Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A FISHER'S APOLOGY, by ANONYMOUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A FISHER'S APOLOGY, by                    
First Line: "minister, why do you direct your artillery"
Last Line: "now his day is done, the means of sport"
Subject(s): Scottish Translations


MINISTER, why do you direct your artillery against my nets? Why am I forbidden
to fish on the Sabbath Day?

On Jews alone is this oppressive commandment binding; we, the descendants of
Japhet, are a people independent of it.

God's edict is, I acknowledge, just, but it is not intended to be unfair
towards anyone -- a stain from which the council and hall of Heaven is quite
free.

Saturday is a festival day; yet who but a half-wit considers it a time for
idling and not tilling the fields?

On that day our Lord himself healed the man with the withered hand, and his
disciples, as you may read, did not keep their hands off the cornears.

But on the Sabbath it is a sin to break the clods with a harrow or to put a
pair of oxen beneath the broad yokes.

These occupations may be resumed on the morrow without regard to wind and rain
and without any loss.

But, ah me! how brief is the opportunity I have of making profit! Away
it flies on wings swifter, East Wind, than thine!

To-day a salmon sports and leaps in my waters; to-morrow it will be off to
take up a settled abode in the upper stream.

Why should I be fool enough to let what's mine be taken from me? What right
has another to swallow the sheep I pasture?

Of their own free will the fish come, asking to be netted. What lunacy it
would be to refuse such an offer of a dinner!

Another fact that carries weight is that on the holy mornings the pools abound
often more plentifully with fish.

Why does the Sabbath offer such a catch if it forbids the nets to be spread?
Temptation of this sort is but making a fool of mankind.

Moreover, neither is it the case that a fisher is engaged in work when he
looses the nets -- among the ancients this was regarded as pure sport.

After wandering the globe in their traversing of woods, hunter and fowler feel
wearied with excessive hard work.

My pursuit causes nothing but delight. -- It is work that the commandment
forbids, but my occupation involves no work.

Sitting on a high rock I keep a look-out on the river's transparent waters for
the glittering shoal's scaly backs.

The stream is my farm, salmon my yearly crop -- these are the dues that the
kindly sea-goddess (Thetis) allots me.

As soon as hope sheds its sunshine, from the rock rings a joyful shout of
warning, which the crowd drink in with pricked-up ears.

No delaying or dallying! The lads quickly get ready their gear and the plying
of many an oar makes the water seethe.

Some bend upward the net-edges, others drop in stones, and the rest haul in
the linen cavern containing the captured shoal.

Cast ashore out of the boats, the catch dumbly quivers on the sands, and in
the open air keeps trying to get back to the waters.

This party kills them; after the killing that group guts them; another group
removes the scales from their backs, and yet another seasons them in salt.

When the nets lie idle, we hunt the fish with rods and cover the bronze barbs
with the treacherous dainties.

Forthwith the tribe, unwitting of the hidden ruse, flies at its prey, and
through its undue credulousness perishes.

If bait is not to be got (for who can find bait enough for so many thousands?)
the hooks are usually hidden in a many-coloured little feather.

At the lure then jumps the raw-recruit salmon, and swallows the hook, and
himself gets caught by his catch.

What is he to do? He sinks into the water, and, as the line is played out,
helplessly drags it in his lacerated mouth as he flees.

Now he rushes downstream, now flies back against the current, now darts
through the waters by a cross-path.

Sometimes he whirls round and struggles in the water, making it somewhat
turbid. Sometimes he gapes his mouth, and, too late, shakes his throat vainly.

Worn out by a thousand meanders, he at length leaves the stream, and, on the
dry shore, captive, lies dead.

Next, when inclination takes me, I lash the waters with a casting net, or with
a leister pierce the gleaming herd.

Now I entangle the hollow river-bed with osier-woven nets; now, by night, with
a torch I let light fall on the stony pools.

Often I depopulate the stream of tributes for myself with concealed
receptacles called in the Scots tongue cruives.

These, when the fish are striving towards the upper waters, hinder their
efforts and bar their paths.

