Among the senior veterans of our riverside I may venture to name two most worthy men and fine salmon fishers. Although both have now wound in their reels and unspliced their rods, one of them still lives among us hale and hearty. "Jamie" Shanks of Craigellachie is, perhaps, the father of the water. He himself is reticent as to his age and there are legends on the subject which lack authentication. It is, however, a matter of tradition that Jamie was out in the '45; and that, cannily returning home when Charles Edward turned back at Derby, he earned the price of a croft by showing the Duke of Cumberland the ford across Spey near the present bridge of Fochabers, by which the "butcher duke" crossed the river on his march to fight the battle of Culloden. It is also traditioned that Jamie danced round a bonfire in celebration of the marriage of "bonnie Jean," Duchess of Gordon, an event which occurred in 1767. Apart from the Dark Ages one thing is certain regarding Jamie, that the great flood of 1829 swept away his croft and cottage, he himself so narrowly escaping that he left his watch hanging on the bed-post, watch and bed-post being subsequently recovered floating about in the Moray Firth. The greatest honour that can be conferred on a fisherman—the Victoria Cross of the river—has long belonged to Jamie; a pool in Spey bears his name, and many a fine salmon has been taken out of "Jamie Shanks's Pool," the swirling water of which is almost at the good old man's feet as he shifts the "coo" on his strip of pasture or watches the gooseberries swelling in his pretty garden. His fame has long ago gone throughout all Speyside for skill in the use of the gaff: about eight years ago I was witness of the calm, swift dexterity with which he gaffed what I believe was his last fish. In the serene evening of his long day he still finds pleasant occupation in dressing salmon flies; and if you speak him fair and he is in good humour "Jamie" may let you have half a dozen as a great favour.
The other veteran of our river of whom I would say something was that most worthy man and fine salmon fisher Mr. Charles Grant, the ex-schoolmaster of Aberlour, better known among us who loved and honoured the fine old Highland gentleman as "Charlie" Grant. Charlie no longer lives; but to the last he was hale, relished his modest dram, and delighted in his quiet yet graphic manner to tell of men and things of Speyside familiar to him during his long life by the riverside. Charles Grant was the first person who ever rented salmon water on Spey. It was about 1838 that he took a lease from the Fife trustees of the fishing on the right bank from the burn of Aberlour to the burn of Carron, about four miles of as good water as there is in all the run of Spey. This water would to-day be cheaply rented at £250 per annum; the annual rent paid by Charles Grant was two guineas. A few years later a lease was granted by the Fife trustees of the period of the grouse shootings of Benrinnes, the wide moorlands of the parishes of Glass, Mortlach, and Aberlour, including Glenmarkie the best moor in the county, at a rent of £100 a year with four miles of salmon water on Spey thrown in. The letting value of these moors and of this water is to-day certainly not less than £1500 a year.
Charles Grant had a great and well-deserved reputation for finding a fish in water which other men had fished blank. This was partly because from long familiarity with the river he knew all the likeliest casts; partly because he was sure to have at the end of his casting-line just the proper fly for the size of water and condition of weather; and partly because of his quiet neat-handed manner of dropping his line on the water. There is a story still current on Speyside illustrative of this gift of Charlie in finding a fish where people who rather fancied themselves had failed—a story which Jamie Shanks to this day does not care to hear. Mr. Russel of the Scotsman had done his very best from the quick run at the top of the pool of Dalbreck, down to the almost dead-still water at the bottom of that fine stretch, and had found no luck. Jamie Shanks, who was with Mr. Russel as his fisherman, had gone over it to no purpose with a fresh fly. They were grumpishly discussing whether they should give Dalbreck another turn or go on to Pool-o-Brock the next pool down stream, when Charles Grant made his appearance and asked the waterside question, "What luck?" "No luck at all, Charlie!" was Russel's answer. "Deevil a rise!" was Shanks's sourer reply. In his demure purring way Charles Grant—who in his manner was a duplicate of the late Lord Granville—remarked, "There ought to be a fish come out of that pool." "Tak' him out, then!" exclaimed Shanks gruffly. "Well, I'll try," quoth the soft-spoken Charlie; and just at that spot, about forty yards from the head of the pool, where the current slackens and the fish lie awhile before breasting the upper rapid, he hooked a fish. Then it was that Russel in the genial manner which made provosts swear, remarked, "Shanks, I advise you to take a half year at Mr. Grant's school!" "Fat for?" inquired Shanks sullenly. "To learn to fish!" replied the master of sarcasm of the delicate Scottish variety.
