58 INTRODUCTION 
For century after century the fishermen of the Isles have 
handed down orally to generation after generation the Gaelic 
prayer with which they set out to sea.! 
“JT will cast down my hook : 
The first fish which I bring up 
In the name of Christ, King of the Elements, 
The poor man shall have for his need : 
And the King of the Fishers, the brave Peter, 
He will after it give me his blessing, 
Columba, tender in every distress, 
And Mary fair, the endowed of grace, 
Encompass ye us to the fishing bank of ocean, 
And still ye to us the crest of the waves!” 
The rarity—I have not met its mention—and curious 
nature of a volume published at Frankfort in 1611, even if 
more than a century after The Boke of St. Albans, compels 
some reference. 
Conjecture Halieutice by Raphael Eglinus consists of a 
long dissertation based on the strange markings of three 
fishes (pictured on its title-page), two caught in Scandinavia 
on the same day, November 21, 1587, and the third in 
Pomerania on May 21, 1596. These markings, supposedly 
chronological, provide their author with a basis for various 
prophecies and warnings of the evils to come in Central Europe, 
especially in Germany. 
As neither text nor type peculiarly tempt to perusal, I 
have not found it easy to disentangle the disasters or allot to 
each country its individual woe. Deductions from Daniel, 
the patriarch Joseph, and of course the Apocalypse enable 
Eglinus to establish definitely to his own satisfaction the 
future advent, in one or other of the Central Kingdoms, of 
Antichrist. 
Nor, again, is it easy to gather whether a time-limit is set 
for his appearance, or whether the prophecies apply to 
twentieth-century events. Alas! also, the data do not 
enable me with certainty from the very promising entries from 
Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria to single out the precise 
1 Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gelica (Edinburgh, 1900), vol. i. p. 325. 
