“The morn, like siller glancin’,
They’ll haul them han’ to han’;
Syne doon the water dancin’,
Come hame wi’ sixty cran.”
The passengers can see the Bell Rock lighthouse, and think of the old legend of the pirate who took away the floating bell that had been erected by a pious abbot on the Inchcape Rock as a warning to mariners, and who was promptly punished for his sin by being shipwrecked on the very rock from which he had carried off the bell. After leaving Aberdeen, the Buffers of Buchan are among the wonders of the shore, and the sea soughs at times with mournful cadence in the great caverns carved out by the waves on the precipitous coast, or it foams and lashes with majestic fury, seeking to add to its dominions. All the way, till the Old Man of Wick is descried, guarding the entrance of Pulteneytown harbour, there are ruined castles, and ancient spires, and curious towers perched on high sea-cliffs; or there are frowning hills and screaming sea-birds to add to the poetry of the scene. And along these storm-washed coasts there are wonders of nature that show the strong arm of the water, and mark out works that human ingenuity could never have achieved. Loch Katrine and the Pass of Glencoe have been the fashion ever since Sir Walter Scott made Scotland; but there are other places besides these that are worth visiting.
The supposed scene of Sir Walter Scott’s novel of The Antiquary, on the coast of Forfarshire, presents a conjunction of scenic and industrial features which commends it to notice. At Auchmithie, which is distant a few miles from Arbroath, there is often some cause for excitement; and a real storm or a real drowning is something vastly different from the shipwreck in the drama of The Tempest, or the death of the Colleen Bawn. The beetling cliffs barricading the sea from the land may be traversed by the tourist to the music of the everlasting waves, the dashing of which only makes the deep solitude more solemn; the sea-gull sweeps around with its shrill cry, and playful whales gambol in the placid waters.
The village of Auchmithie, which is wildly grand and romantic, stands on the top of the cliffs, and as the road to it is steep a great amount of labour devolves on the fishermen in carrying down their lines and nets, and carrying up their produce, etc. One customary feature observed by strangers on entering Auchmithie is, that when met by female children they invariably stoop down, making a very low curtsey, and for this piece of polite condescension they expect that a few halfpence will be thrown to them. If you pass on without noticing them they will not ask for anything, but once throw them a few halfpence and a pocketful will be required to satisfy their importunities. There are two roads leading to Auchmithie from Arbroath, one along the sea-coast, the other through the country. The distance is about 3½ miles in a north-east direction, and the country road is the best; and approaching the village in that direction it has a very fair aspect. Two rows of low-built slate-roofed houses, and a school and chapel, stand a few yards off by themselves. On the north side of the village is a stately farm-house, surrounded by trees, and on the south side a Coast-Guard station, clean, white-washed, and with a flagstaff, giving the whole a regular and picturesque appearance. Entering the village of Auchmithie from the west, and walking through to the extreme east end, the imagination gets staggered to think how any class of men could have selected such a wild and rugged part of the coast for pursuing the fishing trade—a trade above all others that requires a safe harbour where boats can be launched and put to sea at a moment’s warning if any signals of distress be given. The bight of Auchmithie is an indentation into rocky cliffs several hundred feet in perpendicular height. About the middle of the bight there is a steep ravine or gully with a small stream, and at the bottom of this ravine there is a small piece of level ground where a fish-curing house is erected, and where also the fishermen pull up their boats that they may be safe from easterly gales. There are in all about seventeen boats’ crews at Auchmithie. Winding roads with steps lead down the side of the steep brae to the beach. There are a few half-tide rocks in the bight that may help to break the fury of waves raised by easterly winds; but there is no harbour or pier for the boats to land at or receive shelter from, and this the fishermen complain of, as they have to pay £2 a year for the privilege of each boat. The beach is steep, and strewed with large pebbles, excellently adapted, they say, for drying fish upon.
