distillery is now the near neighbor of the cathedral. Below the broken
walls, still rich with beautiful carving, new and old gravestones, as at
Iona, stand side by side. In nave and transepts knights lie on old
tombstones, under canopies carved with leaves and flowers; here and
there in the graveyard without are moss-grown slabs with the
death's-head and graceful lettering of the seventeenth century; near by
are ugly blocks from the modern stone-mason. The guide-book quotes some
of the old inscriptions; but it omits one of late date, which should,
however, receive the greatest honor--that of the man who cared for the
ruins with reverence and love until the Government took them in charge.
These ruins are very beautiful. Indeed, nowhere does the religious
vandalism of the past seem more monstrous than in Scotland. The
Government official asked us to write our names in the Visitors' Book;
he made it seem a compliment by saying that it was not everybody's name
he wanted. We thought him a man of much greater intelligence than the
Glasgow verger. He could see, he said, that J---- knew something about
cathedrals and architecture.
We found nothing else of interest in Elgin. It had a prosperous look,
and we saw not a trace of the old timbered houses with projecting upper
stories of which Dr. Johnson writes. The remainder of our stay we spent
in a restaurant near the station, where we talked politics with a
farmer. He lectured us on free-trade. Scotch farmers cry for protection,
he said, but they don't know what it means. Free-trade is good for the
bulk of the people, and what would protection do for the farmer?
Nothing! If he got higher prices, the landlord would say, Now you can
afford to pay me higher rent, and he would pocket the few shillings'
difference.
We talked with many other farmers in the east of Scotland. Sometimes we
journeyed with them in railway-carriages; sometimes we breakfasted and
dined with them in hotels. They all had much to say about protection and
free-trade, and we found that Henry George had been among them. Their
ideas of his doctrine of the nationalization of the land were at times
curious and original. I remember a farmer from Aberdeenshire who told us
that he believed in it thoroughly, and then explained that it would give
each man permission, if he had money enough, to buy out his landlord.
After our lunch at Elgin we again got through a day's work in less than
an hour. We went by train to
BUCKIE,
a place of which we had never heard before that afternoon. How J----
happened to buy tickets for it I cannot explain, since he never made it
quite clear to me. We found it a large and apparently thriving fishing
town, with one long line of houses low on the shore, another above on
the hill, and a very good hotel, the name of which I am not sure we knew
at the time; certainly we do not remember it now.
[Illustration: FISHER-BOATS HAULED UP NEAR BUCKIE.]
It was at Buckie that J---- made several of the best sketches in the
lost sketch-book in the evening as we watched the boats sail silently
out from the harbor. The sun had just set. The red light of the
after-glow shone upon the water. Against it, here and there, the brown
sails stood out in strong relief. Other boats lay at anchor in the cool
gray of the harbor.
In the morning we made a new start on foot. Now and then, for a short
distance, the road went inland across treeless, cultivated country; but
the greater part of the time it lay near the sea, and kept wandering in
and out of little fishing villages, in each of which the lost
sketch-book came into play. They were all much alike; there was usually
the harbor, where the fishing-boats were moored, some with brown sails
hung out to dry and flapping slowly in the breeze; others with long
lines of floats stretched from mast to mast; and as it was not only low
tide but near the end of the fishing season, all were drawn up in
picturesque masses in the foreground, the light of sea and sky bright
and glittering behind them. Carts full of nets, men and women with huge
bundles of them on their backs, were always on their way either up or
down the hill at whose foot the village nestled; or on the level at its
top the nets were spread like great snares, not for birds, but for any
one who tried to walk across them. Boxes and barrels of salted fish
were piled along the street. In the air was the strong smell of
herrings. In every village new houses were being or had just been built,
but the soft gray smoke hovering above the roofs toned down their
aggressive newness. In their midst was the plain white kirk.
[Illustration]
There were so many villages that we could not complain of monotony; and
then sometimes, on the stretch of beach beyond, dismantled boats in
various stages of decline were pulled up out of reach of the tide.
