AND ANGLING SONGS. 137 



some footing or other, from the Sound dues. The other Kawson 

 was stouter in person, and wore a brown intimidating wig ; and 

 as I don't recollect ever seeing him, although frequently in his 

 shop, astir on his pins, the impression remains with me that he 

 had a double share of impotency in his understandings. As it 

 was, Bill Kawson of the Old Town contrived, in spite of his 

 lame ness j to be much during the summer afternoons on the 

 shores of the Lethean stream ; and a more expert layer on of the 

 trouting-fly I have seldom met with ; nor, independent of this 

 qualification, was there at the time I speak of a neater- handed 

 dresser of fly-hooks, particularly of midges and OO's, or double- 

 nothings, as they were then termed, fashioned out of a scanty 

 twitch of hare-lug or water-rat fur, and a few fibres plucked 

 from the wing of some small bird. I preferred those taken from 

 the edged or back portion of the feather belonging to the pinion 

 of the starling, which exhibits two colours, or rather separate 

 shades of colour, corresponding to what is so much esteemed in 

 the composition of some of our killing Scottish salmon-flies, the 

 dun white-tip, for instance. Such midges seldom anything 

 bigger were the favourites from Slateford downwards. Stewart, 

 I see, in his deservedly popular treatise on angling, has introduced 

 Rawson's flies as subservient to summer fishing in our small 

 Scottish rivulets ; but I do not admit his own (S.'s) claim to be 

 the original constructor of them, or the earliest proclaimer of their 

 efficacy. They have been long held in repute throughout the 

 Lothians three among the veterans of our craft, and commended 

 in angling lore nearly half a century ago. As for bait-fishing, in 

 this .portion of the Water of Leith it was not much' practised ; 

 indeed, the only baits relied on were the minnow and salmon-roe 

 the latter introduced by my old friend the late Monsieur 

 Senebier, a fine-hearted, worthy angler of the bygone school, 

 whose notions of sport, however, were not always orthodox. 

 Senebier had the true touch at his finger-ends of an adept in 



