To any one intent on some definite employment out-of-doors, such as fishing, sketching, botanising, geological mapping, or any pursuit where quiet air is necessary, nothing can be more exasperating than a struggle against the ceaseless driving of the blast. Mere heavy rain, if it fall straight, can be endured, for it allows one to stand, to turn round, and if an umbrella be used, to consult a map or guide-book. With a furious wind, however, you can do nothing but
Grow sick, and damn the climate—like a lord.
In Scotland, as in other countries having a variable climate, the weather has long been a staple subject with which to introduce a conversation. And it is curious that even when the sky is overcast, with a threatening of rain, the usual greeting, ‘It’s a fine day,’ may not infrequently be heard as the beginning of the colloquy. So inveterate is this habit that the observation is apt to escape from the lips, even when the meteorological conditions make it grotesquely out of place, as in the case of the man who made use of it on a day of howling tempest, but immediately corrected himself: ‘It’s a fine day,’ said he,—‘but coorse.’
Remarks about the weather have been known to be resented on Sundays as an unbecoming topic of conversation for that solemn season. When the usual salutation had been made to one of the more strait-laced elders, he testily answered, ‘Ay, but whatna a day’s this, to be speakin’ about days?’
Still more gruff was the Aberdonian response to the ordinary greeting of a stranger on a country road, ‘Ou ay, fae’s findin’ faut wi’ the day. There’s some folk wad fecht wi’ a stane wa’.’
The number of days in a year when an outdoor walk is impracticable on account of the weather is in Scotland far smaller than people might imagine. Of course there come storms of wind and rain that will keep one a prisoner for a day or so at a time. But even in these storms there are not infrequently lulls, when a brisk walk may be enjoyed before the tempest begins again. Geological surveying affords a good test of climate, and I have found it quite possible to carry this work on the whole year through. Snow puts a stop to it, but many winters come and go without leaving snow on the lowlands at all, or at least for more than a day or two altogether.
Those who are familiar with the peculiarly genial and healthy climate of the southern shores of the Moray Firth have sometimes thought that as good an argument as many that have been brought forward to prove that Shakespeare visited Scotland, might be based on the extraordinarily minute and accurate description which he gives of the climate of that region.
The air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses. This guest of summer,