Sometimes on the near links men were playing golf. Once we passed three,
each putting his little white ball on a bit of turf. They were very
serious about it. "Now to business," we heard one say as we went by. But
it grew very hot towards noon, and in the heat our first enthusiasm
melted. When Cullen came in sight we were again declaring that
nothing would induce us to walk another step.
[Illustration: NEAR CULLEN.]
However, a hearty lunch changed our minds. The truth is, we hated to
give in. Though we were quite certain we would never tramp again, we
were unwilling to confess our one walk a failure. At the hotel we were
told that the road to Banff, our next stopping-place, kept inland, but
the landlady thought that to the nearest village at least there was a
path by the shore. A man on the outskirts of the town tried to dissuade
us from going that way; there was such a brae to be climbed, he said.
But there seemed no doubt about the path. When we persisted, he walked
back with us to direct us the better, J---- talking to him about the
brae as if he had never heard of a hill in his life, the man describing
the difficulties before us as if ours was an Alpine expedition. The hill
was steep enough. At the top there was no path, but instead a field of
tall prickly furze, through which we waded. Oh, the misery of that five
minutes' walk! At every step we were stung and pricked by hundreds of
points sharper than needles. And after that we skirted wheat and turnip
fields, because when we tried to cross them, as we were not sportsmen,
there was some one near at hand to stop us. We went up and down ravines,
and picked our way through tall grass at the very edge of sheer cliffs.
The afternoon was hotter than the morning had been. A warm haze hung
over the level stretch of country and the distant hills. The sky seemed
to have fallen down upon the sea; there was not a line to mark where it
met the water. The few brown-sailed boats looked as if they were forcing
their way between, holding up the heavens on their masts.
[Illustration: BIT OF MACDUFF.]
In one place, on a high rock jutting out into the sea, was a low broken
wall of rough masonry, all that is left of Findlater Castle.
There was no use in trying to keep up any longer. Our backs ached, our
shoulders were cut; we were hot, dusty, exhausted, and, in a word, at
the end of our physical and moral forces. This scramble on the cliffs
ended our walking tour.
At Sandend we took the train for Banff; but first we went down to the
shore; for Sandend was a picturesque little village, with all its gables
turned towards the sea, big black boats on the beach, rocks beyond, and
a pretty blue bay of its own. Three artists had left their easels to eat
buns out of a brown-paper bag and drink beer out of bottles, under the
shade of one of the boats. J----, having already learned the
exclusiveness of British artists, took out his sketch-book at a safe
distance. He only spoke to them to ask the way to the station. He did
not dare to talk about work.
A little farther on we again asked the way, this time of a girl hanging
up clothes. J----'s questions and her answers were typical of many
conversations, bad for one's temper, that we held on the east coast.
"Where is the railway-station?"
"What station?"
"Where the train comes in."
"There;" and she pointed to a house beyond the village.
"How do you get there?"
"By the road."
"Can you go up by the hill?"
"Yes."
"Which is better?"
"I don't know."
"Which is shorter?"
"Up the hill."
We started up the hill, but there was no path. "There is no path," we
said to her.
"No, there's no path."
We came to
BANFF
late in the afternoon, just as the fishing-boats were putting out to
sea, one beyond another on the gray water, the farthest but faint specks
on the horizon. The best thing about Banff is that in fifteen or twenty
minutes you can be out of it and in Macduff. The shore here makes a
great curve. On one point is Banff, on the other Macduff; half-way
between, a many-arched bridge spans the river Deveron, and close by the
big house of the Earl of Fife shows through the trees of his park. High
on the hill of Macduff stands the white kirk; it overlooks the town,
with its many rows of fishermen's houses, and the harbor, where the
black masts rise far above the gray walls, and the fishermen spread out
their nets to dry, and the dark-sailed boats are always coming and
going, and boys paddle in the twilight. And if you go to the far end of
the harbor, where the light-house is, you look to the spires and
chimneys and roofs of Banff climbing up their hill-side, and beyond to a
shadowy point of land like a pale gray cloud-bank on the water.
It was easy to see what they thought of us at the Fife Arms, where we
stayed in Banff. We were given our breakfast with the nurse and children
of an A. R. A., while the great man breakfasted in state in a near
dining-room. They ate very like ordinary children, but their clothes
showed them to be little boys and girls of aesthetic distinction. I fear,
however, we were not properly impressed.
