CHAPTER XXVIII 
FISHING WITH THE HAIR OF THE DEAD 
Tuis chapter owes its birth to a passage of intrinsic interest but 
gruesome nature. 
Before quoting or dealing with it, I may be allowed a few 
words as to my running it to ground and the curiosity it excited 
among Angling scholars. 
Some years ago I read in an article that “ fishing with the 
hair of a dead person, enoev vexpa rprxi dé\cap, Was practised 
by the Egyptians, as is shown by discoveries during the last 
thirty years.’’ No authority, no reference was given. ‘Thirty 
years ’’ opened up a search too extensive to waste on an 
anonymous statement. 
Even so this fishing with an unknown gut, dead men’s hair, 
kept worrying me. Aristotle and others had written of the 
use of horse-hair, but none of my friends or I had ever come 
across this Egyptian tackle. A great authority suggested 
that it was possibly taken from a body of which the hair con- 
tinued to grow after death, and thus possessed much value 
because of length and strength. 
Instantly floated before us visions of obtaining by a new 
Rape of the Lock this most desirable gut. Two nefarious 
courses were discussed. First, to rifle the coffin of Edward I., 
which when last opened in Dean Stanley’s time revealed (teste 
the Verger) long hair still growing. Second, to raid the tomb 
of the Countess of Abergavenny (née Isabella Despencer) in 
Tewkesbury Abbey, in which (to use Canon Ernest Smith’s 
words) “‘ at the restoration of the Abbey in 1875 was disclosed 
bright auburn hair, apparently as fresh and as plentiful, as 
when the body was buried four and a half centuries ago.” ! 
1 Aristotle (H. A., III. 11, states that the hair does grow in dead bodies. 
Since his time many descriptions of remarkable growth after death have been 
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