Fishermen have a reputation in folklore for stretching the truth. Listeners to these tales have almost come to expect embellishment and understand that these stories are nothing but tall tales. Clichés, such as “the big one that got away,” and exaggerations about the size of a catch nevertheless remain compelling elements of these stories, and many see the art of storytelling as an integral component of fishing. In the United States, fishing stories are integral to the folklore of both recreational and commercial fishermen, and tales associated with fishing are connected to other genres including folk belief and legend. Whereas fishing tall tales are clearly framed as fiction, many fishing legends contain an element of truth telling, making them more salient to the storyteller as well as to the listeners. The range of stories told about fish and fishing provides a vibrant resource that illuminates the diverse experiences of fishermen in a variety of social, geographical, and occupational contexts.
This Gustave Doré engraving entitled The Little Fish and the Fisherman is from Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables. Tall tales always have been a part of fishing culture in America and continue to be today. Such tales range from an individual angler’s exaggeration of “the one that got away” to important items of American folklore, and are common to all regions and types of fishing. (Timewatch Images/Alamy Stock Photo)
Tall tales about fish and fishing are prominently featured in folklore collections and anthologies. The majority of tall tales are about the exploits of recreational sport fishermen, in contrast to those who fish commercially. A typical story might center on effective and innovative ways of baiting hooks. Consider, for example, the story of a fisherman who trained a lizard to be both bait and an assistant to the angler. When he discovered that the lizard could swim and virtually walk across the water, he taught the lizard to run a fishing line into the mouth of a fish and then exit through the gills. The lizard could then repeat the process and catch a whole stringer full of fish. Other stories, such as the “Convivial Snake,” which the country band the Dixon Brothers turned into the song “Fisherman’s Luck,” deal with other innovative ways to catch fish. In this story the fisherman discovers a snake that has just caught a frog in its mouth. He pours some moonshine into the snake’s mouth to retrieve the frog so he can use it as bait. The next day, the fisherman returns to the same spot. Casting out his line and waiting for a strike, the angler is surprised to find the same snake slide up next to him. The snake made his presence known because he was carrying another frog in its mouth to exchange for another drink of whiskey.
These types of narratives are clearly told as fiction. The stories may be versions of previously existing tales, or they may also be original creations. Almost all of them follow a pattern of setting up a realistic scenario that the storyteller reframes by adding new episodes and shifting the narrative’s tone. These narrative elements frequently include incorporating exaggerated and even surreal elements to the plot. As is characteristic of other tall tales, one goal of the verbal artist’s telling is to display witty and expressive narration through a style that can range from droll understatement to extravagant humor.
Whereas stories told as tall tales are cast as fiction, other stories are told as accurate or at least plausible accounts. Consider, for example, a common story that Jan Brunvand published in his 1986 book The Mexican Pet. He documented a story about scuba divers who were working to repair a reservoir’s dam when they encountered a number of giant catfish lurking deep underwater. Variants of the story add that the divers refused to return to the job site because of their fear of being attacked or even consumed by the fish. Some of the stories include the motif of a diver’s hair turning white due to the trauma of facing these freshwater leviathans. Brunvand notes that he’s heard this story of “The Giant Catfish” applied to various locations in numerous states, but especially along the Mississippi River. Although it is unlikely that all listeners fully believe this narrative, the story is different from a fictional tall tale. It contains a kernel of truth that can be verified. Even though the story contains the folkloric motif of giant fish and although it is has a widespread distribution, the fact remains that many catfish can grow to huge sizes. In the United States, blue catfish can weigh more than 120 pounds, and catfish five times this size swim in Asian waters. Stories of giant catfish, thus, not only blur the boundary between tall tale and legend genres, but they also show that motifs and widespread distribution of stories can provide resources for affirming the accuracy of various details in a fish story.
There are a few examples of tall tales from the commercial fishing industry. The more prominent narratives, however, often fall within other genres of storytelling. Commercial fishing is most prevalent in the large bodies of water plied by trawlers and other commercial fishing vessels, but there is also a vast network of inland commercial fishers within America’s waterways. Stories told in various fishing villages include accounts of successful and unsuccessful trips, accounts of the past that constitute a folk history of maritime communities, and a wide variety of personal experience narratives and local legends that provide valuable resources for understanding the social history of the industry. Jens Lund’s Flatheads and Spooneys (1995) shows that the narrative tradition is an integral element of commercial fishing along the Ohio River, and his work adds to our understanding of the importance of folklore in preserving a body of knowledge within this fascinating occupation.
Stories from the saltwater fishing industry are also compelling. Peggy Bulger and Alan Saperstein’s 1986 documentary Fishing All My Days chronicles the occupational folklife of Florida’s shrimping industry. This exemplary study shows how personal experience narratives, legends, folk beliefs, and rituals are all meaningful elements of the traditional culture of shrimpers. In the video shrimpers tell tales of bad luck that they connect with leaving the dock on a Friday. They explain that it’s considered bad luck to borrow salt on a boat, carry a black suitcase on board, and say the word “alligator” on a vessel. They also recount incidents of encounters with ghost ships and other mystical phenomena. When raconteurs narrate these supernatural stories from first-person experience, these stories exemplify a lesser-known genre of folklore called the “memorate.” These texts are often ghost stories, and shrimpers and other fishers tell of actually seeing what appear to be spectral schooners from previous eras coasting along in full sail as they cross from the land of the dead into shallow waters in Florida’s Gulf Coast. These stories are told as propositions for belief. Like the traditional legend and perhaps even the tall tale, the rich variety of fishing tales explore wider implications about telling the truth—both when lying is an expected part of the tradition as well as when listeners expect to hear veracious accounts of their aquatic adventures.
