Sea-Fishing--Loch and Stream Fishing--"Brindled
Worms"--Rush-Lights--Buckie-Shell Lamps--The Weasel killing a
Hare--Killing a Fallow Deer Fawn.
Though by no means everything that we could wish it, the weather of
the last fortnight [July 1870] was a decided improvement on that of
the preceding, and people have managed to get their hay secured in
tolerably good condition after all. No appearance of the much-dreaded
potato blight as yet; pity that it should show its unwished-for
face this year at all, for a finer crop never lay ripening in the
ground. Something has been done in herring fishing, and there is some
prospect of our having enough for local consumption at all events,
and perhaps a little over, which is no small matter in those dear
times. Other kinds of fish are plentiful, and, with sufficient leisure
for the pastime, there is hardly anything of the kind more enjoyable
in fine weather than an afternoon's or early morning's fishing with
rod or hand-line. You never, besides, see the country so well as on
these occasions, or so thoroughly understand the full force of the
poet's beautiful line, that in such scenes
"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view."
Any number of trout, too--few of them, however, of any size--may be
caught at present in our inland lochs and mountain streams, and a
dish of these speckled beauties, fresh from the basket, is a very
good thing indeed, though the grilse and salmon eater may turn up
his nose in contempt and derision of such "small deer." Let him; we
shall be always prepared to take over his share along with our own! A
curious request was made to us a short time ago by a well-known book
"deliverer," who frequently passes this way, one of the keenest and
most successful fishers on lake or river we ever knew, and a very quiet
decent man to boot. "Will you allow me, sir, to put down some worms
in your place?" "To put down what?" we exclaimed in surprise. "Worms,
sir, brindled worms for fishing with, when the rivers are swollen after
heavy rains." We begged to have a look at the worms, and they proved
to be a variety of the common earthworm that we had never seen before,
the difference consisting in their being rather smaller in size than
the common earthworm, and prettily speckled and streaked all over
their length, whence, doubtless, their name of brindled worms. A lot
had been sent to him from Alyth, in Perthshire, very cunningly done
up in a bunch of damp moss; and, having a few left over after a week's
most successful fishing, he wished to deposit them in this, a central
part of his peregrinations, that they might multiply and be recoverable
at any time he wanted them. Holding one by the middle, between index
finger and thumb, in a manner that would have delighted the heart of
old Izaak Walton, the worm wriggling and twisting the while with all
the liveliness of an eel in similar circumstances, "There, sir," he
exclaimed, looking at the lively "brindled" as if he loved it, "there,
sir, is a bonny ane! no troot that ever swam could resist having a dash
at that in a brown and swollen stream." In answer to our questions,
he told us that the brindled colour of the worm had, he thought, a
good deal to do with the trout's liking for it, but, in his opinion,
the brisk and lively motions of the worm upon the hook was the main
attraction. The thing was so manifestly alive and active, and likely
to escape, if not caught at once, that the trout made a rush at it,
with his eyes shut, so to speak, and only discovered how thoroughly
he had been done, when, hooked and landed, he lay flopping helplessly
about on the green grass by the burn side. Getting piscator a spade,
he searched about for a suitable spot, and buried his worms beneath
the turf as tenderly as if he were laying babies asleep in their
cradles. "There now, sir," he remarked, as he finished his colonising,
"they will breed fast, and soon be plentiful enough hereabouts, and
they will destroy the common earthworm till not one can be found." So
that you see we had an interesting lesson on bait angling and the
natural history of earthworms very unexpectedly from a very unexpected
quarter. We still watch with interest if the assertion turns out to
be true, that the brindled worm exterminates the common earthworm,
notwithstanding their close relationship. Such a thing we know is
quite possible, a notable case in point being the extermination of
the old well-known black rat by the more modern coloniser, the brown.
