GANNETS AS FOOD 467 



seeing that neither the great physician Harvey (1641), 

 nor the observant John Ray (1661), nor the Dutchman 

 Blaeu (1662), make any alhision to its supposed curative 

 virtues, so it probably fell into disuse. Notwithstanding, 

 in 1766 ten Scots gallons were still worth £2 13s. 5d.,* 

 implying that even then it possessed some medical value, 

 or it may have been used for cooking purposes ; at any 

 rate, the jirice is a high one. 



Finally this once valued lubricant was put to no 

 better use than the greasing of carriage-wheels, cart-axles, 

 threshing machines, and other agricultural implements, 

 for which its cheapness was its principal recommendation 

 to farmers in Haddington, t 



* See p. 2,51. 



t The process of boiling down the Gannets' grease at Canty Bay, a small 

 hamlet lying opposite to the Bass Rock, has already been briefly described 

 (p. 254), but I should like to express my obligations to the Rev. H. N. 

 Bonar for photographs taken in September, 1911, of one of the cottages, 

 where these boiling ojDerations went on. This cottage still contains one of 

 the Gannet coppers in sit a (see p. 46(5), and is an interesting reminiscence of 

 an industry not likely to be revived. One of Mr. Bonar's photographs shows 

 the wall, and open space where the Gannet-roasting ovens stood when 

 I was there in 1876, and the little chimney just above the cottage door 

 which served as a vent for the copper's fire, also the fireplace where the 

 young Gannets were singed as the quickest way of getting rid of their 

 down, and the metal spout through which the grease from the copper 

 ran. The whole business — both the boiling and the roasting — was such 

 a highly odoriferous one, that Mr. Booth, who resided for three months 

 in one of the fishermen's cottages, says the place and its inhabitants 

 used to reek with the scent of Gannets' fat, which I can readily believe. 



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