October Storms--Cablegram Predictions--Indications of
coming Storms--Geordie Braid, the St. Andrews and Newport
Coach-driver--The Naturalist in Winter--Drowned Hedgehogs: Spines
become soft and gelatinous--Lophius Piscatorius--Disproportion
between head and body in the Devil-Fish a puzzle--An Itinerant
Fiddler.
The storms of the latter days of October [November 1877] were
exceedingly severe along our western seaboard, and terribly so, as
more than one correspondent assures us, amongst the Hebrides. It is
worth noting with what marvellous punctuality these Trans-atlantically
telegraphed storms reach our shores. They are "up to time," with
all the precision almost of our best appointed mail trains; quite as
punctual, at all events, to their predicted time on several occasions
lately as our ocean mail-carrying steam ships to their appointed dates
of arrival. This last October storm, for example, was telegraphed as
being due on our British shores on or about Saturday, the 27th, and
so correct, considering all the difficulties of such meteorological
vaticinations, was the prediction, that the storm actually reached us
here on the evening of the 26th, increasing in intensity throughout
the night and until mid-day of the 27th, the very day fixed upon,
when it blew with all the force of a hurricane, and the rain fell in
torrents, accompanied, too--that none of the essentials of a great
storm might be wanting--by vivid lightning, and thunder peals loud
enough to make the deafest hear, or at all events feel, for it is no
exaggeration to say that the very ground seemed at times to thrill
responsive to the aërial concussion. The 26th had dawned bright and
clear, and so continued throughout the day; one of those "pet days,"
in short, not uncommon at this season,--the sea, too, calm and glassy
as a mirror. In the afternoon, however, we were called out from the
tea-table to look at a phenomenon which had already attracted the
attention of some of our more observant neighbours, and about which
they wanted our opinion, as they had some thoughts of going a herring
fishing. The phenomenon in question was this: Not a breath of air
was stirring, Loch Linnhe was unruffled by the slightest zephyr, and
yet a heavy surge quite suddenly began to break along the beach with
a sudden boom that was remarkable in such a calm. A somewhat similar
phenomenon, lasting but for a short time, however, is observed in our
lochs when, on a calm summer evening, one of the Messrs. Hutcheson's
paddle steamers--the "Chevalier," for instance--passes at full speed
close in shore. What could this swell and surge, troubling a loch
otherwise calm as a mill-pond, mean? You might have safely carried
a lighted candle exposed and lanternless along the beach on which
that heavy swell with hollow boom was breaking--breaking in great
green waves that showed not a bell or fleck of foam on their crests
until they thundered on the shingle. It was, in a word, a phenomenon
for which there was no apparent adequate cause. The sea, had it been
in keeping with all its visible surroundings, should have been calm
and still; on the contrary, it was restless and perturbed, and there
lay the mystery. Even had we recollected nothing of the telegraphed
storm, it was easy of solution, and our instant interlocutor, as
the law courts have it, was this: "A storm in the Atlantic, my good
friends. Calm as it is here, there is a storm, and a wild one, depend
upon it, outside yonder island of Mull, for all it basks so peacefully
in the golden sunset. Nothing else can adequately account for such
a swell on our calm inland waters on an evening so summer-like and
warm; and when I tell you that a storm likely to reach our shores
to-morrow has been telegraphed from America several days since, I
conclude that it is that very storm fast approaching us that causes
this swell upon our shore. It must be just at hand; so haul up your
boats high and dry; take down your nets from the drying-poles, and
put them in a place of safety. Stay thankfully at home, and let the
herring fishing stand over till the predicted gales have come and
gone. Many a gallant fellow at this moment afloat would be glad to
have his foot like you on terra firma: a chas air talamh tioram were
the words,--his foot on dry land." With some such remarks as these,
we sent the men home, still wondering, however; and within a couple of
hours the storm was upon us with a loud prolonged shriek, that showed
how thoroughly in earnest it was. Timeously warned, no danger was
done in our district, and we are now unanimous in speaking with the
utmost respect of the Atlantic cable in connection with storm warnings
from the Western Continent. These telegraphic warnings from America,
by the way, of coming storms are of the utmost importance and value,
more particularly to the western shores of the British Islands. We
have no doubt at all that on the western seaboard of Scotland alone
many valuable lives were saved, as well as much valuable property,
by the submarine cable notice that put us all on our guard with
reference to the gale that raged on the 27th of October, and for
several days subsequently. We wonder if from Britain or the Continent
any of the terrible easterly storms of last winter were telegraphed
to America--timeously and purposely telegraphed, that is--so as to
be of benefit to our Transatlantic cousins, as their recent telegrams
have been to us. We fear not. But now at least it is surely a matter
of the merest courtesy and cousinly goodwill that we be prepared and
ready to send them betimes telegraphic messages of all our easterly
storms, in return for similar favours on their part in respect to
those that are westerly.
