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But as the salmon fisheries of Great Britain grew in value, so were various destructive methods of capturing the fish declared to be illegal, and many a practice that in earlier days was regarded as “sport” may now be indulged in not at all. Some of those practices were picturesque enough in themselves, and brimmed over with excitement and incident; indeed, as portrayed in the pages of Guy Mannering, they were, to use Sir Walter’s own words, “inexpressibly animating.” Such, for instance, were “burning the water” and “sunning.” Others, such as rake-hooking, cross-lining, and decking salmon out of shallow water, were mere poaching devices with little redeeming virtue, commending themselves to nobody, except as a means of filling the pot.

Then there was the taking of salmon from the “redds” as they spawned, of all methods of capture the least allied to “sport,” for the fish then were soft and flabby, and almost useless as food. Nevertheless, there was in that, too, a strong element of excitement, for the weapon used, the clodding or throwing leister, required no mean skill in the using. This throwing leister was a heavy spear, or rather a heavy “graip,” having five single-barbed prongs of unequal length but regularly graduated. To the bar above the shortest prong was lashed a goats’-hair rope, which was also made fast to the thrower’s arm, carefully coiled, as in a whaling-boat the line is coiled, so that it may run free when the fish is struck. This leister (or waster) was cast by hand at fish lying in not too deep water–generally, in fact, when they were on the spawning beds. It was with this weapon, as one may read in Scrope’s Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing, that Tam Purdie–Sir Walter’s Purdie–when a young man captured that “muckle kipper” that seemed to him to be the “verra de’il himsel’,” so big was he. One Sunday forenoon, as he daundered by the waterside (instead of being, as he should have been, at church) Tam saw him slide slowly off the redd across the stream.

“Odd! my verra heart lap to my mouth whan I gat the glisk o’ something mair like a red stirk than ought else muve off the redd. I fand my hair creep on my heid. I minded it was the Sabbath, and I sudna hae been there. It micht be a delusion o’ the Enemy, if it wasna the de’il himsel’.”

All that peaceful Sabbath day Tam’s meditations were disturbed by visions of great salmon. And as at family worship that night his master read aloud from “the Word,” Tam quaked to realise that no syllable had penetrated his dulled ears, but that, with the concluding solemn “Amen,” had come to his mind the resolution to clip the wings of the Sabbath, and at all costs to capture that fish before anyone could forestall him. According, as soon as his too ardent mind judged that the hands of the clock must be drawing near to midnight, Tam arose, and, rousing a farm boy to bear the light for him as he struck, with “clodding waster” in hand set off for the river. Now this clodding waster (or leister) was a possession of which Tam was inordinately proud; amongst his friends its temper and penetrating power were proverbial. It had been made for him by the Runcimans of Yarrowford, smiths celebrated far and wide for the marvellous qualities they imparted to all weapons made by them. As Purdie said: “I could hae thrawn mine off the head o’ a scaur, and if she had strucken a whinstane rock she wad hae been nae mair blunted than if I had thrawn her on a haystalk.” Yet when anon he came to cast this leister at the muckle kipper, “the 14 lb. waster stottit off his back as if he had been a bag o’ wool.” That was proof enough, if any were needed, that a fish so awesome big must be something uncanny and beyond nature. In a cold sweat, Tam and the boy fled from the waterside and cast themselves shivering into their beds over the byre at home. But as he lay awake, unable to close an eye, Purdie’s courage crept back to him, and again he resolved that have that fish he would, muckle black de’il or no. So again he roused his now reluctant torch-bearer, and having with difficulty convinced him that the fish was actually a fish, and not the devil let loose on them for their sin in having broken the Sabbath–“Irr ye sure, Tam, it wasna the de’il?” the boy quavered–before daylight they again found the spot where the great kipper lay. And whether it was that this time, knowing that it really was Monday morning, Purdie threw with easier conscience and consequently with surer aim, or to what other cause who may say, but certain it is that the man and the boy, soaked to the skin and chilled to the marrow, triumphantly bore home that morning to the mill, where Purdie’s father then lived, a most monstrous heavy fish.