CHAPTER X. 



THE FISHEB-FOLK 



The Fisher -People the same everywhere Growth of a Fishing Village- 

 Marrying and giving in Marriage The Fisher-Folks' Dance Newhaveii 

 near Edinburgh Newhaven Fishwives A Fishwife's mode of doing 

 Business Superstitions Fisherrow Dunbar Buckhaven Cost of a 

 Boat and its Gear Scene of the Antiquary ; Auchmithie Smoking 

 Haddocks The Bound of Fisher Life "Finnan Haddies" Fittie and its 

 quaint Inhabitants Across to Dieppe Bay of the Departed The Eel- 

 Breeders of Comacchio The French Fishwives Narrative of a Fishwife 

 Buckie Nicknames of the Fisher-Folk Effects of a Storm on the Coast. 



A BO OK professing to describe the harvest of the sea 

 must of necessity have a chapter about the quaint 

 people who gather in the harvest, otherwise it would be like 

 playing " Hamlet " without the hero. 



I have a considerable acquaintance with the fisher-folk ; 

 and while engaged in collecting information about the 

 fisheries, and in investigating the natural history of the 

 herring and other food-fishes, have visited most of the Scottish 

 fishing villages and many of the English ones, nor have I 

 neglected Normandy, Brittany, and Picardy ; and wherever I 

 went I found the fisher-folk to be the same, no matter whether 

 they talked a French patois or a Scottish dialect, such as one 

 may hear at Buckie on the Moray Firth, or in the Rue de Pollet 

 of Dieppe. The manners, customs, mode of life, and even the 

 dress and superstitions, are nearly the same on the coast of 

 France as they are on the coast of Fife, and used-up gentlemen 



