The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1893-04-02

sAao "a t2s
This IL the picture that comes 10 me from
Iroland'a craggy moth. The eastern shore
OF Wild Tough Ewilly IL u succession of
rnins, dainty villages, like Buncrnnn and
Fahan. and OF pilgrim. haunted shrines.
Over TO the west are wilder Shores, huts.
there the patched sails of tho herring Ash
ors' smacks lie white against the back
ground Of tho headlan6s and hills. Here
tho sweetest herring known to man are
taken. The b'awny herring fishers Of the
north arc here In greatest numbers. They
ere sodden. hopeless. hard. But they arc
bravo and ~ strong as iron. They have
tremendous frames; are brown as bronze;
and form groups of startling impressive
ness. They ar. simple and psaoeable, ] am
told. But wero pi ates wanted; were fleets
to be fitted out with men for work giving
ons q shudder 20 contemplate. these sea-
giants would furnish incompatible human,
heartless flint. But II they are flint. their
wives are atsel.
Above six feet IN height, broad md
strong as their burly mates, with legs
corded like q mans, and bare to tho knees;
with arms long, crooked and fleshless az
wood; with fiat, hairy bronsts often barad
from neck to tho waist. and tanned by salt.
sun and wind to tho color of the notified
alder bark; with wide jaws, half toothless
mouths. sunkcn checks, eyes blus-black
and flashing from deep, yellow sockets, and
brows bnshy and ragged with bristling
hairs; with narrow, creased torebsnda, and
great. wide satfron-colored ears set straight
ont from behind like dirty 5~''winQ-and.
wing" sails; aud their square heads crowned
by once black hair. faded into snuff-brown
like an ill-kept animals, which is matted
and knotted upon the shoulders. and fire..
qnently to the waist-and You have but the
f~aintest picture of this half-animal who
81 osists upon kelp. dulse, black oat cake
and bsIf-raw fish that the buyers. who
come to tho beaches in thor Cats from
Londonderry. refuse AS oven unworthy of
sale to mendicant and crouohinR man.
beast OF the town.
And the children of these?
They drag out the same horrible lives;
help mako the British navy; or turn traitor
to the brood of halt pirates behind. becom-
ing the most remorseless Of coast guard. or
mountain poteen-huntinQ officers, And
yet how the old blood occasionally bios
SONS through this limitless degradation.
A daughter OF just such an one as l have
pictured was tho most perfect typs Of
wild and simple beauty l ever beheld.
Bare-leQged and bare-breasted as her
mother; brown ns u hazel nut; ignorantiy
innocent of fear; for four copper coins she
rowed me across Tough swiftly to where her
fathers work lay inondinR the seines, like
an Amazonian man-Of-war's-man; while /
sat speechless, contem plating her marvel
GUS beauty and majestic pro ortions; hat
ing myself because 1 WINS not altogether an
artist, and wondering. in all reverence. why
ton, could not wait upon the African mis-
sions for q little, and reach to and succor
such as these.
Standing upon the hugo hoadland above
ancient St. Ives another remarkable pic
ture is yours. II is one of tho most inter
esting fishing ports in Europe. The bay
itself faces the north. At your feet are
purple heather and waving ferns parted
from the Crystalline water by glistening
sands. To the right and east the q cen
hillocks of the eastern shore. Then the
broad yellow beach of Porthcocking. or the
fo!esand dominating this is the great head-
land of Pednolva. Beyond, cleaning like
of Porthminster; and further still, the
headland and rocky islet of Godfrey, with
the %latter's white lighthouse setting cameo.
like between the purple of the sea walls
and tho tremulous blue of the ocean.
Before you, the silent. shimmerinR bay.
with a few white-winged fishing craft
scarcely moving. the distance is go great
from the height where You stand; tho
ocean beyond, shining and blue and still:
rythmic reaches of incoming tide-waves,
miles in length, advancing and rctreating
and breaking softly upon the shelving
and here to the west. a e, eat jumbled mass
Of gray-old st. Ives crouching in a
little pocket of the rocks, like n mass of
messy stone in some shudowy glen. Sleep
ing way the centuries. unconscious of the
thunderouB sea.
moro picturesque sliots that oannot even be
named, the:e are the sleepy hanlets and
sand shores of orange from Blackpool to
Whitehaven, along the Itish Sea; the mites
of Villages speaking the sides of the win
some sea-combes of Somerset and Devon,
the qunint scenes among the fleets and
homcs OF the fishermen of Penzance, Fal-
mouth. Plymouth and Torquay; the count
less fisher haunts in tho seething chimes of
the winsome Isle of Wight; the d,earier
reaches of the English east shore where
the battles with the storms and tides are
ever fierce and strong; the wild, wniling
woeful coast from Yarmouth to Whitby,
which has seemed fnted to be tho scene or
tho oceans saddest% tragedies; the red roofs.
the breezy sho. es, the cleaning sunds
and the tossing spray of ~Coldinaham and
North Berwick, around to tho south to the
mouth of the forth: the snug town and
ha,bor, the quaint old streets. the luscious
fish dinners and the screaming fishwives OF
Newhaven; the almost somber silence ever
b: cooling above the piers of Buckhaven;
the rocky wills, the steoly blue of the Ger
man ocean,, the awful sto, ms and the great
dlngy, cheerless fishing town5 of tho east
coast, from Aberdeen to Thurso; the brown
crags. the emerald slopings and tho shad-
owy. moanful assures of the Shetland and
Orkney shores, with their Dutch and Morse
color in faces and ways; and the drenr, gray
rocks and lufin-haunted crngs of the misty
Hebrides, where the brave. half-stnrved
oroftcr fisher battles all his life for more
existence.
The customs. folklore and superstitions
which have been the natural outgrowth of
their vocation have been practically change
less for half a thousand years; and their
p%ottents and omens are countless.
In Skye If II woman crosses the water
Newhaven men If the name of "Brounpel"
that of IN old Newhnven re, robate who
wal tho i"mparsonation of bad luck and
once lived among then-be mentioned. fish
ing will be at once discontinued. Skye and
Harris fishermen have bscn known to beat
their wives dieadfullv. not from any i'll
feeling, but to propitiats and attract the
fish.
All British fishermen note carefully the
fret person upon whom their eyes aliRht in
depend upon whether the person is we'll OF
i'll favored. A Clergyman, q pig or a cat arc
the most dreaded of all objects as fleets are
calling out of the harbor. This sight Of
either. or the discovery OF tina footprint of
q Unaffected person in the sand. bodies all
manner of i'll luck; and to utter The name
of a clergyman or any four-footed beast on
board u fishing boat would reudcr the Of
fender subject to bodily peril, and at least
destroy all hopes OF success on that day.
All along the west COATS of Cornwall,
Scotland md Ireland they make better use
If the dreadeu cat. They sCcura fnyorinu