Not content with suffering this, the herd stupidly makes its way into the
open-mouthed wicker-work, and is imprisoned.

A mute company, in a dark gaol, like to the horse that enclosed in its belly
the silent Greeks, or Danae's tower, or the labyrinth.

The salmon, thronging, are flustered, dumbfounded, and distressed at being cut
off, and rage wildly within the circumscribed water.

Meanwhile a band of youths flies to the rescue, and, swifter than the East
Wind, many a boat surrounds the dazed shoal.

This lad shakes out the hollow traps, that fellow bears away the catch in his
skiff; one party counts, another kills, the prisoners.

There is no less delight in playing a trick on the owners of the next fishings
-- fooling them properly, and snatching their feast from them before they can
get it.

It is enjoined that on Saturdays the trellis-work barriers be removed to let
the salmon run freely into the upper waters.

There is a penalty attached to this law, and it is necessary to obey; so a
door is opened in the burn wide enough to let the flock through.

But, to keep them from going through, we put just there a horse's skull, its
bones gleaming whiter than midwinter snow.

No sooner is their course directed than a panic possesses the scaly breed, and
there is stampede as if the Gorgon's head lay facing their oncoming.

But, as they flee from Scylla, they enter unwittingly into cruel Charybdis's
jaws, and come to a wretched end in the wicker traps I laid.

Thus with a heap of pleasures this work is piled, and with nothing but
beguilements and charms.

But if this happy pastime is defiled with sin, or, rather, with venial
failing, there is a crowd left at home to appease the Powers.

My household utters for my sake prayers to Heaven. Do you also, for my
household's sake, withhold your imprecations!

My wife and children, flocking to the temples, will consume much incense, and
make presents of more.

With pious incense the angers of offended Deity are wont to be assuaged, and
much fine wood in offerings wins back the propitiousness of Gods.

Do you even as Heaven, minister, and let your wrath abate; lay aside the
roaring thunderbolts of your harshness.

Take my word for it; the rest of the community is also being struck by these
bolts; a wound in my side draws blood from a whole crowd.

If you mean to ban the fishing-nets, ban also from our land the bounties of
Bacchus, for these also we owe to my wares.

I send them over to a foreign nation's shores, and many a ship returns laden
with red wine.

I will rise from my chair in honour of my parents, I will dip a sword-point in
nobody's blood, nor woo any man's wife.

I will not put my hand into any other person's money-boxes, no one shall raise
complaints against me for perjury, no covetousness will take possesion of my
soul.

If only religion permits me to yield to this one temptation! Oh, do let me be
privileged to set my lines on the Sunday!

The sin occupies but a short space of time -- no more than a brief summer.
That is all the length of this harvest-season, I assure you.

I do not even ask for a whole day of it. -- Twice the wave from the
neighbouring sea rises with the tide, twice it ebbs from my waters.

When the waters are high, it is not proper to use the nets; thus the Sunday is
to be violated by me but twice.

In one day, a man, otherwise upright and just, transgresses only as often as
the high sea sucks back the waters it vomits forth.

Pray tell me, why does one failing among the thousand possible sins -- a fault
at that but twice repeated -- prove my ruin?

But there isn't any fault in me if I exert my energies on this day. -- You
may regard it as a holy day, but I look upon it as a working day.

'Twas on this day that God laid the foundation of the boundless universe, and
the first day of our week was the first day of the divine toiling.

'Twas on this day that Chaos came into being, and likewise Daylight, before
the sun was yet created; and Day too was divided from Night.

If you should count the divisions of the week, God rested on the day which is
believed to be sacred to the scythe-bearing God.

The day whereon you harshly forbid me to use my nets is sacred to Phoebus --
and this God is intolerant of idleness.

He never rests; all day long if I, his worshipper, weary the waters of the
rivers, he wearies his steeds.

There is but one slight difference -- he is attending to the management of the
universe, I am managing my own business.

There is no blame connected with my act. -- Who does not attend to finance?
What sin is there in my looking after number one?