[Illustration: NEAR BANFF.]
There was no doubt that now our walking was all done. We asked about
the stage for Fraserburgh, as if staging with us was a matter of course.
It was a relief not to begin the day by strapping heavy knapsacks to our
backs. The hours of waiting were spent partly in strolling through the
streets of Banff, where here and there is an old gray house with pretty
turret at its corner, or quaint old inscription with coat of arms or
figures let into its walls; partly in sitting on the beach looking out
on a hot blue sea.
But hot as it was in the morning, a sharp, cold wind was blowing when,
at three o'clock, we took our seats in the little old-fashioned stage
that runs between Banff and Fraserburgh. Stage and coachman and
passengers seemed like a page out of Dickens transposed to Scotland.
Inside was a very small boy, put there by a fat woman in black, and
left, with many exhortations and a couple of buns, to make the journey
alone; opposite to him sat a melancholy man who saw but ruin staring in
the face of farmers and fishermen alike. At every corner in Banff and
Macduff we stopped for more passengers, until the stage, elastic as it
seemed, was full to overflowing, and we took refuge on the top. Here the
seats were crowded with men, their heads tied up in scarfs. The coachman
was carrier as well, and at different points in the open country women
and children waited by the road to give him, or to take from him,
bundles and boxes and letters. He was the typical cheery carrier. He
had a word for everybody, even for a young man who dropped his
wheelbarrow to flap his arms and greet us with a vacant smile. He was a
puir thing, the driver explained, who went wrong only four years ago. He
was the third we had seen in two days.
[Illustration: BANFF, FROM MACDUFF.]
Many of the carrier's jokes we lost. A commercial traveller, who sat
next to us, supposed we could not understand some of the expressions
hereabouts. He might better have said we could not understand the
language. We could make out enough, however, to find that one joke went
a long way. A man in the front seat, trying to light his pipe in the
wind, set off the whole box of matches. "That's extravagance," said the
carrier; and when another box was handed to the man, he told him that
these were safety matches--it took only one to light a pipe; and this he
kept saying over and over again, with many chuckles, for the next
half-hour. We had a specimen, too, of Scotch humor. At one
stopping-place the commercial traveller got down and went into the
public-house. A family party scrambled up and filled every seat, his
with the rest. J---- remonstrated; but the man of the party answered
that he paid his money for a seat as well as anybody else. "An empty
seat's naebody's seat," he argued, and carrier and passengers roared at
his fun.
The country was dreary, for all its cultivation. The fields were without
tree or hedge to break their monotony. The villages were full of new
houses. There was nothing striking or picturesque until we came within
sight of Fraserburgh. Far across a level stretch we first saw it, its
spires rising high above gray and red roofs. The near meadows were dark
with fishing-nets; in places fishermen were at work spreading them over
the grass; and we began to pass carts heavily laden with their brown
masses, and men and women bent under the same burdens.
FRASERBURGH.
We walked out after supper. Rain was falling, and the evening was
growing dark. Down by the harbor carts were still going and coming; men
were still busy with their nets. Along the quay was a succession of
basins, and these opened into others beyond. All were crowded with
boats, and their thickly clustered masts seemed, in the gathering
shadows, like a forest of branchless, leafless trees. One by one lights
were hung out. On the town side of the quay, in crypt-like rooms and
under low sheds, torches flamed and flared against a background of
darkness. Their strong light fell upon women clothed in strange stuffs
that glistened and glittered, their heads bound with white cloths. They
were bending over shiny, ever-shifting masses piled at their feet, and
chanting a wild Gaelic song that rose and fell with the wailing of
all savage music. As we first saw them, from a distance, they might have
been so many sorceresses at their magic rites. When we drew near we
found that they were but the fish-curers' gutters and packers at work.
Thanks to Cable and Lafcadio Hearn, we know something of the songs of
work at home; but who in England cares about the singing in these
fishing towns--singing which is only wilder and weirder than that of the
cotton pressers of Louisiana? To the English literary man, however--the
Charles Reades are the exceptions--I fear the gutters would be but
nasty, dirty fisher persons. Now and then groups of these women passed
us, walking with long strides, their arms swinging, and their short
skirts and white-bound heads shining through the sombre streets. Over
the town was the glow of the many fires.
