gems, pearls, Britian, Great Britain, UK

The following account is taken, by permission, from the Manchester Guardian Weekly (7 July 1933). “Only occasionally is the pearl-fisher to be seen at work in our British rivers today. Through force of circumstances he is becoming a rare bird, and moreover, at the speed at which we flit through the country now, that figure in mid-stream, handling a rod and with what appears to be a creel about his middle, is easily and naturally mistaken for an angler. It is only on closer acquaintance that these adjuncts of fishing become something interestingly different. It is to be feared, too, that if you saw a pearler and pointed him out to your fellow-passengers the tale would be received with doubt, for it is not generally known that some of our northern rivers, along with streams in Wales and Ireland, but more especially in Scotland, carry a pearl-bearing fresh-water mussel. And fishing for these pearls is an ancient British industry. Tacitus mentions the British river pearl; so does Pliny; there is reference to it in the Faerie Queene.”