50 



The following account of this curious mode of 

 fishing is extracted from M'Diarmid's Scrap-book, 

 1820: " Several years ago, a farmer in the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood of Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, 

 kept a gander, which not only had a great trick of 

 wandering himself, but also delighted in piloting 

 forth his cackling harem to weary themselves in 

 circumnavigating their native lake, or in straying 

 amidst forbidden fields on the opposite shore. 

 Wishing to check this vagrant habit, the farmer 

 one day seized the gander, just as he was about to 

 spring upon the pure bosom of his favourite ele- 

 ment, and tying a large fish hook to his leg, to 

 which was attached part of a dead frog, he suffered 

 him to proceed upon his voyage of discovery. As 

 had been anticipated, this bait soon caught the eye 

 of a greedy pike, which swallowing the deadly 

 hook, not only arrested the progress of the asto- 

 nished gander, but forced him to perform half-a- 

 dozen somersets on the surface of the water ! For 

 some time the struggle was most amusing the 

 fish pulling, and the bird screaming with all its 

 might, the one attempting to fly, and the other 

 to swim, from the invisible enemy the gander 

 one moment losing, and the next regaining his 

 centre of gravity, and casting between whiles many 

 a rueful look at his snow-white fleet of geese and 

 goslings, who cackled out their sympathy for their 

 afflicted commodore. At length victory declared 

 in favour of the feathered angler, who, bearing 

 away for the nearest shore, landed on the smooth 

 green grass one of the finest pikes ever caught in 

 the Castle-loch. This adventure is said to have 

 cured the gander of his propensity for wandering. 



