Sea-Fowl--Weather Prognostics--Goosander (Mergus Merganser,
Linn.)--Gales of Wind--January Primroses--Lachlan Gorach, the Mull
"Natural"--A Dancing Rhyme.
When a prophet's vaticinations are verified by the event, the world
rarely fails to be reminded of it; when it is otherwise, however;
when the vaticinations turn out to be the very reverse of true,
people are rarely ever troubled with a note on the matter, least of
all on the part of the disappointed vaticinator himself. The fact
is that everything like vaticination had better, as a rule, be let
alone; sooner or later, and in nine cases out of ten, or oftener,
the prophet never fails to come to grief. So convinced, for our own
part, are we of this, that while reserving our right to vaticinate
and predict as much and as recklessly as anybody else, when it so
pleased us, yet, as a matter of fact, we never do venture further
into the treacherous territories of vaticination than the mere
outskirts, so to speak, of what may well be called the debateable
land of weather prognostics; and even there we tread as gingerly and
cautiously as if at this moment we were on the banks of the Prah, in
constant dread of a lurking ambuscade of fierce and fetish-valorous
Ashantees. Our weather prophecies from time to time have often,
as the courteous reader may remember, been fully justified by the
event; but if the whole truth is to be told, we fear we must confess
that they have almost as frequently turned out to be wrong, and it
is not every weather prophet who will confess so much. It requires
a larger share of magnanimity than the reader is perhaps aware of,
to be able to confess one's errors with anything like complaisance,
even in such a matter as weather prognostics, and we therefore trust
that the following confession will be valued as it ought. Some time
ago the number of Arctic sea-fowl in our creeks and bays, and the near
approach of a rather early fall of snow to the sea line, justified us,
as we thought, in predicting an early and severe winter, meaning by
"severe"--for we scorn to be disingenuous in the matter--that it
was likely to be excessively cold as well as unusually stormy. The
experience of upwards of twenty years, during which we have been a
keen and close student of meteorological phenomena and wild-bird life,
seemed to us to warrant the conclusion at which we had arrived. But
how at mid-winter stands the fact? Why, thus: that up to this date
[January 1874], it has been, upon the whole, the "openest" and mildest
season for at least a quarter of a century! How, then, about your
Arctic sea-birds? the reader may exclaim, and we can only answer
that their presence so early and in such numbers is to be accounted
for by the almost incessant gales that have been sweeping over the
Atlantic and northern seas, with such disastrous effects, for nearly
two months past. Feeling the first blast of the approaching tempest,
and assured of its prolonged continuance by a marvellous instinct,
further and more correctly prescient of such matters than man, with
all his boasted science, they fled to the shelter of our, to them
in such cases, Friendly Islands; for an Arctic web-foot dreads an
unusual severity of hyperborean storms, long continued, quite as much
as it dreads an excessive intensity of hyperborean cold, and for the
same reason--both equally interfere with the allotted comforts of its
economy and due supply of food. The winter, besides, is not yet past;
whistling before one is fairly out of the wood is proverbially foolish,
and there is, after all, time enough yet betwixt this and the vernal
equinox for the advent of any amount of cold, so that there is still
a chance for our wild-bird friends and ourselves standing higher in
the reader's estimation as weather prophets, ere the winter is ended,
than we do at present. Our web-foot visitors from the far north, at
all events, are still with us, and in large numbers, and a very pretty
sight a flock of them is as you quietly approach them congregated in
some sheltered bay, and with a good binocular watch their graceful
motions, now disporting themselves and chasing each other in many
a merry round over the surface of the water; now, as if by common
consent and in obedience to some, to you inaudible, word of command,
they seem to leap rather than dive into the blue depths beneath
them, until not one is to be seen, then as suddenly reappearing,
again to chase each other, and disport and dive, as if they knew you
were looking at them, and admired and loved them, and would as soon
cut off your finger as think of levelling a murder-dealing weapon at
creatures so beautiful and harmless.
