[Artemisia] Re: Cord Question (period fishing line)

[Catherine Helm-Clark]

> Therasia scripted  " In period, fishing line was made out of white  
> tail
> hairs from a female horse."
>
> I had no idea.  Very cool.  Where does this lovely bit of  
> information come
> from?  I am having little perking A&S ideas here

First off, I made a mistake here.  It's hairs off a stallion
that was specified.  It all has to do with which direction
the liquid waste disposal system points...

I went back to the sources to find this and it turns out
to be an essay by Plutarch - but only by attribution by
in one just out of period source (The Complete Angler
by Walton and Cotton) and several modern secondary
sources.  The period sources do agree that braided
horse hair is the stuff to use for lines.  Most importantly,
the oldest known period manual on fly fishing, A treatyse
of fysshynge wyth an Angle, recommends it.  After that,
the sources begin to disagree as to whether to keep
the horse hair white or whether to dye it.

I know the person who wrote one of those secondary
sources and I trust his research - so I suspect that the
Plutarch attribution is likely real.  I took a quick cruise
through Plutarch's Moriales this afternoon and didn't
find everything (though I did find a lovely little "fish
story" involving Anthony and Cleopatra that's probably
the Medieval work of one of the pseudo-Plutarchs)

Considering the nature of the attribution of the white
stallion horse hair attribution, I have begun to have
my doubts as to source.  The actually content reminds
me much more strongly of Cato the Elder or Pliny the
Elder rather than the sort of moralistic claptrap that
Plutarch turned out.  What we may be seeing here is a
misattribution that has propagated through the modern
sources because lots of people didn't bother to get off
their butts to check out their sources - somethings that's
actually rather inexcusable.  But what can I say?
Thinking is work and people are lazy...

I haven't given up digging yet, not until I check out
Cato and Pliny, who both wrote works on how to make
stuff and manage estates and property (as opposed
to Plutarch who wrote weird high-brow stuff, like
whether God existed, why there was sunshine and
the cunning of wild animals).

ttfn,
Therasia
(happily digging through the works of old dead guys...)