At Fisherrow, a few miles east from Newhaven, there is another fishing community, who also do business in Edinburgh, and whose manners and customs are quite as superstitious as those of the folks I have been describing. “The Fisher-raw wives,” in the pre-railway times, had a much longer walk with their fish than the Newhaven women; neither were they held in such esteem, the latter looking upon themselves as the salt of their profession. Dr. Carlyle of Inveresk, whose memoirs were recently published, in writing of the Fisherrow women of his time, says:—“When the boats come in late to the harbour in the forenoon, so as to leave them no more than time to reach Edinburgh before dinner, it is not unusual for them to perform their journey of five miles by relays, three of them being employed in carrying one basket, and shifting it from one to another every hundred yards, by which means they have been known to arrive at the fishmarket in less than three quarters of an hour. It is a well-known fact, that three of these women went from Dunbar to Edinburgh, a distance of twenty-seven miles, with each of them a load of herrings on her back of 200 pounds, in five hours.” Fatiguing journeys with heavy loads of fish are now saved to the wives of both villages, as dealers attend the arrival of the boats, and buy up all the sea produce that is for sale. In former times there used to be great battles between the men of Newhaven and the men of Fisherrow, principally about their rights to certain oyster-scalps. The Montagues and Capulets were not more deadly in their hatreds than these rival fishermen. Now the oyster-grounds are so well defined that battles upon that question are never fought.
Fisherrow has long been distinguished for its race of hardy and industrious fishermen, of whom there are about two hundred in all. They go to the herring-fishing at Caithness, at North Sunderland, at Berwick, North Berwick, and Dunbar, and about sixty men go to Yarmouth, on the east coast of England, a distance of about 300 miles. Ten boats, with a complement of eight men each, go to the deep-sea white-fishing, and two or three boats to the oyster-dredging.
The white-fishing of Fisherrow has long been a staple source of income. At what time a colony of fishermen was established at that village is unknown. They are most likely coeval with the place itself. When the Reverend Dr. Carlyle, minister of the parish of Inveresk, wrote (about 1790) there were forty-nine fishermen and ninety fishwives, but since that time the numbers of both have of course much increased.
The system of merchandise followed by the fishwives in the old days of creel-hawking, and even yet to a considerable extent, was very simple. Having procured a supply of fish, which having bestowed in a basket of a form fitted to the back, they used to trudge off to market under a load which most men would have had difficulty in carrying, and which would have made even the strongest stagger. Many of them still proceed to the market, and display their commodities; but the majority, perhaps, perambulate the streets of the city, emitting cries which, to some persons, are more loud than agreeable, and which a stranger would never imagine to have the most distant connection with fish. Occasionally, too, they may be seen pulling the door-bell of some house where they are in the habit of disposing of their merchandise, with the blunt inquiry, “Ony haddies the day?”[21]
While treating of the peculiarities of these people, I may record the following characteristic anecdote:—“A clergyman, in whose parish a pretty large fishing-village is situated, in his visitations among the families of the fish-carriers found that the majority of them had never partaken of the sacrament. Interrogating them regarding the reason of this neglect, they candidly admitted to him that their trade necessarily led them so much to cheat and tell lies, that they felt themselves unqualified to join in that religious duty.” It is but justice, however, to add that, when confidence is reposed in them, nothing can be more fair and upright than the dealings of the fisher class; and, as dealers in a commodity of very fluctuating value, they cannot perhaps be justly blamed for endeavouring to sell it to the best advantage.
