CHAPTER II 



FISH STORIES OF THE FATHERS 



HE ancient fish-story-tellers commend them- 

 selves to anglers of to-day. They stood not 

 upon the order of telling, but gave their several 

 relations with a broadness and circum- 

 stance at once attractive and admirable. There is no 

 devious suggestion, no false modesty. If the account 

 obtained from some ancient mariner was lacking in detail, 

 the artist rose to the occasion, and filled it out, while the 

 story-teller released his pent imagination and did the subject 

 full, and copious, justice. So, all hail, Pliny, Olaus Magnus, 

 and Bishop Pontoppidan ! true members of the guild where 

 fancy has no bounds, and the imagination no curb. Little 

 wonder that the real fish stories of to-day are doubted, and 

 the catches of the conscientious angler received with sus- 

 picion. 



Pliny was a delightful raconteur, who fully believed in 

 mermaids, and other strange half-fish folk of the sea. He 

 tells us that a Lisbon deputation to the Emperor Tiberius, in- 

 formed his Imperial Majesty that on their trip they had seen 

 a Triton about a cave, blowing on a conch shell. The legates 

 of Gaul spread upon the records, and gave the information 

 to the Emperor Augustus, that in a heavy storm numbers of 

 Nereids had come ashore and been examined by the people. 

 Distinguished authorities saw a merman in the "ocean of 

 Gades." At night this creature came aboard a ship, and the 

 veracious observers even described the effect of its weight 

 upon the vessel. 



The idea of a fish-man, merman and mermaid, is very 



s 



