98 SALMON FISHING IN THE TWEED 



his colour. I fear I looked a little elate on the 

 occasion ; assuredly I felt so. 



" There's a fine fish now, a perfect beauty ! " 



" Hout tout ! that's no fish ava." 



"No fish, man! What the deuce is it, then? 

 Is it a rabbit, or a wild duck, or a water-rat ? " 



"Ye are joost gin daft. Do ye no ken a troot 

 when ye see it ? " 



I could make nothing of this answer, for I 

 thought that a trout was a fish ; 1 but it seems I 

 was mistaken. However, I saw the envy of the 

 man ; so I determined to inflict him with a settler 

 at once. For this purpose I inveigled him to where 

 my five -pounder was deposited ; then kneeling 

 down, and proudly removing the bracken I had 

 placed over him, there lay the monster most mani- 

 fest, extended in all his glory. The light, the 

 eye of the landscape, before whose brilliant sides 

 Runjeet Sing's diamond, called "the mountain of 

 light," would sink into the deep obscure ; dazzled 

 with the magnificent sight, I chuckled in the 

 plenitude of victory. This was unbecoming in me, 

 I own, for I should have borne my faculties meekly ; 

 but I was young and sanguine; so (horresco refer ens) 

 I gave a smart turn of my body, and, placing an 

 arm akimbo, said, in an exulting tone, and with a 

 scrutinising look, "There, what do you think of 

 that ? " I did not see the astonishment in Sawny's 



1 Salmon, salmon trout, and bull trout alone, are called fish in the 

 Tweed. If a Scotchman means to try for trout, he does not say ' f I am 

 going a fishing" but " I am going a fronting." 



[It requires some courage to criticise the phraseology of such a 

 master as Scrope, but let the stranger beware of applying the term 

 (< fish" to anything of less dignity than a salmon in Scotland. ED.] 



