Note 3 — III A GREAT FISH AND A GREATER FISHERMAN

After the publication of these verses in the above article, as it originally appeared in the issue of Country Life for August 6, 1921, their authorship was discovered through the kindness of some of the readers of that journal and the enterprise of its editor. In a letter in Country Life for August 27, 1921, Bishop G. F. Browne, late Lord Bishop of Bristol, thus describes their origin. “The first three stanzas were composed at Lowick Rectory, Northants, by the rector, J. S. Watson, his daughter Betty, and Dean Ingram of Peterborough. The authors felt that there ought to be a concluding stanza, ambiguously stating a final result. I told the story to Father Waggett on our way from Bournemouth to Clouds, and he suggested ‘booked it’ as the point of a last stanza. On that hint I wrote the stanza. In my book I remark that its tendency would be unjust to any real fisherman’s imaginative powers.”