Into Aill flows a burn, the Headshaw burn, where there used to
be good fish, because it runs out of Headshaw Loch, a weed-fringed lonely
tarn on the bleak level of the tableland. Bleak as it may seem, Headshaw
Loch has the great charm of absolute solitude: there are no tourists nor
anglers here, and the life of the birds is especially free and charming.
The trout, too, are large, pink of flesh, and game of character; but the
world of mankind need not rush thither. They are not to be captured by
the wiles of men, or so rarely that the most enthusiastic anglers have
given them up. They are as safe in their tarn as those enchanted fish of
the "Arabian Nights." Perhaps a silver sedge in a warm twilight may
somewhat avail, but the adventure is rarely achieved.
These are the waters with which our boyhood was mainly engaged; it is a
pleasure to name and number them. Memory, that has lost so much and
would gladly lose so much more, brings vividly back the golden summer
evenings by Tweedside, when the trout began to plash in the
stillness--brings back the long, lounging, solitary days beneath the
woods of Ashiesteil--days so lonely that they sometimes, in the end,
begat a superstitious eeriness. One seemed forsaken in an enchanted
world; one might see the two white fairy deer flit by, bringing to us, as
to Thomas Rhymer, the tidings that we must back to Fairyland.
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