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CHAPTER V. 



ON TROUTING WITH THE FLY. 



AN inquiry into the origin and progress of the art of 

 angling, especially that department of it now to be 

 considered, would prove, I have no doubt, interestingly 

 curious. The primitive trouting-fly, and its inventor, 

 when and where it was first used, its success as a lure, 

 and numerous other circumstances attendant upon its 

 history, are all subjects of attraction to the angler. To 

 trace, also, the period of its introduction into Scotland 

 and to our Border streams, could not fail proving a 

 matter of regard to the antiquarian scholar. The 

 questions and points of research embodied in such an 

 inquiry indubitably stand connected with the customs 

 and manners of the age to which they carry us back, 

 and are linked, moreover, in all probability, with events 

 of wider, if not national interest. 



Who first captured a salmon with the artificial fly on 

 Tweedside? Was he a king or a baron bold- a fat 

 abbot or a cowled monk a reiver rude or stalwart 

 servitor a page or a minstrel ? Or was he, like worthy 

 old Izaak, in his heart an angler one that loved and 

 studied nature, that sought for music by shining streams 

 and under leafy boughs, to whom the sport was the more 

 delicious, because it brought him into companionship with 



