ing the divine Master it is surely, especially in the case of the nurse, a priceless opportunity of feeding the lambs beloved of the great Shepherd who lived as well as died for his sheep.

From The Fishing Gazette.
FISHING SUPERSTITIONS.

ships and sailors, and the annoyance of fishermen in general. In the progress of his work, Old Nick dropped his hammer into the sea. Snatching at it hastily, he caught a haddock, and all haddocks carry the imprint of his black fingers to this day.

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Fishermen have queer customs. few years ago the fishermen of Preston, Lancashire, used actually to go THE legends, quaint customs, and fishing on Sunday. It seems incredsuperstitions connected with fish and ible, but they did. A clergyman of fishing are many and curious. Ask a the town used to preach against this Scandinavian why salmon are red and Sabbath desecration, and pray that have such fine tails. You will be told they might catch no fish. And they that the ruddy color of the flesh is did not! But they found out how to due to the fact that when Heaven was make his prayers of no avail. The on fire the gods threw the flames into fishermen used to make a little effigy the water, and the salmon swallowed of the parson in rags, and put this them. The delicacy of the salmon's small guy up their chimneys. tail is explained by the story that Loki, While his reverence was slowly smoked when the angry gods pursued him, and consumed, the fish bit-like anyturned himself into a salmon. He thing! The fishermen of the Isle of would have escaped if Thor had not Man always feel safe from storm and caught him by the tail. Salmon have disaster if they have a dead wren on had their tails fine and thin ever since. board. They have a tradition that at Why are soles, plaice, and other flat- one time an evil sea spirit always fish brown on one side and white on haunted the herring pack and was the other? The Arabs of Upper Egypt always attended by storms. The spirit give an explanation which no one can assumed many forms; at last it took hesitate to accept. One day, they tell the shape of a wren and flew away. you, Moses, the Israelitish lawgiver, If the fishermen have a dead wren was frying a fish we all know the with them, they are certain that all will Jews are fond of fried fish, and they be safe and snug. Shocking it is to be cook it splendidly. Moses, however, compelled to state that many fishing had only cooked his fish on one side superstitions are ungallantly directed when the fire went out, and so he angrily against the ladies. Over against Ross threw the half-cooked fish into the sea. there is the Island of Lewis, sixty Although half broiled, it came to life miles in length. In this isle there is again, and its descendants - all the but one fresh river. "Fish abound flatfish -have preserved to-day the there in very great plenty," but only peculiar appearance of their half- let a woman wade in the stream, and cooked ancestor, being white on one not a salmon will be seen there for at side and brown on the other. Why do least twelve months. There is a song haddocks carry those peculiar black about "Eliza's Tootsies," but that im"finger marks near the head? Some mortal lyric does not explain why they tell us that they are a memento of the should frighten the fish. I believe the pressure of St. Peter's fingers when ladies deny the allegation in toto. In he went fishing for the tribute money. the south of Ireland, an angler proOn the Yorkshire coast they say the ceeding to fish declares that he will devil once determined to build a bridge have no luck if he is asked where he is at Filey. His Satanic Majesty did not going to, if he sees a magpie, or start the bridge for the convenience of he is so unfortunate as to meet the people, but for the destruction of woman ! "

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From The Contemporary Review.

SCOTTISH NATIONAL HUMOR.

But in time these rose to higher strata in the poems of Lindsay, in some of Knox's prose very grim and strong No one can pass a lifetime among it is-and in Dunbar and Henrysoun, the people of our countryside without mixed in every case with strongly perbeing made aware, in ways pleasant sonal elements. Burns alone caught, and the reverse, of the great amount and held the full force of it, for he was of popular humor ever bubbling up of the soil and grew up near to it. So from the heart of the common people. that to all time he must remain the It is to them the salt of intercourse, finest expression of almost all forms of the oil on the axles of their life. Not Scottish feeling. As to prose, chapoften does it reach the stage of being books and pamphlets innumerable carexpressed in literary form. It is lost ried on the stream, which for the most for the time being in the stir of farm- part was conveyed underground, till, byres, in the cheerful talk of ingle- the fulness of the time, Walter Scott nooks. You can hear it being windily came to give Scottish humor worldexchanged in the greetings of shep-wide fame in the noble series of imagiherds crying the one to the other native writings by which he set his across the valleys. It finds way in the native land beside the England of observations of passing hinds as they William Shakespeare. meet on the way to mill, and kirk, and market.

