Such is the herring fishery of Man. Bishop Wilson knew how bitter a
thing it could be if this industry failed the island even for a single
season. So, with absolute belief in the Divine government of the world,
he wrote a Service to be held on the first day of the herring season,
asking for God's blessing on the harvest of the sea. The scene of that
service must have been wondrously beautiful and impressive. Why does not
some great painter paint it? Let me, by the less effectual vehicle of
words, attempt to realise what it must have been.
The place of it was Peel bay, a wide stretch of beach, with a gentle
slope to the left, dotted over with grey houses; the little town farther
on, with its nooks and corners, its blind alleys and dark lanes, its
narrow, crabbed, crooked streets. Behind this the old pier and the
herring boats rocking in the harbour, with their brown sails half set,
waiting for the top of the tide. In the distance the broad breast of
Contrary Head, and, a musket-shot outside of it, the little rocky islet
whereon stand the stately ruins of the noble old Peel Castle. The
beach is dotted over with people--old men, in their curranes and undyed
stockings, leaning on their sticks; children playing on the shingle;
young women in groups, dressed in sickle-shaped white sun-bonnets, and
with petticoats tucked up; old women in long blue homespun cloaks. But
these are only the background of the human picture. In the centre of
it is a wide circle of fishermen, men and boys, of all sizes and sorts,
from the old Admiral of the herring fleet to the lad that helps the
cook--rude figures in blue and with great sea-boots. They are on their
knees on the sand, with their knitted caps at their rusty faces, and
in the middle of them, standing in an old broken boat, is the Bishop
himself, bareheaded, white-headed, with upturned face praying for
the fishing season that is about to begin. The June day is sweet and
beautiful, and the sun is going down behind the castle. Some sea-gulls
are disporting on the rock outside, and, save for their jabbering cries,
and the boom of the sea from the red horizon, and the gentle plash of
the wavelets on the pebbles of the shore, nothing is heard but the slow
tones of the Bishop and the fishermen's deep _Amen_. Such was Bishop
Wilson's fishermen's service. It is gone; more's the pity.