THE BOOK OF DUCK DECOYS. | ||
| Where Ducks by scores travers'd the Fens, Coots, Didappers, Rails, Water-hens, Combiri'd with eggs, to charge our pot. Two furlongs circle round the spot.* Fowl, fish, all kinds the table grac'd, All caught within the self same space; As time revolv'd, in season fed, The surplus found us salt and bread Your humble servant, now your penman, Liv'd thus a simple, full-bred Fen-man.' |
||
| "With regard to his imperfect education, he, begs the reader's indulgence, the first twenty years of his life having been passed five miles from church or school, amid conversation of the 'lowest, vulgar kind,' with only six months' schooling:- | ||
| "'Pray, sirs, consider, had you been Bred where whole winters nothing's seen But naked floods for miles and miles, Except a boat the eye beguiles; Or Coots, in clouds, by Buzzards teaz'd. Your car with seeming thunder seiz'd From rais'd decoy,-there Ducks on flight; By tens of thousands darken light; | ||
* * * * * | ||
| Who liv'd for months on stage of planks, 'Midst Captain Flood's most swelling pranks, Five miles from any food to have, Yea often risk'd a watery grave.' | ||
| "In a foot-note at page 6 he thus explains the line, From rais'd decoy,' &c. :-'This was the six hundred Decoy; the pond, about three acres of water, well sheltered and distant from disturbance, became so great an asylum, that I have heard divers decoymen say it was apparently impossible for an egg to be dropped without hitting one.** Our house was a full mile parallel distance; and when they were disturbed, any stranger would suppose it distant thunder. It is the author's intention to devote a part of the work under the life of a low Fen-man, where he will descant more largely upon Decoys, having never seen but one rational writer on the subject, and he has manifested that he knows nothing of the theory.' | ||
| *'Referring to Willow Booth, the place of his birth, Hall appends the following note : - 'Then an island of but few perches. The author was the last person living who was born upon it."' ** This was the one in South Kyme Fen, hereinafter mentioned under Lincolnshire Decoys. | ||
Index List of Illustrations