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HE scholarly angler is here pre­sent­ed with an exact fac­sim­i­le of the first En­glish trea­tise on fish­ing. The book is of extreme interest for several reasons, not the least curious being that it has served as a literary quarry to so many suc­ceed­ing writers on fishing, who have not dis­dained to adapt the authoress’s sent­i­ments to their own use, and even to borrow them word for word without ac­knowl­edg­ment. Walton himself was evidently familiar with it, and has clearly taken his “jury of flies” from its “xij flyes wyth whyche ye shall angle to y^e trought & grayl­lyng;” while Burton, that universal plunderer, has extracted her eloquent eulogy on the secondary pleasures of angling for incorporation with the patchwork structure of his “Anatomy of Melancholy.” Besides giving the earliest account of the art of fishing, the estimate which the authoress forms of the moral value of the craft is not only very high, but has served to strike the keynote for all subsequent followers of the art both in their praises and their practice of it. To this little treatise more than to any other belongs the credit of having assigned in popular es­ti­ma­tion to the angler his med­i­ta­tive and gentle nature. Many pure and noble intellects have kindled into lasting devotion to angling on reading her eloquent com­men­da­tion of it. Such men as Donne, Wotton, and Herbert, Paley, Bell, and Davy, together with many another excellent and simple dis­po­sition, have caught en­thus­iasm from her lofty sen­ti­ments, and found that not their bodily health only, but also their morals, were improved by angling. It became a school of virtues, a quiet pas­time in which, while looking into their own hearts, they learnt les­sons of the highest wisdom, reverence, resignation, and love—love of their fellow-men, of the lower creatures, and of their Creator.

Nothing definite is known of the reputed authoress, Dame Juliana Barnes or Berners. She is said to have been a daughter of Sir James Berners of Roding Berners in the county of Essex, a favourite of King Richard the Second, who was beheaded in 1388 as an evil counsellor to the king and an enemy to the public weal. She was celebrated for her extreme beauty and great learning, and is reported to have held the office of prioress of the Benedictine Nunnery of Sopwell in Hert­ford­shire, a cell to the Abbey of St. Alban, but of this no doc­u­ment­ary ev­i­dence exists. The first edi­tion of her “Book of St. Alban’s,” print­ed by the school­master-printer of St. Alban’s in 1486, treats of hawk­ing, hunt­ing, and coat-armour. In the next ed­i­tion, “En­prynt­ed at West­mestre by Wyn­kyn the Worde the yere of thyn­car­na­cōn of our lorde. M . CCCC . lxxxxvi,” among the other “treatyfes perteynynge to hawkynge & huntynge with other dyuers playsaunt materes belong­ynge vnto noblesse,” appeared the present treatise on angling. The aris­to­cratic in­stincts of the authoress prompted this mode of pub­li­ca­tion, as she herself explains in the concluding paragraph—“by cause that this present treatyse sholde not come to the hondys of eche ydle persone whyche wolde desire it yf it were enprynted allone by itself & put in a lytyll plaunflet, therfore I haue compylyd it in a greter volume of dyuerse bokys concernynge to gentyll & noble men to the entent that the forsayd ydle persones whyche sholde haue but lytyll mesure in the sayd dysporte of fysshyng sholde not by this meane vtterly dystroye it.” The present publication is the “little pamphlet” which was enclosed in this “greater volume.” An edition of it as a distinct treatise appears to have been issued by Wynkyn de Worde soon after that of 1496, with the title, “Here begynnyth a treatyse of fysshynge wyth an Angle” over the curious woodcut of the man fishing which is on the first page of the present facsimile, but only one copy of it is known to be in existence. At least ten more editions appeared before the year 1600. This shows the great popularity of the book at the time of its publication, and con­si­der­ing how human nature remains the same, and the charms of angling are equally grateful to every fresh generation of anglers, affords a sufficient reason for the strong antiquarian delight which all literary anglers of the present century have felt in the book. It is worth while briefly to trace the bibliography of angling onwards until the appearance in 1653 of Walton’s Compleat Angler, when the reader will be on familiar ground. In the interval of more than a hundred and fifty years between these two names of Berners and Walton, so deeply reverenced by every true scholar of the craft, there occur but four books on angling, though each one of these possesses a fame peculiar to itself. First came Leonard Mascall’s Booke of Fishing with Hooke and Line, published in 1590. Taverner’s Certaine Experiments concerning Fish and Fruite followed in 1600. Then came in 1613 the Secrets of Angling of the celebrated angling poet, J. D. [John Dennys], whose verses have perhaps never yet been surpassed; and finally, in 1651, appeared Barker’s Art of Angling. With this fisherman and “ambassador’s cook,” as he calls himself, Walton must often have conversed.

It is a further testimony to the attractions which angling has always possessed for contemplative natures that the art appears here sys­tem­a­tised, so to speak, as early as the middle of the fif­teenth cen­tury in En­gland, where it has been prac­tised ever since with more en­thus­i­asm and skill than in other countries. There is a sad gap in angling lit­er­a­ture from the days of Ausonius, at the com­mence­ment of the fourth century, to those of Dame Juliana Berners. Fly-fishing, indeed, is not named between the time of Ælian and that of the Treatyse. It is clearly de­scribed by the former writer, who alone among the ancients mentions it, but in the present book it is spoken of under the term “angling with a dubbe,” as if it were well-known and practised. Not only so, but it is clear that the writer had books of angling lore before her, perhaps monkish manuscripts, as Hawkins suggests, which would be of inestimable interest could they now be recovered. Thus in speaking of the carp, the reader will find she writes—“as touchynge his baytes I haue but lytyll knowlege of it. And me were loth to wryte more than I knowe & haue prouyd. But well I wote that the redde worme & the menow ben good baytys for hym at all tymes as I haue herde saye of persones credyble & also founde wryten in bokes of credence.” No better rules can be given for fly-fishing at present than the two which she prescribes for angling—“for the fyrste and pryncypall poynt in anglynge : kepe y^e euer fro the water fro the sighte of the fysshe,” and “also loke that ye shadow not the water as moche as ye may.” The “troughte” is to be angled for “wyth a dubbe” [artificial fly] “in lepynge time;” but as for the salmon, “ye may take hym : but it is seldom seen with a dubbe at suche tyme as whan he lepith in lyke fourme & manere as ye doo take a troughte or a gryalynge.” With the imperfect tackle and clumsy rod of those days, it is no wonder that the capture of salmon with a fly, which is still the crowning achievement of the craft, could seldom be effected.

