The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-04-02
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
AMONG THE FISHERMEN ALONG
THE ENGLISH COAST.

Shown Through Crystal Lenses OF
Winsome Words ervid Face and
Character Portraiture Of These Pa
tient Toilers of the sea-Curious and
Fanciful superstitions.
Copyright 1927
LONDON, March 2O.-Pilgriming 10 many
lands, I have been much among their water
side folk-with the fishermen OF Algiers,
who are a congIomerate race Of Greeks
Italians. Spaniards and Arabs; with the
fishermen of Sicily, gloomy and voiceless as
gypsy dogs: with Chioggian and Apulian
fishermen, those most majestic sluggards Of
all Italy; with those Of Barcelona, the
giants of the south of Spain; with Biscayan,
Breton and Cornish fishermen, superstitious
and sodden above all others; with the
brave. kind men Of Claddsgh, at
Galway, and those along the wondrOus
Kerry coast; with the stern YET tender fisher
folk Of Manxland with the lazy fishermen
Of the dreamy Azores, who, transferred
20 American coasts, prove the most valu-
BILE recruits TO our esst-shore fishing fleets;
with the cap-aud-tesseled pescadores of
Cuba, brigands all in looks and ways; with
the squatty Esquimaux of the Labrador
coast satisfied with any fruitage Of the deep
which will barely sustain life; with the
erofter-fisher of the north Scottish and
Shetland coasts; and with our own brave
Gloucester men who risk their lives on the
Grand Banks, and the 'QuOddy fishermen
whose chief quarry is the herring, all along
she grand Maine coast TO the mist-wreathed
orags OF wild Manan.
In many years Of intercourse with these
Iowly folk have been continually impressed
with the almost indehnRble and wholly In
describable sadness that seems to brood over
and among all this class Of people. IL is 40
their cabins and homely social life. IL is in
their voices and looks. In repose, it sets on
their faces painfully. Reused into some
great activity, in storm, in taking fish, or in
saving lives, they have grand, earnest faces,
these hshermn. But in the quiet hours,
there ts something hunted, haunted, wearied,
worried, dreading and dreadful, to be read
In the lines of their faces, in the tremulous-
ness Of their voices, and IN the light which
shines from their eyes, that all their brave
and hearty ways cannot hide or disguise.
II is as If the sea from which they live,
had whispered IN secret 90 each conscious
ness some savage threat Of reprissl; as if
over every little comfort, home joy, or we'll
earned content, hung the speoter-hAnd of
fate coming closer 60 the inner vision every
time the fshermRn's heart grew glad. In
whatever degree this Is universal, it seems
to me 20 be more marked among the fisher
ku6u Ok GuRlhuuy 4T6lhuu anu G9COElhQu, IMAM
have ever found 1t elsewhere revealed. l
believe Dickens saw and felt this at the old
fishing port Of Great Yarmouth when he
created out of his great and tender heart
the pathetic characters Of the Peggottys-
simple, tender, true; soorning baseness;
resolute in all manly attributes; majestic in
suffering and forgiveness; and through and
over all, the pathetic thread of sadness,
quivering like an endless plant In q melo-
dious though mournful song.
In this experience strange and tender.
weird and sad, pictures Of fishing towns and
villages, sea-reaches aud coasts innumera-
bic, each one study for a masters brush
are stored within the memory. Here are a
few Of their outlines:
The mighty southwest of Ireland Kerry
coast, with weird Bray Head, and majestic
Sc. Miohaels mount upon Great Skellig
rock, dRrkeninR along the eastward land
ward horizon; and at sea, Just TO the north
of the great ocean liners way, the spring
mackerel heet-from Kerry hamlets, from
Man land and from France, altogether.from
5000 to 1000 crRft-frequently 30 denssly
massed that water cannot be seen from
fishing -smack's deck; thousands Of sea-
gulls whistling and tapping their white
wings above; and to the west ssa-horizon
OF rose and orange where the setting sun
still shows a flaming edge; while more than
10000 lusty men, under third as many
flashing crutch.lights set amidships of the
smacks, are silently shooting the great
brown seines for the night.
Matchless is that picture, ever tinted by
the near presence of fisher folk and their
storm-whipped homes, you may see from
Shetland's most somber SEA wall hight
might, mournful Fitful Head. Ii is the
White mountain OF the Norsemeu, on &C.
count OF the luster Of its stats formation
Its highest crag rises fully 900 feet above
the sea, but the legendary habitation of
Norma, bold, almost detached, cliff lifting
its sea-front into q point as sharp as a
church spire, is not more than three-fourths
that elevation. 1t is quite accessible after a
rough scramble, and its sides are the haupts
of myriads of sea fowl. Horrible, indeed.
must be the place in time of storm.
But, away down there below, the
sea is often as calm as a Highland
Loeb. From the higher headIand the
whole of Shetland can be seen-wRste.
moor, hIlocE, valley, glen; land without
forests, split and serrated by the ceaseless
gnawing OF the sea. Tremendous preci-
pices rise everywhere. Loohs and tarns
show without corpse or vendure. Shadowy
hellyers" cut the sea walls where the tide
is ever at ebb or flow. Here a fishing sta
ton; there a dreary hamlet Yonder a
gravely beach, with fish curers and their
sodden toll; beyond, weird gio with a
herd of seals turning their shining sides to
low, red sun. Over ALL a filmy, dreamy.
pI0SeuCos lot III Ju6 DITCH QaV8 be-
fore tie dark. long winter sets in, it is the
fisherlnan's "peerie summer in the Shet-
land Isles.
Strange, quiet, God-fearing souls are the
fishermen of the Solway shores, whether
they live on the Scottish side, where every
stream and brse and vale has a reminder
of the immortal poet of the lowly who rests
within the sound Of Solway's tide thunder
ings, or on the English side in rock -girt
Cumberland, in the brave old houses built
from Roman walls. Giant frames have
these folk, and wondrous hight, wide, fair
brows, great blue or hazel eyes and leonine
heads Of fiaxen hair. l always remember
them with their apparent alertness Of atten-
tion, an unconscious habit and attitude of
listening. For it is said that these folk can
hear the oncoming sweeps of the great tide
bore from the Irish sea-whioh brings the
harvest of fish and often the terror of death
for twenty miles away.
Long before this. If you are standing on
the clif-edge above ancient Bowness, you
will see the fishers, waist deep in water
huTrytng on the tightening Of their upright
nets, which for ten miles below seem like
tiny fences OF rush; and away seward with
your glass you can see them SourryinR up
from the ebb-slime and sands towards safety
and the shore Then to your Impractical
ba fofuR -,