CHAP, x.] SIGNS AND TOKENS. 453 



As I have already mentioned, the fishers are intensely 

 superstitious. No matter where we view them, they are as 

 much given to signs and omens at Portel near Boulogne as at 

 Portessie near Banff. For instance, whilst standing or walking 

 they don't like to be numbered. Eude boys will sometimes 

 annoy them by shouting 



" Ane, twa, three ; 

 What a lot o' fisher mannies I see !" 



It is also considered very offensive to ask fisher-people, whilst 

 on their way to their boats, where they are going to-day ; and 

 they do not like to see, considering it unlucky, the impres- 

 sion of a very flat foot upon the sand ; neither, as I have 

 already explained, can they go to work if on leaving their 

 homes in the morning a pig should cross their path. 

 This is considered a particularly unlucky omen, and at once 

 drives them home. Before .a storm, it is usually thought, 

 there is some kind of warning vouchsafed to them; they 

 see, in their mind's eye doubtless, a comrade wafted home- 

 ward in a sheet of flame, or the wraith of some one beckons 

 them with solemn gesture landward, as if saying, "Go not 

 upon the waters." When an accident happens from an open 

 boat, and any person is drowned, that boat is never again 

 used, but is laid up high and dry, and allowed to rot away 

 rather a costly superstition. Then, again, some fisher-people 

 perform a kind of " rite " before going to the herring-fishery, 

 in drinking to a " white lug " that is, that when they " pree " 

 or examine a corner or lug of their nets, they may find it 

 glitter with the silvery sheen of the fish, a sure sign of a 

 heavy draught. 



But the fishermen of other coasts are quite as quaint, 

 superstitious, and peculiar as those of our own. The residents 

 in the Faubourg de Pallet of Dieppe are just as much alive to 

 the signs and tokens of the hour as the dwellers in the square 

 of Fittie, or those who inhabit the fishing quarter of Boulogne. 



