NOVEMBER 271 



LI 



As a North Briton myself I might be suspected of 

 partiality were I to claim that there is no more 

 intelligent and practical peasantry in the world 

 than the Scots; therefore I shall content myself by 

 observing how closely they cling to certain kinds of pre- 

 judice, outworn in other communities. Of such is their 

 aversion for eels as food. Every river and lake the 

 smallest burns also contain great store of eels, yet you 

 shall traverse the length and breadth of Scotland, nay, 

 you shall live there for half a century, as I have done, 

 and never see eels served at table unless by your express 

 command. It was not ever so, for the reverend scribe 

 who furnished the text to the maps of Galloway in 

 Blaeu's admirable atlas in the seventeenth century, 

 having described the great abundance of eels in that 

 district, stated that the peasantry laboured to catch 

 them in quantities and salted them for winter fare. He 

 was a parish minister in Galloway, and was writing about 

 what he knew. At the present day, a true Galloway 

 man would as lief make his breakfast on rats as on eels. 

 And in all Scotland I know of but one eel-fishery that 

 at the outlet of Linlithgow Loch, a survival from the 

 days when Queen Mary's French chef taught the natives 

 the true value of a neglected supply. Whence has arisen 

 the almost proverbial dislike of Scotsmen to eels ? Has 

 religion had any hand in it ? In days when the Church 

 of Rome prevailed in the land eels, like other fish, were 

 of high value to carry people over fast days. After the 

 Reformation fish culture fell into disuse, and in Presby- 

 terian Scotland, where divines were wont to enforce 



