FLY-FISHING BY 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 