Reading over the foregoing paragraph, which the reader may see was
written currente calamo--at a gallop, as it were, and without a check,
as the foxhunter says--we find that we have used the often-quoted Latin
phrase terra firma; words which rarely fail to make us smile in their
connection with an anecdote current in St. Andrews in our early college
days. It was to this effect: The driver of a two-horse coach that ran
at that time between St. Andrews and Newport was a George Braid, a
respectable old man, familiarly known to everybody, and notably to the
University students, as "Geordie," a liberty with his Christian name
which Mr. Braid in nowise resented, for he was intelligent and shrewd,
and knew that he was thus spoken of and addressed out of goodwill
and kindly regard rather than otherwise. Frequently patronised on his
route by learned professors and lively students, Geordie had picked
up many big words and learned phrases, which he was fond of using in
his family, and, as the Catechism says, amongst his "inferiors and
equals." In connection with frequent storm and shipwreck on the wild
east coast, it was the most natural thing in the world that Geordie
should often have heard from the lips of some of his learned "fare"
the words terra firma, with which he associated a general idea of
protection, comfort, and safety. One terrible night of snow and storm,
having driven a large coachful from Newport to the city, Geordie, when
he had duly seen to his cattle, and paid a short visit to the bar of
the "Cross Keys" hostelry, wended his way by the West Port to his home,
which lay beyond the old city walls. His wife, a brisk and eident bit
body, had a roaring fire and a cheery welcome for her goodman on his
entrance, while his children gathered round him to help him off with
caps, coats, leggings, and all the other belongings of the outer man of
a driver in the good old coaching days. Reduced at last to something
like his natural dimensions, Geordie, having sufficiently rubbed his
purple hands before the fire, looked benignantly around and exclaimed,
"Ah! Meg, my woman, you and the bairns hae muckle cause to be thankful
to your Maker that ye hae terra firma abune your heads this night! Its
just awfu' out yonder by the Guard Brig and Strathtyrum." We have met
with not a few in our day with a strange craze for using words and
phrases of which they evidently knew as little of the real meaning
and proper application as honest Geordie Braid with his terra firma.
The new moon of the 5th, aided by a wind that at times almost amounted
to a gale, gave us along the western seaboard three very high tides
in succession; that of the afternoon of the 6th, however, being the
highest. The naturalist who is fairly diligent on such occasions
is pretty sure to meet with more or less interesting matter for
thoughtful study; nor, so far as our own experience extends, need
the entries in one's note-book, even for what is called the "dead"
season of mid-winter, be fewer in number, or less interesting or
instructive than those of the pages devoted to the summer season
itself. We have known naturalists whose note-books presented little
but a dreary succession of blank pages for the winter half-year,
and who thought it odd that we should be surprised at it. It has been
said that the laws of disease are as beautiful as those of health, and
that peace has its victories as well as war, and we have no hesitation
in saying that to the true naturalist the winter season, if fairly
and diligently encountered, is in its way just as interesting as
the summer, and that the observer who has all his wits about him,
and who goes to work with a will, may have his "victories" even in
the season of the winter solstice--victories as important in their
way and gratifying as are those of midsummer itself, when the days
are at their longest, when summer seas are calm and summer woods are
green. In the course of half an hour's ramble on the beach the other
day, we fell in with some curious waifs, each of which might be made
the text of an interesting monograph. Three drowned hedgehogs, for
example, was a somewhat startling "find" to turn up in a swathe of
seaware that the advancing tide was slowly rolling up the shingle. One
was full-grown, a female; the other two, both males, were but half or
three parts grown. What brought them there? was the natural question;
for a hedgehog, dead or living, on the sea-shore under high-water mark,
is as odd and out-of-place an object as would be a mackerel far up the
hills amongst the heather. The following is probably a satisfactory
enough explanation of the mystery:--Hedgehogs, which twenty years ago
were quite unknown in Lochaber, are now plentiful. A pair, captured
on Lord Abinger's lands at Torlundy, were sent to us some dozen or
fifteen years ago as a great curiosity; and in this district then
they were a curiosity, so much so, that we can recollect that during
the time they remained in our possession as exceedingly tame and most
interesting pets, people from all parts of the country used to come
in order to have a close look at the black-snouted, spine-armoured
hedge pigs, as Shakespeare calls them, the graineag or repulsive
