United States or Comoros ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When the spear had a barb there was less chance of the fish's being lost; but often this was not the case, and probably not more than two-thirds of the salmon speared were got safely to the bank. The takes of course varied; sometimes, indeed, the black-fishers returned home empty-handed. Encounters with the bailiffs were not infrequent, though they seldom took place at the water's edge.
The torches were very rough-and-ready things rope and tar, or even rotten roots dug from broken trees in fact, anything that would flare. The black-fishers seldom journeyed far from home, confining themselves to the rivers within a radius of three or four miles.
The country-folk of those days were more superstitious than they are now, and it did not take much to turn the black-fishers back. There was not a barn or byre in the district that had not its horseshoe over the door. Another popular device for frightening away witches and fairies was to hang bunches of garlic about the farms.
There were many reasons for this: one of them being that the hands had to be at their work on the farm by five o'clock in the morning: another, that so they poached and let poach. Except when in spate, the river I specially refer to offered no attractions to the black-fishers.
Word Of The Day