The amount of viva você information that one can pick up, not by going
actually to look for it, but in the most casual and incidental manner,
from all sorts of people with whom one may be brought in contact,
is simply extraordinary. Some, to be sure, will have nothing to
tell; they are as Dead Sea fruit, full of mere ashes, that never
had sap or substance for good to themselves or anybody else. Others,
again, may know much, but they are cautious and reserved, and never
venture beyond the most superficial and commonplace chit-chat; but the
great mass of people, if you approach them courteously and frankly,
will be found communicative enough, and if you go deftly about it,
you seldom work long in such mines without bringing some ore to the
surface. A day or two ago, for instance, we were sitting on a rock by
the roadside on the opposite shore of Appin, having rowed ashore from
our fishing ground to have a smoke and a drink of sparkling water
from one of the many rivulets that, like so many silver threads in
some rich embroidery, twist and twine with a glad music of their own
adown the green slopes of Benavere. An old man passing along the way,
with a bundle of rushes under his arm, saluted us with the quiet and
undemonstrative courtesy so characteristic of his class all over the
Highlands. We invited him to sit down beside us, and at once he sat
down and entered into conversation with us about the weather, crops,
fishing, and other such obvious matters as are seldom overlooked during
the first five minutes of a roadside crack at this season. By-and-by
we asked him about the bundle of rushes. There were too few of them
to be of any use as thatch, and we observed that they were not of the
kind generally used in basket-making--a common amusement for the idle
hours of shepherds, herdboys, and others in the past generation, who
made very pretty rush baskets for carrying eggs, butter, and other such
light goods to the nearest shop, and bringing back the tea, sugar, &c.,
usually taken in exchange. What were his rushes for then? He gathered
them, he told us, from time to time, always selecting the largest and
best, for the sake of their pith, which served as wick for his lamp;
and he showed us the process of extracting the pith on the spot. He
first split the rush longitudinally, by running his thumb-nail along
its length, and then pressing his thumb transversely against the pith,
he ran it along until the whole beautifully soft and white substance
was gathered into a bundle free of its skin, the pith still remaining
unbroken by the deftness of the process, and easily extended at will to
its original length. This pith is inserted in the same manner as wick
in the lamp, and answers its purpose admirably. We recollect seeing
the thing before, but it is many years since, and we had thought that
cotton had everywhere, even in the remotest parts of the Highlands,
long since superseded the primitive rush pith as wick for lamps. "All
the people about me," said the old man, "now use paraffin lamps and
cotton wicks, but although perhaps I could afford these as well as
they can, I prefer the good old rush-light of my boyhood. I remember,"
he continued, "when all the people in our hamlet gave a day's work
to the tenant of the adjoining farm for leave to gather rushes for
their lamps in the proper season. Fish oil of our own manufacture was
always used, and you will perhaps be surprised to hear, sir, that the
lamp was often a "buckie shell." "A buckie shell!" we exclaimed, "how
did you manage to fix it properly? You probably glued its keel to a
piece of wood or something of that kind?" "No, sir," was the response,
"we did not fix it at all. It was suspended from a cromag or hook of
wood or iron projecting from the wall near the fire-place by a string,
one end of which was firmly tied round the hollow dividing the whorl
at the smaller end of the shell, and the other round the furrow at
its larger circumference near the lip. The loop of the string was
then thrown over the hook, and thus suspended, the shell was filled
with oil and a rush pith inserted as wick, and it made a very good
lamp indeed, at once economical and serviceable. I recollect," said
the old man with a smile, "that my father, God rest him! who was a
very economical man, and hated everything like extravagance or waste,
allowed us just a shellful of oil for the winter's night. When that
much was spent, we had to tell our tales, sing our songs, and go on
with the work we might have in hand by such light as was afforded by
the blazing peat-fire, or let it alone till the next evening, just as
we pleased." Our friend concluded by declaring in very emphatic phrase
that "the people now are less industrious than they were then; have
more money in their hands, but use it less wisely; are less truthful,
less honest, less to be depended upon in every way than were the
people of his boyhood and their immediate predecessors." "Laudator
temporis acti," but there is some truth in it. You should have heard
how grandly and with what an air of dignity the old fellow spoke that
concluding sentence in the most beautiful and rhythmical Gaelic. The
buckie shell referred to above is the Buccinum undatum, or common
whelk, constantly to be met with on almost every shore. It is to be
understood, we suppose, that the larger specimens only would be used
as lamps in the manner described by our venerable friend.
