[MR] medieval fishing (Fwd: Aoife-Links Digest, Vol 7, Issue 2)

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In a message dated 4/4/2005 12:03:17 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
aoife-links-request at scatoday.net writes:

Greetings, Faithful Readers!

This week's Links List is in  memoriam to a recently passed but very great 
fisher of men--John Paul II, who  passed away yesterday (Saturday April 2nd, 
2005, which is also my 17th wedding  anniversary).  I cannot help but be saddened 
by the passing of someone  who brought so much positive change to the world 
in such a gentle manner. And,  as the world mourns, in it's inevitable way 
spring  has come to my tiny  northern town. The grass peeps through the snow, rain 
falls, the roads are  muddied, and the signs of growth and activity are 
unmistakable. Not only is it  the reason of renewal, is also very nearly the season 
of trout fishing, which  brings us from the fisher of men to the fisher of  
fish.....    

While Fishing may not be your "thing", to be truly medieval I suppose  you 
would have at least a passing knowledge of the process. If you existed in  
Medieval times fish were a staple in your diet, no matter who you  were  or where 
you lived. Certainly there were whole sets of days for which the  Catholic 
religion prescribed that the only animal protein taken was fish. That  meant that 
to be a fisherman during these times and in those places was to be  a popular 
and busy sportsman. If you're not that sort of sportsman, however,  do not 
despair! There is plenty here for other folk: Heralds will like the  Fish in 
Heraldry page, Cooks and Mythologians will like the Gode Cookery  pages, and Bards 
will delight in the Shakespeare the Angler page and the Robin  Hood Ballad 
page. In the links below you can learn about how to make a  medieval fishing 
hook, how to make a net, and how to fly-fish the medieval  way.

As always, please share this wherever a ready audience can be  found. Much of 
this Links List would have been impossible without the  incredible medieval 
fishing website of Liam O'Shea at farreaches.org  .

Your devoted servant,

Aoife

Dame Aoife Finn of Ynos  Mon
m/k/a Lisbeth Herr-Gelatt
Riverouge
Endless  Hills
Aethelmearc

PS: If you wish to correspond with Aoife directly,  please send mail to: 
mtnlion at ptd dot net as she is unable to respond in  this account

Stefan's Florilegium--Fishing  Messages
http://www.florilegium.org/files/ANIMALS/fishing-msg.html
(Site  Excerpt from ONE message) Marc/Diarmaid posted concerning metal fish 
hooks in  the Middle Ages. I
have a book at home I'll get and make available. It's a  translation of a
15th century treatise on angling. You may be intersted,  Diarmaid, in
knowing that they were made from (I don't have the book with  me,) a
shoe-maker's needle (or something closely named) and worked with  an
anvil and forge. 

Fly Fishing in Medieval Times  
http://www.flyfishinghistory.com/fly_fishing_in_medieval_times.htm
(Site  Excerpt) The first reference is from a romance written in about 1210 
by  Wolfram von Eschenbach, whose hero Schionatulander wades barefoot in a 
stream  to catch trout and grayling with a fly. Other texts identify fly fishing 
as  the chosen method of commoners from 1360 onwards, across a vast area 
reaching  from the Swiss plain to Styria. 

Fishing and Fishermen in Medieval  Works of Art
http://www.geocities.com/karen_larsdatter/fishing.htm
Seven  links to web images

Regia Anglorum: Fishing in Early Medieval  Times
http://www.geocities.com/karen_larsdatter/fishing.htm
(Site  Excerpt) Although in 730 AD, according to Bede, Bishop Winfrid of 
Colchester  apparently: '...found so much misery from hunger, he taught the people 
to get  food by fishing. For, although there was plenty of fish in the seas 
and  rivers, the people had no idea about fishing, and caught only eels. So the 
 Bishop's men got together eel nets from all sides. and threw them into the  
sea. By God's help they caught three hundred fish, of all different  kinds.'