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Scott was the first great literary gardener of our old national stock of huFor example, an artist is busy at his mor, and right widely he gathered, as easel by the wayside. A rustic is look- those know who have striven to follow ing over his shoulder in the free man- in his trail. Hardly a chap-book but ner of the independent Scot. A brother he has been through-hardly a generarustic is in a field near by with his tion of our national history that he has. hands in his pockets. He is uncertain not touched and adorned. Yet because whether it is worth while to take the Scotland is a wide place, and Scottish trouble to mount the dyke for the un-humor also in every sense broad, no certain pleasure of looking at the pic- future humorist need feel straitened. ture. "What is he doing, Jock?" within their ample bounds. asks he in the field of his better situ

ated mate. "Drawin' wi' pent!" returns Jock, over his shoulder. "Is 't bonny?" again asks the son of toil in the field. "OCHT BUT BONNY!" comes back the prompt and decided answer of the critic. Of considerations for the artist's feelings there is not a trace. Yet both of these rustics will appreciatively relate the incident on coming in from the field and washing themselves, with this rider: "An' he didna look ower weel pleased, I can tell ye! Did he, Jock?"

This great body of popular humor first found its way into the channels of our historic literature mainly in the form of ballads and songs-often very free in taste and broad in expression, because they were struck from the rustic heart, and accordingly smelt of the farmyard where common things are called by their common names.

Of all the cherished delusions of the inhabitant of the southern part of Great Britain with regard to his northern brother, the most astonishing is the belief that the Scot is destitute of humor. Other delusions may be dissipated by a tourist ticket and the ascent of Ben Nevis-such as that, north of the Tweed, we dress solely in the kilt

which we do not, at least, during the day; that we support life solely upon haggis and the product of the national distilleries; that the professors of Edinburgh University, being "panged fu' o' lear," communicate the same to their students in the purest Gaelic-a thing which, though not altogether unprecedented, is, I am told, considered somewhat informal by the Senatus.

These may be taken as examples of the grosser delusions which leap to the eye, and are received upon Ithe ear as often as the subject of

the Greek language, as well as for the equator; and we are sure that upon more intimate acquaintance that admiration and respect would increase, we may say, on both sides. So that, though the professor frequently told us that he had known several learned pigs to make much better Greek verses than ourselves, we are yet free of his greater excommunication.

Scotland arises in a company of the un- that "every person who despises the travelled, and as we should say glai- Greek language and literature proves kit Englisher." himself to be either a conceited puppy But such vulgar errors are now or an ignorant fool." Our own attichiefly confined to the solemnly fatuous tude towards the Greek language at sheets which proclaim themselves to that time was not, however, that of be comic papers; and which, as I ob- contempt. We have always had the serve from the evidence of the rail-deepest respect and admiration for way bookstalls, command a much more ready sale in England than the works of all the humorists from Charles Lamb to Mr. Jerome K. Jerome. A man is known by the company he keeps. He is still better known, at least when he travels, by the papers he buys. For it is but rarely that we can select our travelling companions; while, on the contrary, when, at that gay and pleasing mart of literature of which I confess myself a devotee, the railway bookstall, a man says boldly, "Illus-admiration of the strength and comtrated Scrapings, Orts, Chips, and the Pink 'Un!" he writes himself down as a genuine lover of literature, of a kind, indeed, but I know well that Mr. Lang and Mr. Barrie will not profit by him.

It is, however, not always wise to judge by appearances. A friend of mine upon one occasion very nearly lost the important good-will of the father of the lady to whom his affections were at the time somewhat engaged, by foolishly colloguing with a certain prospective brother-in-law, a youth wholly without reverence, and buying a large quantity of the aforesaid Orts-and-Scrapings illustrated literature. This the ill-set pair strapped conspicuously upon the outside of the paternal dressing-cases and rugs which, not being discovered till the journey was far spent, occasioned great indignation in the owner, who had instructed the buying of Punch, the Guardian, the Spectator, and other serious literature of that kind. Explanations and apologies were were not accepted; and, as I say, this man of my acquaintance nearly lost a fairly good wife over this occurrence.

It is a dictum of the most justly celebrated of emeritus professors of the classics (alas! gone from the upper world since this paper was in print)

But I should like to pass on his commination, after expressing my envious

pactness of his language. This (it is understood) is what married ladies are wont to do, who have been sorely tried during the day by the stupidity of servants and the contrariness of circumstances they wait till their husbands come home, and pass it on. For this makes the thing fair all round and prevents hard feelings.

So I should much like to say, here and now, that "every person who despises Scottish national humor proves himself to be either a conceited puppy or an ignorant fool." I should like to add or both!"

There is a classical passage in the works of Mr. Stevenson, which, with the metrical psalms, the poems of Burns, and the Catechisms, Shorter and Larger, ought to be required of every Scottish man or woman before they be allowed to get married. It is sad to see young people setting up house so ill-fitted for the battle of life. The passage from Mr. Stevenson is as follows. I protest that I never can read it, even for the hundredth time, without a certain sympathetic moisture of the eye.

None but an Edinburgh lad could have written it none but one to whom nature and the works of God meant chiefly the Pentlands and the Lothians :