Gregory Hansen
See also Fur-bearing Trout; Storytelling; Whitey
Further Reading
Botkin, Benjamin A. 1955. A Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore. New York: Crown.
Brunvand, Jan. 1986. The Mexican Pet: More “New” Urban Legends and Some Old Favorites. New York: W. W. Norton.
Bulger, Peggy, and Alan Saperstein. 1986. Fishing All My Days: Florida Shrimping Traditions. Documentary film co-produced by Eric Larsen and James Morgese. Tallahassee: Florida Department of State/Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs. Available online at www.folkstreams.net.
Lund, Jens. 1995. Flatheads and Spooneys: Fishing for a Living in the Ohio River Valley. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Untiedt, Kenneth L., ed. 2011. Hide, Horn, Fish, and Fowl: Texas Hunting and Fishing Lore. Denton: University of North Texas Press.
Fish(ing) Tales—Primary Document
John Smith’s Mermaid (1849)
Accounts of mermaids can be found in most cultures, ancient and modern, including reports of these sea creatures in American waters. A famous mermaid hoax is attributed to Alexandre Dumas, who in 1849 made up a story that John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, sighted a mermaid in the West Indies in 1611. Dumas’s story is excerpted here. Mermaids are everywhere in American legend; Christopher Columbus mistook manatees for mermaids, though ugly ones, and Henry Hudson’s crew claimed to have seen mermaids in Hudson’s Bay. Many Native Americans passed along stories about mermaids, such as the account of the Ne Hwas in Passamaquoddy legend.
NUPTIALS OF FATHER POLYPUS
BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, AUTHOR OF MONTE CRISTO, ETC. ETC. ETC,
CHAPTER 1.—MERMAIDS AND SYRENS.
I had a letter from King Jerome Napoleon to his niece, the Queen of Holland. No sooner had I arrived at the Hague than I had been careful to send off that epistle to the person to whom it was addressed; so that I was called out of my sleep by a messenger from the palace.
I stretched my head out of the soft feather bed in which I was entombed, and inquired what was wanted with me.
The king’s aide-de-camp had sent to me, on the part of his majesty, a permit for my companions and myself to take the special train; and had sent me, moreover, cards of admission to attend the coronation in the diplomatic gallery.
The special train started at eleven, it was then nine, so I thanked the messenger and made an attempt to drag myself out of bed.
I had only time enough left to go myself to the museum. There was one thing above all I wished to see, independent of the marvels of Rembrandt, Van Dyke, Paul Potter, and all the fine masterpieces of the Dutch school. It was a glass case in which they have preserved some of those salt water women called “mermaids.” The mermaid is a native production, restricted to Holland and her colonies.
You know, reader, or perhaps you have yet to learn, that the mermaid is divided into two species—the syrens and nereids. The syren is the monster of antiquity with a woman’s head and a fish’s tail. These are the daughters of Oceanus and Amphitrite, who used to entice passengers by music, and then devour them. If we may depend upon the veracity of the historians of the sixteenth, seventeenth, or even the eighteenth centuries, these pretty syrens are not uncommon. Captain John Smith, an Englishman, saw in 1611, off an island in the West Indies, a syren, with the upper part of the body perfectly resembling a woman. She was swimming about with all possible grace, when he descried her near the shore. Her large eyes, rather too round, her finely shaped nose, somewhat short, it is true, her well-formed ears, rather too long however, made her a very agreeable person, and her long green hair imparted to her an original character by no means unattractive. Unfortunately the beautiful swimmer made a slip, and Captain Smith, who had already begin to experience the first effects of love, discovered that from below the stomach the woman gave way to the fish. It is true that this fish had a double tail; but two tails are not exactly calculated to make amends for two legs.
Doctor Kercher, in one of his scientific reports, relates that a syren was caught in the Zuyder Zee, and dissected at Leyden by Professor Peter Paw; and, in the same learned report, he makes mention of a syren who was found in Denmark, and who was taught to knit and fortell future events. This syren has a pretty face, mild sparking eyes, a small tiny nose, long dropping arms; the fingers of her hand joined by a cartilage like a goose’s foot, the breasts round and hard, and the skin covered with white shells. He asserted that the tritons and syrens constitute a submarine population, which, partaking of the skill both of the ape and beaver, build their grottoes of stone, in places inaccessible to all divers, and where they spread out their beds of sand, in which they lie, sleep, and enjoy their lovers.
John Philip Abelinus relates, in the first volume of his “Theater of Europe,” that in the year 1619 certain councilors of the court of Denmark, sailing between Norway and Sweden, discovered a man-marine or man-fish, swimming about, with a bunch of grass on his head. They threw out a bait to him with a fish-hook concealed therein. The man-marine was fond of good living, it seems, like a man of the earth. He allowed himself to be caught by a slice of bacon, bit at it, and was drawn aboard; but when he got on deck he began to speak most excellent Danish, and threatened to prosecute the whole ship’s company. The sailors stared at each other in astonishment; and when, from words he proceeded to threats, their wonder was turned to consternation; they hastened to throw the man-fish back into the sea, with the humblest excuses and apologies. It is true that, as this is the only instance we have of a man-fish having spoken, the erudite commentators of Abelinus opine that he was not triton, but a specter.
Johnstone tells us that in the year 1403 a mermaid was caught in a lake in Holland, whither the tide had carried her. She allowed them to dress her in woman’s clothes, learned to eat bread and milk, to knit very well, but always continued mute.
Source: Dumas, Alexandre. “Nuptials of Father Polypus.” The Gazette of the Union, Golden Rule, and Odd Fellows’ Family. Vol. 11. New York: Crampton and Clarke, 1849, p. 200.