The Arte of Angling  Olde to New  
http://www.farreaches.org/fishing/
Sixteen links to medieval fishing,  for adults and children

The Treatyse of Fishing with an  Angle
http://www.farreaches.org/fishing/treatise/treatyse_index.html
(Site  Excerpt) If you want to be crafty in angling, you must first learn to 
make  your tackle, that is, your rod, your lines of different colours. After 
that,  you must know how you should angle, in what place of the water, how 
deep, and  what time of day. For what manner of fish, in what weather; how many  
impediments there are in the fishing that is called angling. And especially  
with what baits for each different fish in each month of the year. How you  
shall make your baits breed. Where you will find the baits: and how you will  keep 
them. And for the most crafty thing, how you are to make your hooks of  steel 
and of iron. Some for the artificial fly: and some for the float and the  
ground-line, as you will hear afterward all these things talked about openly  so 
that you may learn. 

THE COMPLEAT ANGLER 
BY IZAAK WALTON  
http://www.farreaches.org/fishing/walton/izintro.html
(Site Excerpt) On  the Nature and Breeding of the Trout, and how to fish for 
him ...The Trout is  a fish highly valued, both in this and foreign nations. 
He may be justly said,  as the old poet said of wine, and we English say of 
venison, to be a generous  fish: a fish that is so like the buck, that he also 
has his seasons; for it is  observed, that he comes in and goes out of season 
with the stag and buck.  Gesner says, his name is of a German offspring; and 
says he is a fish that  feeds clean and purely, in the swiftest streams, and on 
the hardest gravel;  and that he may justly contend with all fresh water fish, 
as the Mullet may  with all sea fish, for precedency and daintiness of taste; 
and that being in  right season, the most dainty palates have allowed 
precedency to him.  

A Historical Look at the Sport of Angling by Doug  Dillon
http://www.farreaches.org/fishing/angling.html
(Site Excerpt)  Ancient pictographs dating from about 2000 B.C. indicate that 
the first known  anglers were the Egyptians. A drawing dating from c. 1400 
B.C., which depicts  an Egyptian noble angling in an elegant pond, suggests they 
were also the  first culture which enjoyed it as a sport. The Greeks, who 
wrote avidly on  fishing, discuss the sport of angling in greater detail, and 
provide some of  the earliest amounts of the equipment used. The Romans, by 
contrast, did not  seem to hold the sport in very high regard, since there is 
mention that it was  an activity for women and not a fitting sport for men.

Shakespeare the  Angler 
by Dr. John Day  
http://www.farreaches.org/fishing/shakes/shakes.html
(Site Excerpt)  After his death, Shakespeare attracted dozens of biographers, 
but while he was  alive he had none. And so, legions of scholars have had to 
analyse his plays  and poems word by word to piece together Shakespeare the 
man, and to determine  his likes and dislikes. As to whether Shakespeare enjoyed 
fishing, the  scholars, as we shall see, are divided. All in all, they've 
sifted from  Shakespeare's works about 200 allusions to fish and fishing. Some of 
these 200  refer to sea fish like mackerel and herring, but they all smell of 
the  dining-table or the fishmonger. Living inland, Shakespeare probably only 
once  or twice visited the sea.

Fishy Heraldry
Lord Liam  OShea
http://www.farreaches.org/fishing/fishy_heraldry.html
(Site  Excerpt) It appears that the earliest heraldry containing a fish is 
that of  the Zodiac sign Pisces. This sign is said to be representation of 
fishing on  the Nile, where the season generally starts in February. The symbol for 
Pisces  can be found on the west entrance to Iffley Church in England. Iffley 
is  considered one of the most beautiful still-extant examples of 
Anglo-Norman  architecture.

