CHAP, x.] FISHERROW. 435 



when necessitated to mention the animal, it is called 'the 

 beast/ or 'the brute/ and, in case the real name of the ani- 

 mal should accidentally be mentioned, the spell is undone by a 

 less tedious process the exclamation of * cauld iron ' by the 

 person affected being perfectly sufficient to counteract the evil 

 influence. Cauld iron, touched or expressed, is understood 

 to be the first antidote against enchantment." 



At Fisherrow, a few miles east from Newhaven, there is 

 another fishing community, who also do business in Edinburgh, 

 and whose manners and customs are quite as superstitious as 

 those of the folks I have been describing. " The Fisher-raw 

 wives," in the, pre-railway times, had a much longer walk with 

 their fish than the Newhaven women ; neither were they held 

 in such esteem, the latter looking upon themselves as the salt 

 of their profession. Dr. Carlyle of Inveresk, whose memoirs 

 were recently published, in writing of the Fisherrow women 

 of his time, says : " When the boats come in late to the har- 

 bour in the forenoon, so as to leave them no more than time 

 to reach Edinburgh before dinner, it is not unusal for them 

 to perform their journey of five miles by relays, three of them 

 being employed in carrying one basket, and shifting it from 

 one to another every hundred yards, by which means they 

 have been known to arrive at the fishmarket in less than three 

 quarters of an hour. It is a well-known fact, that three of 

 these women went from Dunbar to Edinburgh, a distance of 

 twenty-seven miles, with each of them a load of herrings on 

 her back of 200 pounds, in five hours." Fatiguing journeys 

 with heavy loads of fish are now saved to the wives of both 

 villages, as dealers attend the arrival of the boats, and buy up 

 all the sea produce that is for sale. In former times there 

 used to be great battles between the men of Newhaven and 

 the men of Fisherrow, principally about their rights to certain 

 oyster-scalps. The Montagues and Capulets were not more 

 deadly in their hatreds than these rival fishermen. Now the 



