Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland Part 16

THE FIs.h.i.+NG SEASON.

To Lerwick, during the fis.h.i.+ng season, thousands of women come from the island of Lewis to gut the myriad herring that are daily brought into the bay. There is an extemporised town for the strangers on the outskirts, over which float many odours, weird, pungent, and unsavoury.

All the processes of gutting, curing, and kippering go on in grand style. The women, clad in a kind of oilskin, handle their dangerous implements in most dexterous fas.h.i.+on. It is a horrid business, but well paid. Prolific Nature is never tired supplying these women with work, for as many as 68,000 eggs have been found in the roe of one female herring. My friend, Mr. M'Kenzie of Ullapool, who is in the service of the Fishery Board, took me to see the official examination of several hundred barrels of fish, preparatory to the branding thereon of the official stamp. The owners pay for this examination, but the additional value given to each barrel by the Government mark far surpa.s.ses the fee exacted by the Board. The branding-officer selects at random a barrel here and there, extracts some dozen fish from each, and satisfies himself as to the size and quality. If the herring are puny or of inferior sort, the officer refuses to brand, and the examination fee is refunded. Mr. M'Kenzie remarked that this was the only case in which he had ever seen men reluctant to receive money. I followed that gentleman as he walked over the long lines of slippery herring barrels, lying in horizontal juxtaposition, and I cannot recommend the exercise to those who have had no training in gymnastics.

The great success of the Shetland fisheries during the last year or two has brought to Lerwick a palpable increase of business and droves of business men. In the Grand Hotel there were, in August last, thirty gentlemen resident who were in some way brought thither by the traffic in herring--among the number a young Russian, who, with his wife, sat at a little table apart, and kept jabbering their language with glib expressiveness. His name was Walk-off, and his object was the annexation of fish for Muscovite consumption. He had a flabby face and long, dark hair, which he publicly combed. _She_ was small and pretty--doll-like, indeed--with jewels in her ears, which glittered and flashed in the gas-light. She was a very loquacious wee creature, and her intonation reminded me of the caressing way the Swedes articulate English. I heard him read the Russian newspapers to her with evident emotion, but the only word I could make out was _Kouropatkin_. The herring-agents at the hotel table were full of drollery. One of them, hailing from Wick, addressed a neighbour abruptly to this effect: "I am a rather expensive man to sit beside, and to one like you especially so, for you seem to be a water-drinker. When I tell you who I am, however, you will insist on standing me a bottle of champagne." He was frigidly asked to state his grounds for such a preposterous expectation. "Prepare to gasp," he replied; "you see before you one who is a model and a beacon to all the men of Caithness. I am the sire of nine st.u.r.dy sons, and _they have only three birth-days among them_, seeing that they came into this vale of tears three at a time."

CHAPTER VI.

COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS AND THEIR ANECDOTES.

Trials of commercials--The two-est-faced knave--Mary, the maid of the inn--Anecdotes of the smoking-room: Sonnet to Raleigh--Peelin's below the tree--"She's away!"--A mean house--One of the director's wives--Temperance hotels--A memorial window--The blasted heath--The day for it--The converted drummer--A circular ticket--A compound possessive--Sixteen medals--"She's auld, and she's thin, and she'll keep"--The will o' the dead--Sorry for London--"Raither unceevil"--An unwelcome recitation--A word in season--A Nairn critic--A grand day for it--A pro-Boer--"Falls of Bruar, only, please!"--A bad case of nerves.

TRIALS OF COMMERCIALS.

The commercial traveller (that bustling and indispensable middleman) leads a life of mingled joy and pain. He is constantly on the move, and from meeting innumerable types of men, becomes very shrewd in judging character. Resource, readiness, abundance of glib phrases must in time become his. He must not, for fear of offence, show any marked bias in politics or religion. His temper must be well under control; he must have the patience of an angel; he must smile with those that are merry, be lugubrious with those that are in the dumps, and listen, with apparent interest, to the stock stories of h.o.a.ry-headed prosers. It is not enough that he should book orders. Some shaky customers are only too ready to give these. It is his business to book orders only from those that are likely to pay. A big order delivered to a scoundrel who means to fail next week, is a horrible calamity, which, if it does not result in pains and penalties, means a sharp reprimand and a loss of prestige at headquarters, that may take years to redeem.

He has to sleep in many a different bed. It is lucky for him if a damp couch has not rheumatised his limbs. No one knows better than he that what seems a bell-pull has often, owing to former violence and broken wires, no connection with the bell. Here a chimney smokes, there the flue is blocked with birds' nests. In certain country inns, the flimsy gossamer of spiders makes an undesirable fretwork over the greenish k.n.o.bs of the ill-puttied panes. Mice, rats, and "such small deer"

scamper uncannily the live-long night along the worn waxcloths and unspeakable carpets. As he undresses by the light of a three-inch candle, he has his soul horrified by early Victorian prints, of Paul tumbling from his horse on the way to Damascus, of the gory relief of Lucknow, or of some towsy-headed clansman smiling out of perspective. He is by no means a tourist on pleasure bent. He must face gust and surge, for he cannot choose his time and weather. His duty is to cover as much ground as he can in a given week, fill his order-book with irreproachable orders, and get home to report, preparatory to another sally in another direction. Compet.i.tion stings him into feverish activity. If he sells tea, he well knows that an army of rivals is scouring the whole country with samples as good, or perhaps a great deal better, than his own.