At Prestonpans, and the neighbouring village of Cockenzie, the modern system, as I may call it, for Scotland, of selling the fish wholesale, may be seen in daily operation. When the boats arrive at the boat-shore, the wives of those engaged in the fishing are in readiness to obtain the fish, and carry them from the boats to the place of sale. They are at once divided into lots, and put up to auction, the skipper’s wife acting as the George Robins of the company, and the price obtained being divided among the crew, who are also, generally speaking, owners of the boat. Buyers, or their agents, from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, etc., are always ready to purchase, and in a few hours the scaly produce of the Firth of Forth is being whisked along the railway at the rate of twenty miles an hour. This system, which is certainly a great improvement on the old creel-hawking plan, is a faint imitation of what is done in England, where the owners of fishing-smacks consign their produce to a wholesale agent at Billingsgate, who sells it by auction in lots to the retail dealers and costermongers.
Farther along on the Scottish east coast is North Berwick, now a bathing resort, and a fishing town as well; and farther east still is Dunbar, the seat of an important herring-fishery—grown from a fishing village into a country town, in which a mixture of agricultural and fishing interests gives the place a somewhat heterogeneous aspect; and between St. Abb’s Head and Berwick-on-Tweed is situated Eyemouth, a fishing-village pure and simple, with all that wonderful filth scattered about which is a sanitary peculiarity of such towns. The population of Eyemouth is in keeping with the outward appearance of the place. As a whole, they are a rough uncultivated people, and more drunken in their habits than the fishermen of the neighbouring villages. Coldingham shore, for instance, is only three miles distant, and has a population of about one hundred fishermen, of a very respectable class, sober, well dressed, and “well-to-do.” A year or two ago an outburst of what is called “revivalism” took place at Eyemouth, and seemed greatly to affect it. The change produced for a time was unmistakable. These rude unlettered fishermen ceased to visit the public-houses, refrained from the use of oaths, and instead sang psalms and said prayers. But this wave of revivalism, which passed over other villages besides Eyemouth, has rolled away back, and in some instances left the people worse than it found them; and I may perhaps be allowed to cite the fish-tithe riots as a proof of what I say. These riots, for which the rioters were tried before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, and some of them punished, arose out of a demand by the minister for his tithe of fish.
Crossing the Firth of Forth, the cost of Fife, from Burntisland to “the East Neuk,” will be found studded at intervals with quaint fishing-villages; and the quaintest among the quaint is Buckhaven. Buckhaven, or, as it is locally named, Buckhyne, as seen from the sea, is a picturesque group of houses sown broadcast on a low cliff. Indeed, most fishing villages seem thrown together without any kind of plan. The local architects had never thought of building their villages in rows or streets; as the fisher-folks themselves say, their houses are “a’ heids and thraws,” that is, set down here and there without regard to architectural arrangement. The origin of Buckhaven is rather obscure: it is supposed to have been founded by the crew of a Brabant vessel, wrecked on that portion of the Fife coast in the reign of Philip II. The population are, like most of their class, a peculiar people, living entirely among themselves; and any stranger settling among them is viewed with such suspicion that years will often elapse before he is adopted as one of the community. One of the old Scottish chap-books is devoted to a satire of the Buckhaven people. These old chap-books are now rare, and to obtain them involves a considerable amount of trouble. Thirty years ago the chapmen were still carrying them about in their packs; now it is pleasing to think they have been superseded by the admirable cheap periodicals which are so numerous and so easy to purchase. The title of the chap-book referred to above is, The History of Buckhaven in Fifeshire, containing the Witty and Entertaining Exploits of Wise Willie and Witty Eppie, the Ale-wife, with a description of their College, Coats of Arms, etc. It would be a strong breach of etiquette to mention the title of this book to any of the Buckhaven people; it is difficult to understand how they should feel so sore on the point, as the pamphlet in question is a collection of very vulgar witticisms tinged with such a dash of obscenity as prevents their being quoted here. The industrious fishermen of Buckhaven are moral, sober, and comparatively wealthy. Indeed, many of the Scottish fisher-folk are what are called “warm” people; and there are not in our fishing villages such violent alternations of poverty and prosperity as are to be found in places devoted entirely to manufacturing industry. There is usually on the average of the year a steady income, the people seldom suffering from “a hunger and a burst,” like weavers or other handicraftsmen.