CORACLES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19800, 27 May 1926, Page 5

CORACLES.

A LITTLE-KNOWN KIND OF BOAT. I had the notion that everybody knew what coracles were, says a writer in tne Navy, but it appears that I was mistaken. For I said to Tony, aged 101, “D’ye know whit coracles are?” His reply was, “-No I don't, but llipy’re rude.” The cryptic pronouncement rather took my breath away, till I remembered that nearly every history manual insists on two facts regarding the ancient Britons; first, that their priests were called Druids; second, that they sailed about in “rude coracles.’ Then I casually let fall the word in the presence of Jobson, who is “in advertising,” and, therefore, uncertain of nothing. ** ‘So long a time since I heard that word,” he said. “Funny how tags of poetry, and so on, stick in your mind, even when they're not slogans. I've ght the one —‘I am Lord Coracle and when I speak don't let the dogs hark. ’ I firmly pointed out to him that what he had in mind (I Paid, of ccmrse, "what you call your mind/' being grieved at him) was Shakespeare's— I am Sir Oracle, .And when I open my lips, let no dog bark. However, Jobson called me a high-brow, and said there was no pep in it, either Shakespeare's way or his. It is usually said that the earliest form of boat was a dug-out, with the coracle as the next stage of advancement made by primitive man who wished to cross any considerable expanse of water. Doubtless the fashioning of a dug-out was a slow process, even though at that period of history, no smart Aleck had put forward the idea that “Time is money"; there was only time. 1 venture the suggestion that the most striking advantage of the coracle, as compared with the dug-out, was that it was so much less cumbrous Its portability—for the coracle was, and is, a framework of skins (canvas nowadays), stretched over it would it immediate popularity. In one or two parts of Wales the arrival of the salmon season ushers in great activity on the part of professional fishermen. One guide book asserts that “Coracle fishing on the River Towy is probably tbe oldest industry round Carmarthen," and statement which undoubtedly means activity in fishing from coracles and not for them. The fishermen work in pairs some distance apart, each man moving and steering his coracle with one hand and holding one end of a drag net with the other. It is stated that theiTc coracle men form a kind of close corporation and speak a curious dialect of their own. As they use such words as “Gwar bach y gored,” it is obvious that no cultured salmon could have much chance of escape.