466 CHINESE FISHING 
This time we have no excuse of hospitality, no fair Empress 
before whose eyes our angler, as Antony with Cleopatra, wanted 
to display his prowess, or a new cast. No! he was “ merely 
amusing himself ’’—think of the crime !—“ by fishing in one 
of the Palace lakes.” 
But alas! ’twas the fifth moon, when fishes were still busy 
breeding the nation’s common and ample staple of food. The 
line raised for a fresh throw was suddenly cut by the Viceroy, 
Ly-Ke. ‘‘ What the deuce are you doing?” thundered the 
Emperor, aghast at the audacity of the act. “ My duty,” 
quietly answered Ly-Ke. “All must obey the laws which 
you have bidden me enforce.”’ 
The voice is the voice of Ly-Ke, but the sentence and 
sentiment smack of Mr. Barlow! Such, however, is the power 
of the “superior man,’’ that the contrite autocrat not only 
bestowed a present on the intrepid Atropos who shore his 
line, but commanded that its severed bits should hang for all 
to see in the ante-chamber of the Palace, as a warning to future 
ages. ! 
Whether in ancient China a fish-god, such as Ebisu in 
Japan,? or fish-gods existed, I have not ascertained, but in 
our day the fishermen on the southern coasts celebrate in spring 
or autumn a festival to propitiate the gods of the waters. An 
immense display of lanterns lights the path for a huge dragon, 
made out of slender bamboo frames covered with strips of 
coloured cotton or silk: the extremities represent his gaping 
head and frisking tail. The monster, symbolising the ruler of 
the watery deep, is preceded by huge models of fish gorgeously 
illuminated.3 
But whether the Sinitic Pantheon lacked or held a deity 
of fishermen, it was reserved for Hsii, the hero of one of the 
stories in Liao Chat Chih I, to summon from the vasty 
1 For these two stories, see de Thiersant, op. cit., VII. ff. 
* The earliest drawings represent Ebisu holding a red tai (Chrysophis 
cavdinalis) in one hand, and a fishing-rod in the other. In popular sketches 
he is usually shown with a laughing countenance, watching the struggles of 
the tai at the end of his line, or else banqueting with his companion gods on 
the same fish. In placing a fisherman god among the Seven Deities of 
Happiness the Japanese display shrewdness of observation and skill in 
selection. 
3 Williams, op. cit., I. p. 818. 
