AND ANGLING SONGS. 2O3 



palm, I shall not say to indifferent, but to inferior hands ; yet 

 were his success on St. Mary's to be taken as a criterion of my 

 friend's piscatorial powers, I don't require to bring better evi- 

 dence than what would be supplied by Tibby herself, who, honest 

 old lady, was never addicted, as far as I could judge, either to 

 favouritism or to flattery. I have fished along with W. in many 

 parts of Scotland, and always had occasion to look upon his skill 

 as a fly-fisher as something extraordinary. Whether, many years 

 ago, on the Water of Leith and St. Mary's Loch, on the rivers 

 and lakes of Argyleshire, Perthshire, and the upper North, or, 

 in a later day, on Tweed, Teviot, and the Solway Esks, the 

 successes consequent on his fascinating power in this capacity 

 stand out in bold relief to my own humbler performances. More 

 than once, as his individual share of our day's booty, I have 

 assisted him to tell off from twenty to six-and-twenty dozen of 

 river or lake trout, a number which it may be thought it is 

 quite impossible in the course of a day's fishing for a single 

 hand to overtake, or for any piece of water to yield. As a 

 general sportsman, in connexion with Scotland, my friend W. 

 had few equals ; and had only the cacoethes scribendi taken pos- 

 session of him, from what I know, the reading world would, long 

 ere this, have discovered much of the sire in the son, that 

 poetry, at least, of action, feeling, thought, and imagination, 

 improved by extensive and varied reading, which forms so dis- 

 tinguished a feature in the Recreations of Christopher North. 



SONG THE YELLOW FINS OF YARROW. 



i. 



THE yellow fins o' Yarrow dale ! 



I kenna whar they Ve gane tae ; 

 Were ever troots in Border vale 



Sae comely or sae dainty ? 



