To Mountain Tarn 



may look with a curious and more kindly eye. 

 The eel will be avenged. 



Further fishing is hopeless. The burn swarms 

 with such. Had we not watched them coming 

 up in the spring myriads of wriggling needles ? 

 So many that when they grew bigger the water 

 would not hold them. And what enemy had 

 they, save a solitary heron, or an otter journeying 

 from the water beyond the ridge ? 



A long-time wonder was where the elvers came 

 from. If the hatching is done amid the gravel, 

 or the mud, why should they not appear singly, 

 or in small shoals, as the trout do ? Why crowd 

 up the current in an almost unbroken phalanx 

 from the sea, like travellers who were eager to be 

 at their journey's end? The puzzle was to make 

 a life cycle of the big eels in the burn, and the 

 elvers which appeared so strangely and suddenly 

 in the spring to fill up the gap between. From 

 elver to eel was a matter of growth ; between eel 

 and elver lay the rub. 



The rustic had his theory, as he has of all 

 things recondite. So arose folk-lore, and country- 

 side natural history, so childlike, so past belief, 

 and yet so attractive. Hid from the wise and 

 prudent, these charming half-truths or whole 

 fables are revealed unto babes. If an explanation 

 holds the field, so long as it is alone, then the 

 rustic's view had its day. Science might pooh 

 pooh, but could find nothing to take its place. 



73 



