think I can avouch ! For trout fishing they seem well 

 suited to their habitues^ but certainly coracle-fishing is an art 

 which does not come by nature. The method of propulsion 

 is by paddling, the paddle sometimes used in front 3 and pulled 

 towards the rower, the blade being turned side- or edge-ways 

 when recovered. This is slightly complicated in practice, and 

 rather difficult to describe theoretically. * If worked at the 

 side, and the paddle used perpendicularly, the coracle only 

 spins round without progressing *[W. H. If.] a, result which 

 tends to instruction rather than edification. 



1 Annals and Antiquities of the Counties and County Families of Wales. 

 Longmans, Green, Reader, & Co., 1872. 



2 Thousands of salmon have been killed with rod and fly out of coracles 

 but with only one man in the coracle. It requires long practice and cleverness 

 to do it ; guiding the coracle and minding the rod at the same time is not 

 easy. BEAUFORT. 



5 The paddle is more often used at the side, being fixed between the arm 

 and the body, and worked, like the single scull in a sea -going boat, with either 

 hand the paddle almost perpendicular and at the side, instead of behind like 

 the scull in a sea boat. BEAUFORT. 



