While searching for old books on fly-fishing, I recently acquired Songs for the Fisherman, collected by Joseph Morris and St. Clair Adams (Stewart Kidd Co., 1922). Among the many treasures is a poem by John Harrington Keene, "The Salmon Fly," a tale of the gypsy queen Gitana.

Joseph D. Bates, Jr., in his book The Art of the Atlantic Salmon Fly, writes: "In his articles for the Fishing Gazette (but not in his book) Kelson gave the patterns for several flies which he credited to Major John Traherne, one of the great salmon anglers near the end of the last century." Then Bates goes on to include two additional patterns with the Gitana and illustrates them on Plate XV.

Looking back through the American Fly Fisher, the journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing (vol. 13, no. 2), I found a reprint from Wildwoods Magazine--"The Salmon," written by John Harrington Keene as it appeared in the October 1888 issue (vol. 1, no. 6). I mention this as the poem preceded the article and was not presented in its entirety. For your enjoyment, here is the complete poem:

See here! a faded, ragged, salmon-fly,
"Gitana," fitly named--a gypsy queen,
The body tinselled--gleaming silverly,
The hackle--parrot green.

The wings--ye gods! what beauty--erst macaw,
Sky-blue, enclosed in tippets tawny red;
Beyond--to end of hook without a flaw,
The jungle-fowl is spread.

And over all--a golden rain of rays,
The topping droops, with fibers blue and red,
From parrot's sword--at tail a topping's blaze,
An ostrich herl at head.

Thus was "Gitana" when I made her first,
A vision of delight 'neath spring-blue skies;
A poem bright of color all unversed-
Empress of salmon flies.

And bright the morning on that crag-bound stream,
In Scotia--rugged land of rock and fell;
When like a bar of light the fish did gleam,
And rose with mighty swell,

Taking "Gitana" in her rich-robed pride,
Whilst I nerve-shaken, sought to stay his course--
As well try stay the torrent's mighty tide,
or rein the proud wild horse.

Like arrowy lightning's flash he sped to deeps
That hid the caverns of his fastness--there
Sharp juts of rock on rock lay piled in heaps
To form the salmon's lair.

(Here in the somber shadows, fathoms down,
Sir Salmo Salar spoilt "Gitana's" dress,
Rubbing his nose against the door-post brown,
Till hook held less and less.)

At last, with furious rush and buoyant plunge,
High out in the air his burnished form he throws,
And falling on the line with mighty lunge,
Free once agin he goes!

And thus "Gitana" faded and undone--
Unlucky nymph--recalls his summer night,
A lusty wooer lured, but all unwon--
Her lover and his flight.

Earth's mightiest, great fish! have worshiped thee
And leaving learning and the cares of state,
Have sought the river's side, with joy elate,
To woo thee from thy home so wild and free.

From Orient climes they bring the jewelled plume--
Each bird of sunshine and each bird of storm--
The bustard from Siberian frost and gloom;
The mighty condor--e'en Cathay's rare worm!
All vie in luring thee unto thy doom.

And if perchance, then, seeing the bright gem
That glitters to thine eye, thou yieldst thy life--
Men have done more for less--and like to them,
Thou passest only from this mundane strife! --

J. Harrington Keene ("Grapho").