62 NOTES ON HSH AND FISHING. 



Crawhall again reproduced the Collection of Bight Merrie 

 Garlands, fyc, with songs and poems added mainly by 

 himself and Doubleday, T. Westwood being also a contri- 

 butor, and styled them by the old title of the Newcastle 

 Fishers' Garlands, assigning one, and sometimes two, to 

 each year to 1864 inclusive. Thus we have what the 

 Devonshire folk would call " a Mixed Medley," and the 

 Doubleday and Eoxby strike some sympathetic cords, and 

 Mr. Westwood is no mean poet. It may be a question 

 whether the original or the " interpolated " Garlands have 

 anything like sufficient merit in them to justify the pre- 

 tentious form they have assumed in Mr. Crawhall's 

 volume — and far less in a larger and more expensive 

 edition, for which only two guineas were asked per copy. 



In Professor Wilson's collected poems, published in 

 1825, will be found a very pretty piece, entitled " The 

 Angler's Tent." 



Mr. Blakey published his Angler's Song Booh in 1855, 

 containing nearly 250 songs of various degrees of merit, 

 and some of no merit at all, scraps and snatches of all 

 kinds and descriptions, ranging from John Dennys down 

 to Wordsworth. The collection as a whole is not one of 

 which anglers can feel very proud. 



Several anonymous writers also in the current literature 

 of the day during the last fifty years have with varied 

 success contributed to the stock-in-trade of piscatory 

 poetry. 



Among our standard poets, though not strictly speak- 

 ing piscatory poets, several have dwelt more or less on 

 angling, and shown that they were admirers of the 

 " gentle art " and its surroundings, if not actual professors 

 of it. I shall not press Shakspeare into the service, though 



