Thirty years ago the burns that feed St. Mary's Loch were almost
unfished, and rare sport we had in them, as boys, staying at Tibbie
Sheil's famous cottage, and sleeping in her box-beds, where so often the
Ettrick Shepherd and Christopher North have lain, after copious toddy.
"'Tis gone, 'tis gone:" not in our time will any man, like the Ettrick
Shepherd, need a cart to carry the trout he has slain in Meggat Water.
That stream, flowing through a valley furnished with a grass-grown track
for a road, flows, as I said, into St. Mary's Loch. There are two or
three large pools at the foot of the loch, in which, as a small boy
hardly promoted to fly, I have seen many monsters rising greedily. Men
got into the way of fishing these pools after a flood with minnow, and
thereby made huge baskets, the big fish running up to feed, out of the
loch. But, when last I rowed past Meggat foot, the delta of that
historic stream was simply crowded with anglers, stepping in in front of
each other. I asked if this mob was a political "demonstration," but
they stuck to business, as if they had been on the Regent's Canal. And
this, remember, was twenty miles from any town! Yet there is a burn on
the Border still undiscovered, still full of greedy trout. I shall give
the angler such a hint of its whereabouts as Tiresias, in Hades, gave to
Odysseus concerning the end of his second wanderings.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34