The visitor, in addition to studying the quaint people, may explore one of the vast caves which only a few years ago were the nightly refuge of the smuggler. Brandy Cove and Gaylet Pot are worth inspection, and inspire a mingled feeling of terror and grandeur. The visitor may also take a look at the “Spindle”—a large detached piece of the cliffs, shaped something like a corn-stack, or a boy’s top with the apex uppermost. When the tide is full this rock is surrounded with water, and appears like an island. Fisher-life may be witnessed here in all its unvarnished simplicity. Indeed nothing could well be more primitive than their habits and mode of life. I have seen the women of Auchmithie “kilt their coats” and rush into the water in order to aid in shoving off the boats, and on the return of the little fleet carry the men ashore on their brawny shoulders with the greatest ease and all the nonchalance imaginable, no matter who might be looking at them. Their peculiar way of smoking their haddocks may be taken as a very good example of their other modes of industry. Instead of splitting the fish after cleaning them, as the regular curers do, they smoke them in their round shape. They use a barrel without top or bottom as a substitute for a curing-house. The barrel being inserted a little distance in the ground, an old kail-pot or kettle, filled with sawdust, is placed at the bottom, and the inside is then filled with as many fish as can conveniently be hung in it. The sawdust is then set fire to, and a piece of canvas thrown over the top of the barrel: by this means the females of Auchmithie smoke their haddocks in a round state, and very excellent they are when the fish are caught in season. The daily routine of fisher-life at Auchmithie is simple and unvarying; year by year, and all the year round, it changes only from one branch of the fishery to another. The season, of course, brings about its joys and sorrows: sad deaths, which overshadow the village with gloom; or marriages, when the people may venture to hold some simple fête, but only to send them back with renewed vigour to their occupations. Time, as it sweeps over them, only indicates a period when the deep-sea hand-lines must be laid aside for the herring-drift, or when the men must take a toilsome journey in search of bait for their lines. Their scene of labour is on the sea, ever on the sea; and, trusting themselves on the mighty waters, they pursue their simple craft with persevering industry, never heeding that they are scorched by the suns of summer or benumbed by the frosts of winter. There is, of course, an appropriate season for the capture of each particular kind of fish. There are days when the men fish inshore for haddocks; and there are times when, with their frail vessels, the fishermen sail long distances to procure larger fish in the deep seas, and when they must remain in their open boats for a few days and nights. But the El-dorado of all the coast tribe is “the herring.” This abounding and delightful fish, which can be taken at one place or another from January to December, yields a six weeks’ fishing in the autumn of the year, to which, as has already been stated, all the fisher-folk look forward with hope, as a period of money-making, and which, so far as the young people are concerned, is generally expected to end, like the third volume of a love-story, in matrimony.
Taking a jump from Auchmithie, it is desirable to pause a moment at the small fishing village of Findon, in the parish of Banchory-Devenick, in Kincardineshire, in order to say a few words about a branch of industry in connection with the fisheries that is peculiar to Scotland. Yarmouth is famed for its “bloaters,” a preparation of herrings slightly smoked, well known over England; and in Scotland, as has already been mentioned in a previous chapter, there is that unparagoned dainty, the “Finnan haddock,” the best accompaniment that can be got to the other substantial components of a Scottish breakfast. Indeed, the Finnan haddock is celebrated as a breakfast luxury all over the world, although it is so delicate in its flavour, and requires such nicety in the cure, that it cannot be enjoyed in perfection at any great distance from the sea-coast. George IV., who had certainly, whatever may have been his other virtues, a kingly genius in the matter of relishes for the palate (does not the world owe to him the discovery of the exquisite propriety of the sequence of port wine after cheese?), used to have genuine Finnan haddocks always on his breakfast-table, selected at Aberdeen and sent express by coach every day for his Majesty’s use. Great houses of brick have now been erected at various places on the Moray Firth and elsewhere; and in these immense quantities of haddocks and other fish are smoked for the market by means of burning billets of green wood. Formerly the fisher-folk used to smoke a few haddocks in their cottages over their peat-fires for family use. I have already described how the fame of the Finnan haddock arose. The trade soon grew so large that it required a collection to be made in the fishing districts in order to get together the requisite quantity; so that what was once a mere local effort has now become a prominent branch of the fish trade. But it is seldom that the home-smoked fish can be obtained, with its delicate flavour of peat-reek. The manufactured Finnan or yellow haddock, smoked in a huge warehouse, is more plentiful, of course, but it has lost the old relish. It is pleasant to see the clean fireside and the clear peat-fire in the comfortably-furnished cottage, with the children sitting round the ingle on the long winter evenings, listening to the tales and traditions of the coast, the fish hanging all over the reeking peats, acquiring the while that delicate yellow tinge so refreshing to the eyes of all lovers of a choice dish.