Aye, but, you say, it is contrary to religion. -- But no hunter of the waters
believes religion to enjoin anything unprofitable.

For profitableness is the standard in reference to which laymen approve of
friendship, marriage, the legal system, class distinctions, and even religion
itself.

My present attitude to this question in the old days had the assent of the
clergy; how great were the tributes that the Sunday brought in to them!

It was the custom on this day for us to gather such a catch as we could,
whereof they bore off a tythe in their hallowed hands.

When the allotment dissatisfied the fathers, the holy kitchen was enriched
with confiscated fish.

God's commandment was altered by the holy Church. Even so, when one God
refuses help, another God vouchsafes it.

The only folk whom the clergy invoked this law to oppress were farmers -- it
was forbidden that the lowing of herds be heard on the Sunday.

But by their express orders, amid the snarling of the rabble, the necks of
fishermen were exempt from this yoke.

Whosoever of the fathers authorised the granting of so rare a privilege, O may
his bones, I pray, lie lightly.

But ah! I fear his soul is now deciding points of law by the waters of Styx,
if any fish perchance wander in its waters.

But for fishing what would the gay unrespectable young men drink, who have, by
day and night, a thirst for Bacchus's juice?

Or the stern throng of elders, of whom Bacchus is the very life-blood? What
would those great chatterboxes, the old women, do?

Who would be a worshipper of the muses if you abolished the habit of wine-
drinking? Bah! the waters of Helicon are tasteless.

When the Sunday comes round, Council and Common folk alike get drunk on wine,
nor is there any disgrace in being drunk on the holy day!

Aye, you too, minister, dispense wine in God's honour, and are wont with wine
to cut short the lingering day.

If your word were law, no fire would gleam in the house, nor water be fetched
from the nearby spring.

No one would stretch out a helping hand to anyone who stumbled, and no one
would lift a bleating sheep out of a ditch.

All love-making would be under a ban, and in observance of your Sabbath, a
newly-wed wife would flee from her husband's embraces.

The sailors, for want of rowing, and because no one would dare to set sails
for the wind, would run aground on rocks.

And when Sunday dawned, the coal-miner would, in the midst of his fires, be
drowned in waters welling up from the ground.

Why should I mention the salt-makers? Unless their work is perpetually in
motion, it goes for nothing and is not made good again.

The forge for glass-making, the forge for smelting the impenetrable iron --
either is ruined if the fire slumbers even once.

Oh, me! why is the seventh day a holy day so far as fishers alone are
concerned, but a working day for other people?

It is a foolish superstition to muffle the mind in numbers -- arithmetic of
this sort has a bit too much of the magic art in it.

Either blot out the Sabbath days, or postpone them till the idle times of
midwinter, when to my disgust rivers are in the grip of lifeless frost.

Then I will keep religious festivals all the week -- while winter rules not
one working day will there be.

So long as it is mine to enjoy the light of Heaven and the life-giving water,
I will obey all the other commandments engraved by God's finger.

To God alone will I pray, I will make no graven image, nor will I take in vain
the Lord's name.

However, if you cannot be swayed by this offer, I will submit to your
injunctions -- only, so far as Sabbath observance is concerned, let me observe
the day in my own way!

The pious flock of Isaac's sons, by the flowing waters of Babylon, gave
countless tears and pious prayers unto God.

Even so, I will perform the rites I deem acceptable regularly each proper day
by the waterside, and either bank will hear my prayers.

May it be by that waterside that the Nymphs give me a tomb when I have left
the rivers, and may the stone which covers my bones bear this inscription: --

"Here lies a man, owner of the neighbouring pool while he drew breath, but not
owner of his own soul.

"Not that he lived unto himself; he lived for his children; but his life was
nothing but one unconscionable round of work, and not a day nor an hour did he
spend at the festivals of religion while alive.

"He took no thought for his future state, and between the palace of Heaven and
the halls of the Netherworld, he saw no difference in point of preferableness.

"There are fish in the Heavens; there are rivers in Hell; either region
affords him, now his day is done, the means of sport."





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