Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/440

432 a clay-hole under a bank, and the piles beneath the arch of a bridge are certain haunts for this bold and beautiful fish. I have taken (in October) from ten to twelve brace of good fish, none under half a pound, under the wooden piles of old Walton Bridge; and should a skilful angler get amongst a shoal at this season of the year he may catch every fish. Still the perch, though a bold feeder, is wary, and if one hooked fish escape, in all probability you will fish in vain near the spot for another fish. Under such circumstances it is but lost time, and I would advise immediate removal to another hole. I may cite a striking example of this which came under my experience. Fishing one autumn in the river Isis, I had come upon a shoal of perch, and had taken upwards of a dozen—nay, so greedy were they, I could even see them swim up and take the bait—when two college friends, in sheer wantonness, knocked the rod out of my hand as I was playing a very fine fish (I should judge more than a pound), and of course the fish escaped. From that moment I could not take another perch, although I could see more than a score round the hook. I tried successively a gudgeon, a dace, a small frog, a brandling, a gentle, and a minnow again, but to no purpose; they peered at my bait, they swam round and round, and touched it with their noses, but not a fish would bite, though I had before been pulling them out of the water as fast as I could bait my hook. Since then the same curious wariness in these fish (after one of them has felt the hook) has often come under my notice.

Apart from the amusement which the perch affords to lovers of angling, it is by no means a despicable fish. The flavour is delicate, and the flesh firm and white, and many think (and I am of that number) that a water souchet of perch in season may challenge comparison with any fish delicacy that comes to table. An excellent way of dressing this fish is as follows:—Take four perch of from half a pound to a pound and stuff them with thyme, marjorum, bread crumbs and sweet herbs; dip them in egg and bread crumbs, and fry till they are a rich brown, then lay them on a clean dish (but with no napkin), and serve up with mashed potatoes and clear melted butter. A glass of claret or Madeira I think an improvement to the sauce, but that is purely a matter of taste. This dish, if properly cooked, is really a very superior one, and one which I can recommend to a “gourmand” without any misgiving.

The perch is a very hardy and, I am sorry to add, a most pugnacious fellow, and two fish of this species will frequently engage in desperate combat. Even the cruel and voracious pike is slow to attack the perch, and when urged to it by extreme hunger usually gets the worst of it. The formidable fin on the back of the perch, armed as it is with excessively sharp spikes, causes it to be much feared by other fish, and a roach or dace of a pound weight will often fly from a perch not one quarter the size. It is not at all uncommon for a baby-perch not two inches in length to attempt to swallow a minnow, and, as the perch has a most capacious mouth, the attempt is sometimes successful.

The scales of the perch are very beautiful, having serrated edges, not unlike the ends of the petals of a pink or carnation. Very handsome screens are embroidered with these curious ornaments, and the writer knows a lady who is very expert at making exquisite imitations of white moss-roses and white pinks with the scale of the perch. The scales, after having been frequently washed in salt-and-water, become of the most delicate snowy whiteness, and few readers of this paper who have not seen specimens of perch-scale embroidery would form any just idea of the chaste and beautiful effect they produce.

Perch spawn usually in April and May, and they are in perfection for the table and for the pastime of the amateur fisherman from September until the end of January. .



the time of the great troubles in France, that fell out between the parties of Armagnac and of Burgundy, there was slain in a fight in Paris a follower of the Duke John, who was a good knight called Messire Jacques d’Aspremont. This Jacques was a very fair and strong man, hardy of his hands, and before he was slain he did many things wonderful and of great courage, and forty of the folk of the other party he slew, and many of these were great captains, of whom the chief and the worthiest was Messire Olivier de Bois-Percé; but at last he was shot in the neck with an arrow, so that between the nape and the apple the flesh was cleanly cloven in twain. And when he was dead his men drew forth his body of the fierce battle, and covered it with a fair woven cloak. Then the people of Armagnac, taking good heart because of his death, fell the more heavily upon his followers, and slew very many of them. And a certain soldier, named Amaury de Jacqueville, whom they called Courtebarbe, did best of all that party; for, crying out with a great noise, “Sus, sus!” he brought up the men after him, and threw them forward into the hot part of the fighting, where there was a sharp clamour; and this Amaury, laughing and crying out as a man that took a great delight in such matters of war, made of himself more noise with smiting and with shouting than any ten, and they of Burgundy were astonished and beaten down. And when he was weary, and his men had got the upper hand of those of Burgundy, he left off slaying, and beheld where Messire d’Aspremont was covered up with his cloak; and he lay just across the door of Messire Olivier, whom the said Jacques had slain, who was also a cousin of Amaury’s. Then said Amaury:

“Take up now the body of this dead fellow, and carry it into the house; for my cousin Madame Yolande shall have great delight to behold the face of the fellow dead by whom her husband has got his end, and it shall make the tiding sweeter to her.”

So they took up this dead knight Messire Jacques, and carried him into a fair chamber lighted with broad windows, and herein sat the wife of Olivier, who was called Yolande de Craon,