THE TWO-EST-FACED KNAVE.

Nevertheless, the jovial facetiousness of these commercial gentlemen knows no limits, and hotel-waiters are, at all times, fair game for their stings and arrows. In one of the northern hotels, there used to be a portly and rubicund waiter who might have pa.s.sed for the High Priest of the G.o.ddess of Health. His face shone, if I may say so, with the radiance of perfect digestion. A pert commercial, one day, approached him with an affected look of deep concern and said, "_Well, I hope you're keeping better_," accompanying the remark with a dig in the waiter's stomach. The waiter, who had never known a minute's ill-health in his life, swore vividly for fifteen minutes without repeating himself, and among many references to the commercial's ancestry, called him the _two-est-faced_ knave that had ever set foot on the Shetland Islands. Such a superlative was felt by all to be a masterpiece of language, and turned the laugh against the bagman.[27]

[27] As to language, one hears, especially in the Hebrides, phrases of amusing quaintness, due no doubt to the speaker handling a foreign tongue. The school in one of the Mull villages is very small, and I made a remark to that effect in the hearing of the hotel-porter. "Oh, no," said he, "_it is a good deal bigger than you would wonder_." The same waiter, who had a talent for confusing his language, said in reply to an irate visitor who had questioned his intelligence: "You need not talk like that; I am as good as you; _I am as good as any other man put together_."

MARY, THE MAID OF THE INN.

I have a great deal of sympathy with hotel-porters and waiters, and think them unduly longsuffering at times. As to Mary, the exemplary maid of the hotel alluded to, she can hold her own in repartee with any of the visitors. She is a distinct character, and Moliere could have made a "type" of her. She has no sinecure of a situation, and, after eleven at night, when the last supper is over, she has to polish the knives for the morrow's breakfast. She is young, slim, and active, and wears a string of red corals round her neck. The place is not frequented by plutocratic tourists, and so her tips are meagre. In spite of her long days and her slim perquisites, the girl is affable, smiling, and gay.

She trips out and in, sylph-like, can carve fowls most dexterously by the light of nature, never spills the soup, and has a laughing and appropriate word for all. Mary, I hope, will get some decent fellow for husband, and be a stay and comfort to him all the days of his life.

Meanwhile, however (to use the historic present), a nice old gentleman in the soft goods line, who hails from the flouris.h.i.+ng village of Dundee, is paying her marked attentions. She will have none of him, for all his apostolic looks. He repeats to her, with a comically sentimental air, the lines of Omar:

"Here with a book of verse beneath the bough, A loaf of bread, a cup of wine, and thou Beside me singing in the wilderness, The wilderness were Paradise enow."

Mary looks in amazement at the old gentleman with the insinuating voice, anon bursts into a merry peal, and trips off with the remark, "_There's nae fules like auld anes_," which a listening Londoner takes to mean, "There's nothing fills like onions!"

ANECDOTES OF THE SMOKING-ROOM.

SONNET TO RALEIGH.

The conversation of an intelligent commercial traveller is, as I said, of a facetious and entertaining turn. He speaks to so many people in the course of a day and hears so many anecdotes as he rushes about, that his sense of humour becomes very keen. Old Burton, author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, used to dissipate his sombre thoughts by listening to the coa.r.s.e badinage of bargemen: a modern, afflicted with Burton's complaint, might well find a cure in the smoking-room of a hotel among a company of commercial travellers. One Sat.u.r.day night, in a Shetland hotel, I listened to a crowd of these merry gentlemen communicating to each other their several collections of stories. Before doing so, they all sang with great fervour the well-known hymn _The Sands of Time are Sinking_, a whisky-traveller officiating at the harmonium. One of the number ostentatiously beat time with his pipe. It was a very affecting scene, and certain of the singers were moved to tears at their own melody.

The company then settled down, in a pleased frame of mind, to tell stories. I noted some of these, and as they were new to me, I cherish the hope that they may not be stale to others. The following preliminary sonnet to Sir Walter Raleigh seems to be apposite and new; it is needed to give atmosphere to the tales:

Raleigh! the benefactor of thy kind, May azure undulations ever roll As incense to thee from the glowing bowl, Thy rapt disciples fume with placid mind In easy chair, by ingle-nook reclined!

Next to the mage, Prometheus, who stole From Heaven's court with philanthropic soul, The wonder-working fire, thou art enshrined In mortal bosoms as a friend, for thou Did'st bring from sunset isles the magic leaf That weaves enchantment's halo round the brow, Alleviates the pang of every grief And stirs the bard, exempt from fretting cares, To wail the weird of pipeless millionaires.

