FL Y-FISHING B Y NIGHTLIGHT. 185 



belief had also attributed to the waters of this lake 

 the, to anglers, curious and interesting property of 

 communicating to those who washed their hands in 

 it the power of being ever after able to unravel with 

 ease the perplexing tangles of their tackle. Instead 

 of referring to the pages of an almanac, there seems 

 to be no valid reason why I should not mark the 

 proper date for commencing this description of 

 angling, by drawing on the calendar used in the 

 locality of the lake itself for the division of time. It 

 usually began, then, to be practised about the festival 

 of St. John, contemporaneous with the summer 

 solstice, when the fires of Baal, at the time I 

 chronicle, might yet be seen blazing at midnight on 

 the surrounding hills ; and the hierophants, in the 

 mixed rites of paganism and Christianity, scattering 

 the last embers of the expiring piles amongst the 

 corn-fields to secure them against blight and barren- 

 ness. Over the superstition of the usage let no 

 brother of the angle shed a tear of sentimental horror. 

 The actors indeed in these festive scenes were, I can 

 assure him, much more alive to the lively music of 

 the piper or the fiddler who ministered to the dance 

 on those occasions, than to the worship of the pagan 

 deity or the Christian saint to whose feast-day the 

 unholy fires were said to have been transferred by the 

 early missionaries. Neither would I recommend him 

 to waste his indignation on the barbarous coina, or 