one of the midland Highlanders of Athole and Strathspey, where the
animal has always been plentiful. They have now become so common in
this district that a hedgehog is no more accounted a rarity than is
a stoat or a weasel. Hedgehogs are fond of making their cozy nests
of moss, grass fibres, and fallen leaves, near the roots of trees and
bushes growing on the banks of rivers and mountain streams. These last
have of late been frequently swollen beyond their usual bounds by the
heavy rains; and in a spate of this kind poor Mrs. Hedgehog and her
youngsters were caught napping, and carried away by the torrent to
the sea, and ultimately cast ashore by the wind and waves, where we
found them in their winding-sheet of slimy sea-wrack, and for a moment
wondered how it came to pass that they lay there, like poor Ophelia,
"drown'd, drown'd." One remarkable circumstance connected with these
drowned hedgehogs was this: we found to our surprise that we could
handle them with impunity; their spines, so formidable in the living
animal, being quite soft and gelatinous to their very tips. This is
by no means the case with the spines of such hedgehogs as are killed
by trap, or otherwise on land. In this latter case the spines retain
their point and prickliness, as in the living animal, till in the
process of decay they separate from their sockets in the skin, and
drop in brittle, broken fragments to the ground. A question, then, for
future investigation is this,--Do the spines of all drowned hedgehogs
lose their prickliness and point, and become soft and gelatinous? If
so, has fresh water alone this effect, or is it necessary that the
animal should be some time immersed in salt water?
Within a short distance of the drowned hedgehogs, lay a large
angler or fishing-frog, the Lophius piscatorius of ichthyologists,
and a frequent waif on our shores after a gale. It had evidently been
caught by the storm in shallow water, and been beaten to death by the
weight and force of the waves, for it was in excellent condition,
and there was nothing to indicate death in any other way. Why in
this fish such a huge head, with its formidable array of recurved
teeth, and such a cavernous, capacious gullet, should be joined to a
body comparatively so diminutive, is a puzzle that has never yet been
satisfactorily solved; nor can we ourselves, up to this present moment,
advance even a plausible conjecture in explanation of an anomaly that
must have attracted the attention of thousands. The disproportion
between the immense head and the small and slender body is as great
as if you erected a porch lofty and wide enough to serve as the main
entrance to a cathedral, and vestibule to correspond, in order to
enter a dwelling consisting after all but of a single bedroom. Or,
to put it in another way, it is as if you built a large mill, with
the most powerful machinery possible, in order to grind sufficient
meal for the daily consumption of a single dyspeptic customer. The
fishing-frog, has, we believe, been of late successfully introduced
into more than one of our many aquaria, but we are not aware that any
satisfactory explanation of the difficulty which we are considering
has as yet been arrived at. A full and sufficient explanation, however,
you may be sure there must be, if we only know enough of the animal's
economy to get at it.
But we must stop; for hark! an itinerant fiddler has this moment
struck up "Bob of Fettercairn" just in front of our study window. He
plays admirably too, lovingly caressing the polished base of his
instrument--his bread-winner, poor fellow--with his wan and withered
cheek, and wielding a powerful, yet light and delicate, bow-hand;
and we must go and have a crack with him. Nor must you sneer at us
for so doing, gracious reader. The arrival even of a peripatetic,
out-at-elbows fiddler is an event of some importance in such a place
as this on a cold, grey November afternoon. We shall order him a big
bowl of tea, with something to eat, satisfied that if in so doing we
are not entertaining an angel unawares (though there is no reason that
we know of why an angel should not appear in peripatetic fiddler guise,
as well as in any other form), we are at all events entertaining one
who by his appearance manifestly needs something warm and comfortable,
and a little rest by a cheerful fireside at this season, not forgetting
the while that he is a capital fiddler--of some intelligence, too,
and full of capital stories we warrant him. Depend upon it that Homer,
who was after all but an inspired gaberlunzie, has many a time and oft
appeared in quite as sorry a plight, and with as little externally to
recommend him as this same itinerant fiddler; and think how proud and
glad you and we should be to have a chance of entertaining the blind
old Chian, wandering ballad-singer as he was! You must, therefore,
let us have our way with this poor old man, who, by the way, in not
blind, but, on the contrary, has a good large dark brown eye of his
own, so common, we have noticed, in people musically inclined, that
it may be called the musical eye; and if he is all we take him for,
and he and we got on well together, you may perhaps hear of him again.