Respectful by nature to their superiors, the honest working folk of Speyside occasionally forget themselves comically in their passionate ardour that a hooked salmon shall be brought to bank. Lord Elgin, now in his Indian satrapy, far away from what Sir Noel Paton in his fine elegy on the late Sir Alexander Gordon Cumming of Altyre called
The rushing thunder of the Spey,
one day hooked a big fish in the "run" below "Polmet". The fish headed swiftly down stream, his lordship in eager pursuit, but afraid of putting any strain on the line lest the salmon should "break" him. Down round the bend below the pool and by the "Slabs" fish and fisherman sped, till the latter was brought up by the sheer rock of Craigellachie. Fortunately a fisherman ferried the Earl across the river to the side on which he was able to follow the fish. On he ran, keeping up with the fish, under the bridge, along the margin of "Shanks's Pool," past the "Boat of Fiddoch" pool and the mouth of the tributary; and he was still on the run along the edge of the croft beyond when he was suddenly confronted by an aged man, who dropped his turnip hoe and ran eagerly to the side of the young nobleman. Old Guthrie could give advice from the experience of a couple of generations as poacher, water-gillie, occasional water-bailiff, and from as extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the river as Sam Weller possessed of London public-houses. And this is what he exclaimed: "Ma Lord, ma Lord, gin ye dinna check him, that fush will tak' ye doun tae Speymouth—deil, but he'll tow ye oot tae sea! Hing intil him, hing intil him!" His lordship exerted himself accordingly, but did not secure the old fellow's approval. "Man! man!" Guthrie yelled, "ye're nae pittin' a twa-ounce strain on him; he's makin' fun o' ye!" The nobleman tried yet harder, yet could not please his relentless critic. "God forgie me, but ye canna fush worth a damn! Come back on the lan', an' gie him the butt wi' pith!" Thus adjured, his lordship acted at last with vigour; the sage, having gaffed the fish, abated his wrath, and, as the salmon was being "wetted," tendered his respectful apologies.
In my time there have been three lairds of Arndilly, a beautiful Speyside estate which is margined by several miles of fishing water hardly inferior to any throughout the long run of the river. Many a man, far away now from "bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the river's roll over its rugged bed, recalls in wistful recollection the swift yet smooth flow of "the Dip;" the thundering rush of Spey against the "Red Craig," in the deep, strong water at the foot of which the big red fish leap like trout when the mellowness of the autumn is tinting into glow of russet and crimson the trees which hang on the steep bank above; the smooth restful glide into the long oily reach of the "Lady's How," in which a fisherman may spend to advantage the livelong day and then not leave it fished out; the turbulent half pool, half stream, of the "Piles," which always holds large fish lying behind the great stones or in the dead water under the daisy-sprinkled bank on which the tall beeches cast their shadows; the "Bulwark Pool;" the "Three Stones," where the grilse show their silver sides in the late May evenings; "Gilmour's" and "Carnegie's," the latter now, alas! spoiled by gravel; the quaintly named "Tam Mear's Crook" and the "Spout o' Cobblepot;" and then the dark, sullen swirls of "Sourdon," the deepest pool of Spey.
The earliest of the three Arndilly lairds of my time was the Colonel, a handsome, generous man of the old school, who was as good over High Leicestershire as he was over his own moors and on his own water, and who, while still in the prime of life, died of cholera abroad. Good in the saddle and with the salmon rod, the Colonel was perhaps best behind a gun, with which he was not less deadly among the salmon of the Spey than among the grouse of Benaigen. His relative, old Lord Saltoun, was hard put to it once in the "Lady's How" with a thirty-pound salmon which he had hooked foul, and which, in its full vigour, was taking all manner of liberties with him, making spring after spring clean out of the water. The beast was so rebellious and strong that the old lord found it harder to contend with than with the Frenchmen who fought so stoutly with him for the possession of Hougomont. The Colonel, fowling-piece in hand, was watching the struggle, and seeing that Lord Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited his opportunity when the big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring, and, firing in the nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail, hardly marking it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river with cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now considered rather the "Whitechapel game." He resorted to the cross-lines, not in greed for fish but for the sake of the shooting practice they afforded him. When the hooked fish were struggling and in their struggles showing their tails out of water, he several times shot two right and left breaking the spine in each case close to the tail.
The Colonel was succeeded by his brother, who had been a planter in Jamaica before coming to the estate on the death of his brother. Hardly was he home when he contested the county unsuccessfully on the old never-say-die Protectionist platform against the father of the present Duke of Fife; on the first polling-day of which contest I acquired a black eye and a bloody nose in the market square of a local village at the hands of some gutter lads, with whose demand that I should take the Tory rosette out of my bonnet I had declined to comply. Later, this gentleman became an assiduous fisher of men as a lay preacher, but he was as keen after salmon as he was after sinners. He hooked and played—and gaffed—the largest salmon I have ever heard of being caught in Spey by an angler—a fish weighing forty-six pounds. The actual present laird of Arndilly is a lady, but in her son are perpetuated the fishing instincts of his forbears.
My reminiscences of Spey and Speyside are drawing to an end, and I now with natural diffidence approach a great theme. Every Speyside man will recognise from this exordium that I am about to treat of "Geordie." It is quite understood throughout lower Speyside that it is the moral support which Geordie accords to Craigellachie Bridge, in the immediate vicinity of which he lives, that chiefly maintains that structure; and that if he were to withdraw that support, its towers and roadway would incontinently collapse into the depths of the sullen pool spanned by the graceful erection. The best of men are not universally popular, and it must be said that there are those who cast on Geordie the aspersion of being "some thrawn," for which the equivalent in south-country language is perhaps "a trifle cross-grained." These, however, are envious people, who are jealous of Geordie's habitual association with lords and dukes, and who resent the trivial stiffness which is no doubt apparent in his manner to ordinary people for the first few days after the illustrious persons referred to have reluctantly permitted him to withdraw from them the light of his countenance. For my own part I have found Geordie, all things considered, to be wonderfully affable. That his tone is patronising I do not deny; but then there is surely a joy in being patronised by the factotum of a duke.