And now for the stories.

"PEELIN'S BELOW THE TREE."

A Sunday School teacher in the island of Luing was giving a lesson on the disobedience of Adam and Eve, and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into this world, and other ills. At the close of his harangue, which was rather above the heads of the children, he said, "Can any of you tell me _how the Creator knew_ that Adam had eaten the apple?" There was silence for a time. At last one boy, with a glimmer of light in his eyes, shouted: "Please, sir, because He _saw the peelin's below the tree_."

"SHE'S AWAY."

An Englishman staying in Oban, wished to visit the island of Coll, and discovered, on enquiry at Macbrayne's office, that the S.S. _Fingal_ left for that outer isle at five in the morning. He accordingly gave serious instructions to the "boots" of his hotel to rap him up at 4.30 A.M., and to show him no mercy. At _six_ o'clock, the tourist was awakened by a noise like that of a battering-ram at his door, and a stentorian voice sternly enquiring: "Are you the gentleman that's going with the early boat?" "Yes, yes, I am," said the tourist, leaping to his feet. "_Well, she's away_," said the boots. (This is a story that grows on one.)

A MEAN HOUSE.

Another hotel story: Feeling somewhat thirsty in the middle of his dinner and not judging that water was sufficiently slockening, a visitor rang the bell and asked the waiter to bring him a bottle of lager. This was done. "How much do you charge for this?" enquired the traveller.

"Ninepence," replied the waiter. Anger, consternation, and incredulity were all depicted, by turns, on the visitor's cheek. "What!" he shouted, "_ninepence_. Why, I could buy a dozen bottles for half-a-crown. It's downright robbery to ask ninepence for one bottle. You've made a mistake." "I've made no mistake," said the waiter; "I was told to ask ninepence. _But_," (at this point he sidled up to the traveller and whispered, with terrible accents, in his ear) "_it's a damp mean house this you're in, and I'm leaving mysel' the morn!_"

ONE OF THE DIRECTOR'S WIVES.

A gentleman who loved tobacco exceedingly well, went into a first-cla.s.s smoking compartment, filled his pipe, and settled down, with a newspaper in front of him, to enjoy the luxury of a long and undisturbed wors.h.i.+p of the weed. He had a journey of fifty miles before him. Just as the train was moving off, a lady, who was panting and fl.u.s.tered, was pushed up into the compartment by a porter. It was soon evident that pipes and tobacco were not congenial to this dame. She began to sniff in a very haughty fas.h.i.+on, but the smoker, utterly indifferent to her presence, continued to roll out with deliberate relish his dense tobacco fumes.

Soon she lost all patience, and said with extreme bitterness: "You there, behind that paper, you have no manners. You have no right to smoke before a lady. Do you know who I am? _I am one of the directors'

wives, sir._" Down went the journal, and "Oh, indeed," said he, "you are one of the director's wives, are you? Well, let me tell you this, that even if you were the director's _only_ wife, I do not intend to encourage you, by any compliance of mine, in the bad habit of rus.h.i.+ng for trains and getting into the wrong compartment!"

TEMPERANCE HOTELS.

An English clergyman--a p.r.o.nounced teetotaler and temperance worker--was being driven through the streets of a Scotch town in an open machine.

Looking round, with expansive benevolence, on the streets and people, he was overjoyed to see such a large number of temperance hotels. "Driver,"

he exclaimed, "I am delighted to see, by the hotels, that total abstinence has got such a firm hold in this place." "Indeed, sir," said the driver, "don't be too sure of that. We have two kinds of temperance hotels here: the first kind would like the licence, but can't get it; the second kind have had the licence, and lost it through bad behaviour and disorderly conduct."

A MEMORIAL WINDOW.

An inn-keeper in Ross-s.h.i.+re, with great enthusiasm, said to a visitor: "There's n.o.body I work for with more satisfaction than an English gentleman. Now, there's Sir Samuel Oatts, the wealthy Liverpool merchant that has the shootings near here. He is a fine gentleman, and so considerate. He is not very good at shooting, I must admit: he often misses the birds, and he goes through a good number of dogs. One day he shot the keeper in the right eye, and blinded it. But he gave the keeper a handsome present and a fine new gla.s.s eye. We call that eye '_Oatts'

Memorial Window_,' and the keeper can sleep during the sermon now without anybody knowing, provided he does not snore."

THE BLASTED HEATH.

Two English tourists--big, hearty fellows--were travelling in the same compartment with a communicative Scot, when the train stopped at Forres.

"Gentlemen," said the Scot, "this is Forres, and I'm sure you've read about it; quite near Forres is the _blasted heath_ where Macbeth was accosted by the witches." "How shocking," said one of the Englishmen; "how really shocking! Well, you see, we haven't read about that yet: we've been up North for some time, and _we have'nt seen the pypers for ten dyes!_"