Perhaps I should note that I have not made the boatman say “whateffer,” because he doesn’t.  The occasional use of the imperfect is almost his only Gaelic idiom.  It is a great comfort and pleasure, when the trout do not rise, to meet a skilled and unaffected narrator of the old beliefs, old legends, as ancient as the hills that girdle and guard the loch, or as antique, at least, as man’s dwelling among the mountains—­the Yellow Hill, the Calf Hill, the Hill of the Stack.  The beauty of the scene, the pleasant talk, the daffodils on the green isle among the Celtic graves, compensate for a certain “dourness” among the fishes of Loch Awe.  On the occasions when they are not dour they rise very pleasant and free, but, in these brief moments, it is not of legends and folklore that you are thinking, but of the landing-net.  The boatman, by the way, was either not well acquainted with Marchen—­Celtic nursery-tales such as Campbell of Islay collected, or was not much interested in them, or, perhaps, had the shyness about narrating this particular sort of old wives’ fables which is so common.  People who do know them seldom tell them in Sassenach.

LOCH-FISHING

LITTLE LOCH BEG

There is something mysterious in loch-fishing, in the tastes and habits of the fish which inhabit the innumerable lakes and tarns of Scotland.  It is not always easy to account either for their presence or their absence, for their numbers or scarcity, their eagerness to take or their “dourness.”  For example, there is Loch Borlan, close to the well-known little inn of Alt-na-geal-gach in Sutherland.  Unless that piece of water is greatly changed, it is simply full of fish of about a quarter of a pound, which will rise at almost any time to almost any fly.  There is not much pleasure in catching such tiny and eager trout, but in the season complacent anglers capture and boast of their many dozens.  On the other hand, a year or two ago, a beginner took a four-pound trout there with the fly.  If such trout exist in Borlan, it is hard to explain the presence of the innumerable fry.  One would expect the giants of the deep to keep down their population.  Not far off is another small lake, Loch Awe, which has invisible advantages over Loch Borlan, yet there the trout are, or were, “fat and fair of flesh,” like Tamlane in the ballad.  Wherefore are the trout in Loch Tummell so big and strong, from one to five pounds, and so scarce, while those in Loch Awe are numerous and small?  One occasionally sees examples of how quickly trout will increase in weight, and what curious habits they will adopt.  In a county of south-western Scotland there is a large village, populated by a keenly devoted set of anglers, who miss no opportunity.  Within a quarter of a mile of the village is a small tarn, very picturesquely situated among low hills, and provided with the very tiniest feeder and outflow.  There is a sluice