A bird generally rare in our inland waters is this year quite common
on all our shores. We refer to the goosander (Mergus merganser,
Linn.), one of the handsomest and most interesting of sea-fowl. Of the
Merganser family the goosander is the largest, and the whole order
is remarkable for their serrated mandibles, the nearest approach to
anything like teeth to be met with among birds, and admirably adapted
for retaining firm hold, when seized, of their slippery prey, which
mainly consists of eels, lampreys, &c., in dealing with which "kittle
cattle" in deep water an ordinary unarmed duck-bill would be a very
inefficient weapon. Once in the firm grip of the Merganser's serrated
bill, however, the chance of such comparatively small fish as it can
alone feed upon must be very small indeed. We saw a very fine male
specimen a few days ago, which a young man had shot, believing it to
be a "wild duck," as he termed it, and necessarily good for eating. We
told him that he had been guilty of a piece of very unnecessary and
indefensible cruelty, for that the bird in his hand was in truth a
Merganser, and no more fit to be eaten than a ten-year-old herring
gull or an octogenarian guillemot. He looked at us with a smile,
in which we thought we detected a considerable shade of incredulity,
and we do believe that the thought passed through his mind at that
moment that we only spoke so disparagingly of the bird because we
wanted to get hold of it ourselves, either by its being given to us
as a present, or for the smallest possible money payment, and then
what a jolly feed we should have at the expense of his ornithological
ignorance and juvenile simplicity! Perhaps we do him injustice; but,
at all events, he carried the bird away with him, observing that he
"would try it at any rate." We met his sister a day or two afterwards,
and on inquiring if they had cooked the "wild duck," and how they
liked it, we confess that it was with an inward chuckle of intense
satisfaction that we listened as she told us that, after having duly
boiled and cooked it secundum artem, until it ought to have been good
and tender, it turned out to be so rank, and fishy, and tough, that no
one could eat a morsel of it, and it had to be thrown into the dinner
refuse basket as worthless! These birds, though necessarily hardy, and
able to outlive a vast amount of cold and storm, are exceedingly fond
of still water, rarely resting or fishing when there is any surface
disturbance beyond a slight ripple; and hence it is that you so seldom
meet with them elsewhere than in the most sheltered bays, creeks,
and estuaries, where the water is least liable to the surface turmoil
and commotion of a storm. The finest stuffed specimen of the Merganser
we ever saw is at Achnacarry Castle, Lochiel's seat in Lochaber.
We have said above that the winter has thus far been almost
unprecedentedly open and mild, by which we mean only that the
temperature throughout has been unusually high, not, by any means,
that it has been calm. The very contrary is the case. It has been
one continued storm, with an occasional breathing time, so to speak,
of a fine day at rare intervals, for upwards of eight consecutive
weeks. But the storms have, as to temperature, been rather the
storms of early summer or autumn, than the boisterously cold and burly
shriekings of the lone winter "Storm King," as we used to know and fear
him. The reader will best understand what we mean, when we say that,
notwithstanding the storminess, anemometrically, of the season, not
a single snowflake has fallen in the lowlands of Nether Lochaber this
winter, except a little which fell last night, but of which there are
no traces again this morning; nor, except twice, and then only for an
hour or so, has the thermometer touched the freezing-point. We much
doubt if the thickness of a sixpenny piece of ice could be gathered
at any one moment from pool or puddle in our district of Lochaber
during the present winter. The consequence is, that in all our gardens
flowers are at this moment in bloom that perhaps were never known
to be in bloom at the same date before. Our privet and elder hedges
bear quite a close green vesture of young leaves; the columbine has
already reached an April altitude of growth, and a woman who happened
to walk from Fort-William early last week brought us a small bouquet
of primroses that she had picked up while passing through the woods of
Coirrechaorachan, as beautiful and perfect as if it were in truth the
proper season of these favourite flowers, instead of the last days of
the first month of the year. We shouldn't wonder, however, if we have
to pay for it all yet, ere the truant schoolboy again begins to imitate
the cuckoo's note, or "the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."
There is at this moment sitting in our kitchen a poor, half-witted
natural, "Lachlan Gorach," from Mull, whose conversation is always
garnished with "Davie Gelletly"-like snatches of quaint song. Sometimes
the rhyme is in English, and sometimes in Gaelic, and frequently
has no connection whatever with what may be the immediate subject
of conversation. On going up to have a crack with him a few moments
ago--for poor Lachlan is, in a way, a great favourite of ours--he
returned our friendly greeting of "Well, how are you, Lachlan?" with
a hearty shake of the hand, and a bow that, for close proximity of
forehead to the ground and duration, might have graced the court of
Louis the Fourteenth, and immediately on regaining the erect position,
struck, to an air that was probably original, into the following verse,
which we took down on the spot:--
"First the heel and then the toe,
That's the way the polka goes;
First the toe and then the heel,
That's the way to dance a reel;
Quick about and then away,
Lightly dance the glad Strathspey.
Jump a jump, and jump it big,
That's the way to dance a jig;
Slowly, smiling as in France,
Follow through the country dance.
And we'll meet Johnny Cope in the morning."
It was very amusing. Where he picked up the uncouth rhyme we do not
know, and it was bootless to inquire. Having ordered him some dinner,
we bade him good-bye, when we caught hold of the following verse of
Lachlan's favourite ditties as we disappeared:--
"Kilt your coaties, bonnie lassie,
As you wade the burnie through;
Or your mother will be angry
If you wet your coaties now."
Poor Lachlan, always cheerful and perfectly harmless, is a welcome
guest at every fireside throughout the many districts which he
periodically peregrinates. We may have something more to say of
himself and his quaint scraps of songs on a future occasion.