After the eloquent pleading for angling with which the treatise opens, the lady at once proceeds to teach the making of the “harnays” of it. The rod she orders to be constructed somewhat resembles, save in its larger size, the modern walking-stick rod. A hazel wand, or failing it, one of willow or mountain ash, is to be procured, as thick as the arm and nine feet in length. This is to form the butt, and is to be hollowed out by means of divers red-hot irons into a tapering hole, which is to receive the “croppe,” or top, as we now call it, when not in use. This “croppe” is to be made of a yard of hazel, joined to a length of blackthorn, crab, medlar, or “jenypre.” All these are to be cut between Michaelmas and Candlemas, the lady giving very particular directions as to their drying and the like. When the two portions of the “crop” are “fretted together,” the whole rod is to be shaved into a shapely taper form; the staff encircled with long hoops of iron or latten at both ends, and finished with a “pyke in the nether ende fastnyd wyth a rennynge vyce : to take in & oute youre croppe.” The line is then to be wound round the crop and tied fast with a bow at the top. The reader will note that there is no mention of a reel; it was only used, seemingly until the beginning of this century, for large salmon and pike. An angler who hooked a fish when armed with this ponderous rod (which must from its description have been nearly eighteen feet long, as large as a modern salmon rod), would act as Izaak Walton would have done in the like predicament—throw the rod in to the fish and recover it when he could. But the lady is wonderfully pleased with this mighty rod, and thus concludes—“Thus shall ye make you a rodde soo preuy that ye maye walke therwyth : and there shall noo man wyte where abowte ye goo. It woll be lyghte & full nymbyll to fysshe wyth at your luste. And for the more redynesse loo here a fygure,” and she adds the curious woodcut which the reader may see reproduced at page 5.

Then follow directions how to dye and make lines and hooks. There were evidently no manufacturers of hooks in the fifteenth century: each angler made his own. The casting of plummets and forming of floats succeed. The six methods of angling and the mode of playing a fish are next treated, and the latter alone shows that Dame Juliana must herself have been a proficient in the craft. No one but a thoroughly good fisher could have summed up the art of playing a fish in the words—“kepe hym euer vnder the rodde, and euermore holde hym streyghte : soo that your lyne may susteyne and beere his lepys and his plungys wyth the helpe of your croppe & of your honde.” The place, the time of day, and the weather in which to fish, are next particularly described after the exac­ti­tude peculiar to fishing manuals of the olden time. These para­graphs are well worth the con­si­der­a­tion of a modern angler, especially the charge, “yf the wynde be in the Eest, that is worste For comynly neyther wynter nor somer y^e fysshe woll not byte thenne.”

The following part of the treatise, with what baits and how to angle for each kind of fish, together with a brief description of each, certainly furnished Walton with a model for some of his chapters. This portion of her book is regarded by the authoress as most necessary to be known and proficiency in carrying out her rules “is all the effecte of the crafte.” She adds amusingly, “for ye can not brynge an hoke in to a fyssh mouth wythout a bayte.” A few of the quaint receipts of her age succeed; how to keep live baits, to make pastes and the like, ending with a rule which is often given to flyfishers for trout at the present day: “Whan ye haue take a grete fysshe : vndo the mawe, & what ye fynde therin make that your bayte : for it is beste.”

Just as the authoress rises to eloquence at the beginning of the treatise when comparing the fisher’s happy life with the toils and troubles which too often fall to the lot of the hunter, hawker, and fowler, so the end of these rules once more recalls her enthusiasm. The last two pages of the book give us a portrait of her con­cep­tion of the perfect angler, and it is no pre­sump­tion to say that a nobler and truer picture has never been limned. Sim­plic­i­ty of dis­po­si­tion, for­bear­ance to our neigh­bours’ rights, and con­si­der­a­tion for the poor, are strongly in­cul­cated. All cov­e­tous­ness in fishing or employment of its gentle art to increase worldly gain and fill the larder is equally condemned. She holds the highest view of angling; that it is to serve a man for solace, and to cause the health of his body, but especially of his soul. So she would have him pursue his craft alone for the most part, when his mind can rise to high and holy things, and he may serve God devoutly by saying from his heart his customary prayer. Nor should a man ever carry his amusement to excess, and catch too much at one time; this is to destroy his future pleasure and to interfere with that of his neighbours. A good sportsman too, she adds, will busy himself in nourishing the game and destroying all vermin. So will what Walton calls “the civil, well-governed angler” escape the vices which spring from idleness, and enjoy the full delights of an elevating and noble recreation. “And all those that done after this rule shall haue the blessynge of god & saynt Petyr, whyche he theym graunte that wyth his precyous blood vs boughte.”

“And therefore to al you that ben vertuous : gentyll : and free borne I wryte & make this symple treatyse folowynge : by whyche ye may haue the full crafte of anglynge to dysport you at your luste : to the entent that your aege maye the more floure and the more lenger to endure.”

M. G. W.