260 SOMERSETSHIRE COOMBS 



resentment which the writer once saw excited by the 

 simple narrative of a method of taking trout in the 

 water-meadows, given by an Andover rustic : " When 

 us sees a big 'un, us shuts down the sluice ; and then 

 us runs he up and down until he be that blowed he 

 can't a-move ; and then us gropples he/' For the 

 " fishing " entails hard and enduring toil before the 

 trout can be transferred from the brook to the tub 

 on the cart which waits to carry them to their new 

 home. Such, at least, was the experience of the last 

 occasion of the kind in which the writer assisted. 



The scene was in a narrow coomb, down which ran 

 one of the minor tributaries of the river Yarty, on 

 whose banks Sir Francis Drake was born, and beyond 

 which lies the Tudor manor-house, which was part of 

 the grant awarded to him by Queen Elizabeth, with an 

 estate, held, like the house, by his descendants, within 

 sight of the birthplace of the first circumnavigator 

 of the globe. The stream ran almost beneath the 

 windows of an even more ancient manor-house, 1 

 dating from the days of Henry VII., on the 

 Somerset side of the Yarty, and the trout-pools below 

 the mansion were yearly filled from the young fish 

 taken from the lower waters. Close by were the 

 remains of a Roman gentleman's comfortable villa ; and 

 it is not improbable that our Whit-Monday fishing 

 may have been a repetition of yearly scenes of country 

 economics, supervised by the polite Roman, whose 

 interest in domestic comfort doubtless extended from 

 1 Whitestaunton Manor. 



