Names of Salmon , 
351 
44 When as the salmon seeks a fresher stream to find, 
Which from the sea comes yearly hy his kind, 
As he in season grows, and stems the watry tract. 
Where Tivy falling down doth make a cataract. 
Forc’d by the rising rocks that there her course oppose, 
As though within their bounds they meant her to inclose; 
Here, when the labouring fish doth at the foot arrive. 
And finds that by his strength but vainly he doth strive, 
His tail takes in his mouth, and bending like a bow, 
That’s to the compass drawn, aloft himself doth throw; 
Then springing at his height, as doth a little wand, 
That, bended end to end, and flirted from the hand, 
Far off it self doth cast; so doth the salmon vaut, 
And if at first he fail, his second summersaut 
He instantly assays ; and from his nimble ring, 
Still yerking, never leaves, until himself he fling 
Above the streamful top of the surrounded heap.” 
(PolyoTbion, song iii.) 
Harrison gives the different names by which the 
salmon was known at the successive stages of its exist¬ 
ence : “ The first year a gravelin, and commonlie so big 
as an herring, the second a salmon peale, the third a 
pug, and the fourth a salmon.” This fish has received 
a variety of names in the different localities in which 
it is taken. According to Yarrell (British Fishes , vol. ii. 
p. 155)— 
44 the smolt or young salmon is by the fishermen of some rivers called 
a laspring, and various couplets refer to the fish as well as to the time 
and circumstances under which the descent is made:— 
4 The last spring floods that happen in May, 
Carry the salmon fry down to the sea.’ 
Under three pounds weight, they are called salmon peal. The laspring 
of some rivers is the young of the true salmon, but in others it is only 
a parr. A grilse is a young salmon that has not.spawned.” 
In John Dennys’s poem on angling, published before 
1613, several names of fish occur, some of which are 