Of British quadrupeds--perhaps of all existing quadrupeds--the
pluckiest, and, according to its size and weight, by far the strongest,
is the common weasel (Mustela vulgaris). The other day a man in our
neighbourhood brought us a common brown hare, large and in excellent
condition, that had been hunted and killed by a weasel in a very
extraordinary manner. In the evening the man was going up a green glade
on the wooded hill-side in search of his cows, when he heard what he
took to be the screaming of a child on the other side of a small hazel
copse which he was passing at the moment. Supposing it to be a child
searching for cows like himself, that had fallen and hurt itself,
or that had perhaps been attacked by some stirk or quey, angry at
being disturbed in a favourite bit of grazing ground, he ran forward,
and hearing the screaming repeated, was astonished to find that it
proceeded from a hare that toilsomely and with staggering steps was
struggling up the steep. On closer inspection, about which there was
no difficulty, for by this time the poor hare was, in race-course
phrase, about "pumped out," and could barely stagger along, he was
more than astonished to observe that a weasel was extended couchant
along the hare's back, with his muzzle deeply sunk into the vertebræ
of his victim's neck, a position from which no exertion on the hare's
part could possibly dislodge him. Picking up a stone, the man rushed
forward and threw it with all his might, not so much at the hare as
at its lithe and blood-thirsty rider. The hare, however, was hit, and
fell, and with a gasp or two was dead; less from the blow than from
the terrible injuries inflicted by the weasel's teeth, from which,
under any circumstances, it was impossible that the poor animal could
have recovered. Before the man and a dog which accompanied him could
get at the wary weasel, it had with proverbial agility made good
its escape. On examining the hare, we found that it was in truth
dreadfully wounded, the ruthless Mustela having manifestly gone to
work in a very scientific manner, the little red-eyed wretch's motto
being "Thorough!" Once fairly on the back of his victim, he anchored
himself firmly by his teeth right in the centre of the nape of the
neck, just where the head is articulated to the cervical vertebræ;
and as no exertion of the hare could shake him off, he leisurely
dug down, drinking the blood and eating as he dug, until the poor
hare, faint and exhausted, could only stagger about in response to
each cruel dig of the dental spurs of its terrible rider. That a
creature so diminutive--weighing only about as many ounces as a hare
weighs pounds--should be able thus to mount and master an animal
so much bigger than itself, seems extraordinary, and is only to be
accounted for by a lithe agility in the assailant, to be met with
in no other creature perhaps, coupled with indomitable courage and
instinctive blood-thirstiness. We recollect some years ago that an
old man, a James Cameron, belonging to Achintore, near Fort-William,
was savagely assaulted by a colony of weasels, and very severely
wounded before he could get rid of his assailants. He was employed
by a neighbour to remove a cairn of small stones from a grass field,
in which it had long been an eyesore, from the centre of which cairn,
when he had wheeled away several barrows-full, six or seven weasels
rushed out and attacked him. So sudden and unexpected was the attack,
that before he could do anything to defend himself, his hands and
chin and cheeks--for they instinctively flew at his throat, which
was luckily guarded by the thick folds of a homespun cravat--were
severely bitten. One or two he killed by taking them in his hands,
dashing them to the ground, and trampling them under his feet; but the
others stuck to him with the pertinacity and viciousness of angry bees,
and it was only by running into a house that was at hand, for aid and
protection, that they ceased their attack and left him. Happening to
be in Fort-William that day, we recollect examining the man's wounds,
and getting the story of the weasel assault from his own lips. We
remember remarking how astonishingly deep and formidable were the
wounds, to be made by the comparatively small teeth, short though
sharp, of the weasel; and what was worse, they festered again and
again, and gave the man much pain and trouble ere they fully healed
up and disappeared. An old gamekeeper tells us that he once saw a
fallow deer fawn, upwards of six weeks old, killed by a weasel in one
of the Callart parks precisely as this hare was killed, and a fawn at
that age will weigh three times as much as a brown hare in ordinary
condition. In common with most people, we have rather a dislike to
the weasel, though one cannot but view with respect the courage and
pluck that carry him safely through such exploits as these.