THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 7 



are found fishing among them, the Irishmen rarely or never 

 repair in their turn to the Scotch and English seas. In 

 this respect they are not peculiar. The Highlanders and 

 Islanders of Western Scotland, sprung from a common 

 ancestry with the Irish, seldom leave their own lochs, or 

 their own seas ; the Welshman like the Irishman rarely, if 

 ever, leaves his own neighbourhood ; and Welsh boats are 

 never seen in English seas. The Cornishman is perhaps 

 the only example in the United Kingdom of a man sprung 

 from a Celtic ancestry who follows his fish from sea to sea. 

 In every other case, it may be suspected that the fishermen 

 owe some of their skill and courage to the blood of the 

 bold Saxon and Norse Sea Rovers, who, in the early days 

 of English History, played their part in what the late Mr. 

 Green has called the making of England.* 



This circumstance is of essential importance. In the 

 olden time fishing, conducted chiefly in the estuaries of 

 rivers, or on the coasts of the sea, was a trade which 

 required little skill, and perhaps little courage. Our fore- 

 fathers while fishing did not venture far out to sea, but 

 kept in close proximity to the shore, either in consequence 

 of the frailty of their boats, or of what an early writer has 

 called " the fearfulness " of their minds. Much of the fish 

 which was served up on table was intercepted in passing 

 out to sea with the ebb tide by the dams which any 



* How far the Devonshire and Cornish people may owe their fish- 

 ing propensities to the Conquest of South Western Britain by Egbert 

 in 815 is perhaps doubtful. The Saxons, it is certain, did not succeed 

 in rooting out the Celtic names which still distinguish this part of 

 England. But the Saxon conquerors, in all probability, settled and 

 fused with the Britons in Cornwall, while they only held a strategical 

 position in Wales. No one, at any rate, can look at a Cornish fisher- 

 man at the present time, and think that he is descended from the same 

 exclusively Celtic stock as the Welsh. 



