AND ANGLING SONGS. 57 



paying tithe, and how he himself, who commanded the ap- 

 proaches, never happened upon such big fish'? ' Aiblms,' quoth 

 he shrewdly, 'it's no the fish that are muckle bigger up the 

 waiter, but them that tak' them are bigger story-tellers,' a more 

 expressive but less polite word being used by him as the clincher 

 than the one I have introduced. 



After lashing for three successive days, without the ghost of a 

 rise, the stretch of water assigned to me, which I admit, how- 

 ever, was in galloping humour, and quite out of order the whole 

 time, I began to conclude that I had come to Fochabers on a 

 fool's errand. As a final resort I took to trout-fishing, with 

 results which did not exceed my expectation, and were quite on 

 a par with the very unpromising nature of the channel, which, 

 until on its approach to Garmouth, where the river becomes split 

 up into several currents, is of the barest description, void of 

 nutriment and shelter-places. The generality of the trout, in 

 consequence, are not much longer than one's finger. Lower 

 down, where the Spey is broken up into sections, and islands 

 have been formed, covered over with brushwood, the shelter and 

 feeding-grounds improve ; but the class of trout peopling the 

 runs and side-stretches which there abound is not in keeping 

 with the appearance of the place ; nor did I find it an easy task 

 to force my way through the tangled bushes, and over the 

 uneven ground, strewn with drift-wood, which form part and 

 pertinent of the north bank of the river. 



At Garmouth, I certainly expected to fall in with a schule of 

 finnocks, it being the time of the year when they are usually most 

 plentiful, and the river being apparently in fine trim. I only 

 succeeded, however, in capturing one, and that a sorry specimen 

 of the fish above-named, which, along with a few common trout, 

 formed the whole spoils of the day. Next morning the Spey 

 was in full spate, torrents of rain having fallen during the night. 

 It continued in a disturbed state up to the 14th of August, when 



