92 THE PIKE 



menaced, and eventually the logic of the situation was 

 felt to be unanswerable. On the Thames in conse- 

 quence a prohibitory bye-law has within the last 

 decade been passed and is enforced rendering trolling 

 for pike according to the ancient customs a specific 

 offence. In my boyhood no one had apparently 

 ever heard a whisper against what everybody con- 

 sidered a legitimate form of sport, and, indeed, 

 the pleasure to be derived from trolling was un- 

 doubtedly great so great that I will ask the reader's 

 toleration if I dilate upon it. 



The beginning of trolling takes us back to far-off 

 days, and the young reader at any rate will probably 

 agree with me that it is interesting to trace the evolu- 

 tion of this bygone business. Let us start, there- 

 fore, with the famous 'The Treatyse of Fysshynge 

 with an Angle,' attributed rightly or wrongly to 

 Dame Juliana Barnes (or Berners). If the work 

 was really written by this pious lady (though the 

 history of the ' Treatyse ' is another story), she had 

 a very workmanlike notion of the manner of fishing 

 for pike ; but it may here be remarked that the state- 

 ment in the books of the last century that pike were 

 introduced into England in the reign of Henry VIII. 

 does not at all tally with the good dame's references 

 in the pamphlet which bears the date of 1450. 