[Illustration: FRASERBURGH.]
In the morning there was less mystery, but not less picturesqueness. We
were up in time to go to the harbor with the fishermen's wives, and
watch the boats come in. Everything was fresh after a night of rain. It
was still early, and the sun sent a path of gold across the sea just
where the boats turned on their last tack homeward. Each brown sail was
set in bold relief against the shining east, and then slowly lowered, as
the fishermen with their long poles pushed the boats into the already
crowded harbor. At once nets were emptied of the fish, which lay
gleaming like silver through the brown meshes. Women and boys came to
fill baskets with the fresh herrings; carts were loaded with them. In
other boats men were hanging up their floats and shaking out their nets.
The water was rich with the many black and brown reflections, only
brightened here and there by lines of blue or purple or white from the
distinguishing rings of color on each mast. There was a never-ending
stream of men and carts passing along the quay. Many fishermen with
their bags were on their way to the station, for the fishing season was
almost over. So they said. But when one thousand boats came in, and
twenty thousand fisher-folk were that day in Fraserburgh, to us it
looked little like the end. In all this busy place we heard no English.
Only Gaelic was spoken, as if we were once more in the Western Islands.
It was the same in the streets. The day's work in the curing-houses was
just about to begin. Girls and women in groups of threes and fours were
walking towards them. In the morning light we could see that the greater
number were young. All were neat and clean, with hair carefully parted
and well brushed, little shawls over their shoulders, but nothing on
their heads. They carried their working clothes under their arms, and
kept knitting as they walked. Like the men, they all talked Gaelic.
[Illustration: IN THE HARBOR, FRASERBURGH.]
When they got to work, we found that those strange stuffs which had
glistened in the torch-light were aprons and bibs smeared with scales
and slime, that the white head-dresses were worn only for cleanliness,
that the shining masses at their feet were but piles of herring. I have
never seen women work so hard or so fast. Their arms, as they seized the
fish, gutted them, and threw them in the buckets, moved with the
regularity and the speed of machines. Indeed, there could not be a
busier place than Fraserburgh. All day long the boats kept coming in,
nets were emptied, fish carted away. The harbor, the streets, the fields
beyond where nets were taken to dry, the curing-houses, were alike
scenes of industry. If the women put down their knives, it was only to
take up their knitting. And yet these men and women, working incessantly
by day and by night, were almost all Western Islanders--the people who,
we are told, are so slovenly and so lazy! No one who comes with them to
the east coast for the fishing season will ever again believe in the
oft-repeated lies about their idleness.
There were no signs of rest until Saturday evening. Then no boats went
out, and the harbor and curing-houses were deserted. The streets were
full of men and women walking about for pleasure. The greatest crowd was
in the market-place, where a few "cheap Jacks" drove their trade. Two,
who dealt in china, as if to make up for their poor patter, threw cups
and saucers recklessly into the air, breaking them with great clatter,
while the women and girls they had attracted stood by and bought
nothing.
The fishermen had gathered about a third, who sold cheap and tawdry
ornaments, but who could patter. When we first came near he was holding
up six imitation gold watch-chains, and offering the buyers prizes into
the bargain. "O ye men of little faith!"--shaking his fist at
them--"can't any of you favor me with a shillin'? You don't want 'em,
gen'lemen? Then there'll be smashin' of teeth and tearin' of hair.
Glory! glory hallylujah!" All this, I regret to say, was interspersed
with stories that do not bear repetition. But he sold his watch-chains
without trouble. "And now, gen'lemen, for any of you that wants to take
home a present to your wife and chil'ren, here's an album. It'd adorn a
nobleman's mansion, and wouldn't disgrace a fisherman's cottage. It's
bound in moroccer and stamped with gold, and'll hold many pictures. I'll
only sell half a dozen, and it's the very thing you wants. You'll have
one? Well, sir, I can't reach you, but these gen'lemen'll pass it
along."
And then he began again with the stories and the Scripture until he had
sold out all his stock of albums and note-books and cheap jewellery.