Medieval Sourcebook: Cartulary of Saint Trond: Robert,  Bishop of Liège: 
Protection of Fishing Rights,  1246
http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/source/1246Fishrts.html
(Site  Excerpt) We admonish each of you and command you to prohibit in 
general,  publicly and solemnly, all people from fishing in the waters of Willebempt 
and  in the other streams of our beloved and faithful son, the Abbot of  
Saint-Trond, situated in the town of Saint-Trond, without permission or  without 
the command of the said abbot. 
SEE ALSO: 
Medieval Sourcebook:  
Louis the Pious: 
Grant of Fishing Rights,  832
http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/source/832louispious-fishing1.html
(Site  Excerpt) Wherefore be it known to all, both present and future, that, 
by these  presents, we have granted for the love of God and for the salvation 
of our  soul, to the monastery which is called New Corvey, which we built in 
Saxony in  honor of Saint Stephen, the first martyr, and at the head of which 
is our  faithful cousin Warin, its first abbot, a certain fishery in the River  
Weser.

The Medieval Sportsmen 
Compendium of  Knowledge
http://www.farreaches.org/foresters/
25 sources for the  Medieval Fisherman, many in print.

A Boke of Gode Cookery---Fish and  Seafood  Recipes
http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/goderec.htm#fish
(Site  Excerpt)  Pykes in brasey. Take pykes and vndo hem on þe wombes and  
waisshe hem clene, and lay hem on a roost irne. Þenne take gode wyne and  
powdour gynger & sugur, good wone, & salt, and boile it in an erthen  panne; & 
messe forth þe pyke & lay the sewe onoward. 
SEE  ALSO:
Fantastic Fish of the Middle  Ages
http://www.godecookery.com/ffissh/ffissh.htm
(Site Excerpt) Here  are the fantastic and incredible fish of the Middle 
Ages, which populated both  the waters and the imagination of the medieval world. 
Real creatures still  familar to us, such as the salmon and the crayfish will 
be found here, but you  will also read of such fabulous specimens as the 
Abremon, which propagated  without intercourse, the Ezox, so large that a 
four-horsed cart could not  carry one away, and the Nereydes, sea monsters that cried 
whenever one of them  died.

The Raversijde Domain
Walraversijde (A reconstructed medieval  fishing town near  Flanders)
http://users.pandora.be/alex.deseyne/ENG/WalraversijdeE.htm
(Site  Excerpt) Walking through the reconstructed medieval landscape brings 
the  visitor to four fisherman's houses: the house of a rich ship owner, the 
home  of a fisherman's widow, a tradesman's house and finally the fish 
smokehouse  and bakery. When building these houses, much depended on archaeological  
evidence to know how they had to look like. Moreover, these houses have been  
rebuilt using the original medieval bricks of the village. All objects that  can 
be seen in the houses are true replica from recent findings. Thanks to the  
audio equipment, visitors are guided through the houses by the voice of  
medieval inhabitants. 

Kingdom of Atlantia Arts and Sciences: Fish and  Fishing
http://moas.atlantia.sca.org/wsnlinks/index.php?action=displaycat&catid=118
17  links to information, some of which appear here.

Fishing off Spain in  Medieval  Times
http://www.cliffordawright.com/history/fish_spain.html
(Site  Excerpt) In the Mediterranean when one mentions hake, one must talk 
about the  Spanish. Although Spain, and Castile in particular, was similar to 
Sicily in  the secondary importance that fish had in the diet and the economy, 
hake was  the most popular of fish. Hake is a gadoid fish (meaning it resembles 
cod),  except it lacks the barbel of the cod and has a long second dorsal and 
anal  fin running from mid-body to the tail fin. Spanish fishermen have 
caught hake  since the fourteenth century, and the Spanish fondness for hake has 
resulted  in a great variety of preparations.

ROBIN HOOD'S FISHING: INTRODUCTION  (A Renaissance  Ballad)
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/fishint.htm
(Site  Excerpt) This ballad is found in seventeenth-century broadsides and 
garlands  and was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1631. The earliest of 
the Wood  texts, which Child relied on (dated by Wing at 1650?), is quite 
unclear in the  final action and appears to have been cut down to fit onto a 
broadside sheet.  The version found in the Forresters manuscript has a fuller and 
more lucid  sequence of final action, and, as its sense of completeness appears 
most  unlikely to have been generated editorially from the broadside version, 
its  text is used here.