Footdee, or “Fittie” as it is locally called, is a quaint suburb of Aberdeen, figuring not a little, and always with a kind of comic quaintness, in the traditions of that northern city, and in the stories which the inhabitants tell of each other. They tell there of one Aberdeen man, who, being in London for the first time, and visiting St. Paul’s, was surprised by his astonishment at its dimensions into an unusual burst of candour. “My stars!” he said, “this maks a perfect feel (fool) o’ the kirk o’ Fittie.” Part of the quaint interest thus attached to this particular suburb by the Aberdonians themselves arises from its containing a little colony or nest of fisher-folk, of immemorial antiquity. There are about a hundred families living in Fittie, or Footdee Square, close to the sea, where the Dee has its mouth. This community, like all others made up of fishing-folk, is a peculiar one, and differs of course from those of other working-people in its neighbourhood. In many things the Footdee people are like the gipsies. They rarely marry, except with their own class; and those born in a community of fishers seldom leave it, and very seldom engage in any other avocation than that of their fathers. The squares of houses at Footdee are peculiarly constructed. There are neither doors nor windows in the outside walls, although these look to all the points of the compass; and none live within the square but the fishermen and their families, so that they are as completely isolated and secluded from public gaze as are a regiment of soldiers within the dead walls of a barrack. The Rev. Mr. Spence, of Free St. Clement’s, lately completed plans of the entire “toun,” giving the number and the names of the tenants in every house; and from these exhaustive plans it appears that the total population of the two squares was 584—giving about nine inmates for each of these two-roomed houses. But the case is even worse than this average indicates. “In the South Square only eight of the houses are occupied by single families; and in the North Square only three, the others being occupied by at least two families each—one room apiece—and four single rooms in the North Square contain two families each! There are thirty-six married couples and nineteen widows in the twenty-eight houses; and the number of distinct families in them is fifty-four.” The Fittie men seem poorer than the generality of their brethren. They purchase the crazy old boats of other fishermen, and with these, except in very fine weather, they dare not venture very far from “the seething harbour-bar;” and the moment they come home with a quantity of fish the men consider their labours over, the duty of turning the fish into cash devolving, as in all other fishing communities, on the women. The young girls, or “queans,” as they are called in Fittie, carry the fish to market, and the women sit there and sell them; and it is thought that it is the officious desire of their wives to be the treasurers of their earnings that keeps the fishermen from being more enterprising. The women enslave the men to their will, and keep them chained under petticoat government. Did the women remain at home in their domestic sphere, looking after the children and their husbands’ comforts, the men would then pluck up spirit and exert themselves to make money in order to keep their families at home comfortable and respectable. Just now there are many fishermen who will not go to sea as long as they imagine their wives have got a penny left from the last hawking excursion. There is no necessity for the females labouring at out-door work. There are few trades in this country where industrious men have a better chance to make money than fishermen have, especially when they are equipped with proper machinery for their calling. At Arbroath, Auchmithie, and Footdee (Fittie), the fishing population are at the very bottom of the scale for enterprising habits and social progress. When the wind is in any way from the eastward, or in fact blowing hard from any direction, the fishermen at these places are very chary about going to sea unless dire necessity urges them.