[Illustration: GUTTERS AT WORK, FRASERBURGH.]
It was the hint about presents to those left behind which bore greatest
weight with the fishermen. It never failed. But we remembered their
cottages and the sadness of their homes, and it angered us that they
should be duped into wasting their hard-won earnings on tawdry
ornaments. It seems to be their fate to be cheated by every one. Even
the peddler, like the parson and the landlord, can pervert Scripture to
their discomfort.
Still, there was a pleasant suggestion of holiday-making in the square.
It was the first time we had seen the Western Islanders amusing
themselves. True, they did it very solemnly. There was little laughter
and much silence; but at least a touch of brightness was given to the
gloom of their long life of work and want.
Even on Sunday we thought the people more cheerful. In the morning the
women, the little shawls over their shoulders, their heads still bare,
the men in blue cloth, many without coats, again filled the streets on
their way to church. In the afternoon we walked to two near fishing
villages. In one an old fisherman was talking about Christ to a few
villagers. We sat a while close to the sea, looking out to the next
village, gray against gray gold-lined clouds, to the water with the
light falling softly across it, to the little quiet pools in among the
low rocks of the shore, to the big black boats drawn up on the beach.
And then, as we walked back to Fraserburgh, the mist fell suddenly. But
the road near the town was crowded with the men in blue cloth and the
women in short skirts. Some were singing hymns as they walked. To us
they looked strong and healthy, and even happy. It seemed as if this
life on the east coast must make up for many of the hardships they
endure in the deserts of their western home.
That same evening in the hotel we heard about life in Fraserburgh, which
looks so prosperous to the stranger. A Catholic priest came into the
dining-room after supper. He seemed very tired. He had been visiting the
sick all day, he told us. Measles had broken out among the women and
girls from the Hebrides. Many had already died; more had been carried to
the hospital. The rooms provided for them by the curers were small and
overcrowded. So long as they were kept in their present quarters, so
long would disease and death be their portion. Their condition was
dreadful; but they worked hard, and never complained. He came from the
west coast of Ireland, he said, where Irish poverty is at its worst, but
not even there had he seen misery as great as that of the Western
Islanders. He knew it well. He had lived with them in the Long Island,
where many are Catholics. If the Highlands were represented by
eighty-five members, all wanting Home Rule, more would have been heard
about destitution in the Hebrides. In the prosperous days of the east
coast fisheries the people's burden had been less heavy; but now they
came to the fishing towns of the east, the women to sicken and to die,
the men to beg their way back as best they could. There were too many
fishermen here, just as at home landlords thought there were too many
crofters.
[Illustration: COMING HOME FROM THE FISHERIES, FRASERBURGH.]
The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle shall lament,
and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish.
The epidemic and its causes became the town talk. The Gaelic Free Kirk
minister, differ as he might from the Catholic priest on every other
point, on this could but agree with him. He told us the same story in
words as strong. It was shameful, he said, the way these poor girls were
being killed. He had not known it before; but now that he did, he could
not and would not let the matter rest. An indignation meeting of the
people of Fraserburgh was called for the day we left. The town was
placarded with the notices. Since then the report must have gone abroad.
Now that agitation in Lewis is forcing attention to the islands and
their people, in London there has been formed a committee of _ladies_ to
look into the condition of the girls and women who work on the east
coast.
That last morning, as we stood by the hotel door, the funeral of one of
the dead women passed up the street towards the station. Fifty or sixty
fishermen followed the coffin. When we took our seats in a third-class
carriage we found the Free Kirk minister there before us. The coffin had
just been put on the train. Two girls came up to speak to him. He
stretched out his hand; one took and held it as she struggled to answer
his questions; the other turned away with the tears streaming down her
face. As the train started they stood apart, their heads bent low, their
faces buried in their shawls, both crying as if their hearts would
break. And so, at the last, we saw only the sadness of Fraserburgh.
We had intended going to Peterhead and the smaller fishing towns by the
way; but our energy was less inexhaustible than the picturesqueness of
the east coast. Our journey had been over-long. We were beginning to be
anxious to bring it to an end. Now we went straight to
ABERDEEN,