s 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