The Unlucky Fisherman of Seattle
A satirical poem from 1878 chronicles an angler who spends a week sitting by a local sawmill, only to become a living piece of landscape architecture for the local insect population.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
An angler sat by an old sawmill, and angled away in the flowing rill; dreaming of fish that traditions say, deep in these waters nest and lay. Gudgeons and perch, eels and pout, and Legend whispered, a speckled trout. This last named fish must be taken 'on spec,' for no one has seen his head or neck. One man had seen the end of his tail going down stream like an express mail; this tale may be true, yet this is, ending up with a dubious Fin-is. But to our tale, as I said before: This patient angler sat by the shore: The tools of his trade around him lay, hackles, red, dun, brown, speckled and gray, flies artificial of every hue, millers and moths and grasshoppers, too, and rare old Walton’s 'Angler Complete,' the fisherman’s Bible lay at his feet. As thus he sat and angled away, I gently spoke to the fisherman gray: 'Hallo, my friend, how goes the fight with the finny tribes; hadst ere a bite?' 'Not yet,' he sighed and whispered low, 'I’ve only been here a day or so.' Time rolled on and I passed that way. There sat the fisherman, old and gray; the hornet had built a nest in his hat, his ears were the house of the sportive gnat; and yellow jackets were coming to rest within the folds of his peaceful vest; a family select of mosquitoes had taken the attic over his nose; a gay and frolicsome water newt ran in and out of the leg of his boot; earwigs, horseflies and beetles brown were sporting about his snowy crown; but there he sat by the old sawmill, happy, contented and patient still. As thus he sat and angled away, I gently spoke to the fisherman gray: 'Hallo, my friend, how goes the fight with the finny tribes, hadst ere a bite?' 'Not yet,' he sighed and whispered low, 'I’ve only been here a week or so.'
“The hornet had built a nest in his hat, his ears were the house of the sportive gnat; and yellow jackets were coming to rest within the folds of his peaceful vest.”
While Seattle’s sawmill culture has long since given way to high-tech, this poem captures the timeless local tradition of 'fishing for status'—or at least, the absurdity of waiting for a bite in waters that were already becoming polluted or overfished even in 1878.
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