fact, there are several Roman villas in the
neighbourhood, and there was also fighting hereabouts in the Civil Wars.
But half the country folk look upon everything that happened more than a
hundred years ago as having taken place in the time of the Romans; and
Oliver Cromwell is to them as mythical a personage and belonging to an
equally remote antiquity as Julius Caesar. The Welsh people are just the
same. The other day we were shown a huge pair of rusty scissors whilst
staying in Breconshire. The man who found them took them to the "big
house" for the squire to keep as a curiosity, for, "no doubt," he said,
"they once belonged to _some great king_"!

To our disgust, on reaching the upper water we found it as thick as
pea-soup. Sheep-washing had been going on a mile or so above us. Never
having had any sport under these conditions in past times, we had quite
decided to give up fishing for the day; but Tom Peregrine, who is ever
sanguine, swore he saw a fish rise. To our astonishment, on putting the
fly over the spot, we hooked and landed a large trout Proceeding up
stream, two more were quickly basketed. When the water comes down as
thick as the Thames at London Bridge, after sheep washing, the big trout
are often attracted out of their holes by the insects washed out of the
wool; but they will seldom rise freely to the artificial fly on such
occasions. To-day, oddly enough, they take any fly they can see in the
thick water, and with a "coch-y-bondu" substituted for the may-fly, as
being more easily seen in the discoloured water, any number of fish were
to be caught. But there is little merit and, consequently, little
satisfaction in pulling out big trout under these conditions, so that,
having got seven fish, weighing nine pounds, in the basket, we are
satisfied.

As a rule, it is only in the may-fly season that the biggest fish rise
freely; an average weight of one pound per fish is usually considered
first-rate in the Coln. On this day, however, although the may-fly was
not yet properly up, the big fish, which generally feed at night, had
been brought on the rise by the sheep-washing.

All the way home we are regaled with impossible stories of big fish
taken in these waters, one of which, the keeper says, weighed five
pounds, "all but a penny piece." As a matter of fact, this fish was
taken out of a large spring close to the river; and it is very rarely
that a three-pounder is caught in the Coln above Bibury, whi