THE COOKERY OF THE SALMON 203 



acts very differently from the sense of constraint. 

 Ramsay of Ochtertyre, who left interesting social 

 memoirs, says that a hundred years ago Scottish 

 servants on the banks of salinreich rivers invariably 

 stipulated that they should not be compelled to 

 dine on the fish more than thrice in the week. An 

 early traveller who visited the North in the middle of 

 the seventeenth century tells precisely the same story. 

 Richard Frank writes that ' the Firth of Forth 

 relieves the country with her plenty of salmon, where 

 the burgomasters (as in many other parts of Scotland) 

 are compelled to enforce an ancient statute that 

 compels all masters not to force any servant or 

 apprentice to feed upon salmon more than thrice in 

 the week.' The salmon swarmed. The adventurous 

 travellers who had preceded Franck tell similar tales. 

 Don Pedro de Ayala, who got as far as the Beauly 

 and Spey in 1498, says it is impossible to describe 

 the immense quantity of fish, which sufficed for 

 Flanders, France, Italy, and England. He adds 

 when he had gone back to Dunbar, that nothing 

 was scarce in the kingdom save money, but that 

 the salmon was specially abundant. So says Fynes 

 Morrison, when he entered Scotland at Berwick in 

 1598. So said Taylor, the water poet, who put up 

 at the border city just twenty years later, when 



