1870
ANSTRUTHER. Prosperous Gas Company.—The annual general meeting of the Anstruther and Cellardyke Gas Company was held in the Town Hall on Wednesday evening—Mr Thomas Foggo in the chair. There was a small attendance of the shareholders. After the minutes of the various meetings had been read, the Secretary submitted the report of the directors, which showed the income for the year £1084, the discharge as £813, leaving balance of £271, out of which they recommended dividend of 8 per cent., with a reduction in the price of gas of 3d per 1000 feet, or from 6s 6d to 6s 3d.
The white fishing having closed for the season the shores of the East of Fife are now from morn to eve the same eager and active scene in the way of preparing for the herring fishing, which the comfort and well-being of the fishermen so much depends. Already many of the boats have left for Peterhead, and others will daily follow they complete their preparations for the north, which are being hurried on with all manner of expedition. Much labour, however, is now saved to the fishermen this busy season by the use of the traction engines belonging to Mr Gilchrist’s steam cultivators, and these are at present busily at work in launching the large boats at Cellardyke The fine dry weather is also enabling great progress to be made in fitting on the nets and other gear, and everything is going on well for an early trial at this all important venture.
1871
LEFT HIS HOME, on 26th June, JOHN WALKER, Taylor. Was last seen in St Andrews on his way to Cellardyke, Information regarding him will be thankfully received at 101 Nethergate, Dundee.
HOME PICTURES FROM THE EAST OF FIFE. Surely the merry season in all the year is the gladsome Lammas time ; it is the harvest of land and sea. Yes all day long, in the sweet sunlight, the farmer is bringing home the golden grain, and abroad, in the crimson and gold of the beautiful even tide, the fisher is drawing forth the silver spoils of the no less fruitful wave.
You see yon gray steeples by the sea, that, like hoary -warders, have raised their heads through sun and rain for nine hundred years ; you see you storm-battered harbours covered with tangles like the ancient rocks, and piled up as rudely as if the old builders had wrought in an age before man had come to use either the chisel or the trowel. But long before all these- by every sandy and shingley nook along the green old shore —there would come in the season, looking in the distance like the bank in the bosom of the sea wind, hosts of fisher ships —the Dutchman in his stiff galliot, the Frenchman in his long pinnace, and the haughty English crew in their deep-waisted smack, with many a native fisher besides in his dancing coracle, light boats made only of wild beasts’ skin fastened a frame of wicker-work. The herdmen of Abraham and Lot strove on the plain until their masters had to go, the one to the right and the other to the left. How, then, could these old fishers—men of different tongues and different complexions, without a single bond of union between them, but, like the old enemies of France in England, suckling hate with their mother’s milk— meet here in peace It could not be; and so we know the sea often rang all night long with the noise of battle, and the tide in the morning bestained with blood, until the strong hand at last gained the mastery.
“For why, because the good old rule
Sufficeth them ; the simple plan
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”
A battle would take-place at any moment, either on the beach or in the ships; but the old chroniclers tell us that the fewer herrings the more bloody heads, or that the more barren the seas the greater were the wrongs and the robbery. Though after all the storm scud never flew so fast, but now and then there would be a gleam of light making everything bright and beautiful where it fell. It happened this way holy men, wasted and weary in body, but with hearts strangely strong and full of fire, would seek out these far fisher gatherings, and preach to them of Calvary and the Cross till the hearts of the people would be so strangely melted with their sacred eloquence, that they would bring gifts to the altar of God, and there all night long, on their knees and tears, pray to sweet St Mary for grace to live and love all men as became her children.
Such is the fisher life on our shore, on which the light of history first breaks it is a glimpse of what the world was in the dark ages, but let us hasten to our own happier and more peaceful times. Across the little streamlet from the chapelle” of the Royal Bruce, half hidden in the dirt and litter of a dung-stead, is the blue stone cave, where the first Archdeacon of St Andrews —the blessed St Monan—laid down the cross to take the crown of martyrdom, being here butchered by the Danes while in the act of his devotions one thousand years ago. The place was christened with the saint’s name, and has prospered ever since; and at the present day we have a thriving fishing community of about 2000 souls, who contribute above a hundred herring boats to the ingathering of the wealth of the sea. About two miles east along the coast is the great brown cloven rock with its springlet of crystal water, where St Fillian, who gave his days and nights to writing the Scriptures, found refuge in his wanderings from the storm and the rain. The monks told many wonderful miracles of this holy man; such as that heaven so loved him for his blessed work that his right hand shone night and day with a light more beautiful than a waxen candle ; and that it was he who gave King Robert and Scotland the deathless victory of Bannockburn; but many changes have been wrought about this venerated spot.
Men look with curious wonder at the grand old Abbey Wall of St Andrews ; but the monks of Pittenweem had a no less stately defence for their ancient monastery. In the days of our great-grandfathers, however, tower and archway were torn down that a quarry might be found to build a pier and retaining walls for a coal company, but the project ruined everybody connected with it, though the late Mr Lyon, the historian of St Andrews, would have told you that this was just the fate of all such sacrilege. Still since the days of these self-same monks, fishers have been found increasing in Pittenweem; but however curious and romantic their history may be like that of their neighbours of St Monance, are naturally invited to turn to the greatest of our fisher beehives namely, Cellardyke —as affording for our narrative at once more scope and variety the ordinary experiences of everyday life. Let us endeavour, then, to give a glimpse of the inner life of a Scottish fishing town, cross the white door step any point of the long street, which, notwithstanding many busy feet, has not yet lost the snowy hue of the Sabbath, and enter the cheerful and substantial-looking apartment. You may see a glossy-headed maiden, with swift-moving fingers weaving the long rents or making good the torn fragments of a herring net. She sings merrily to her work, till all in moment, perchance, the song dies her lip, and the blush mantles deep on cheek and forehead. Would you know the mystery that thrills her heart? Well, her old friends Maggie and Jessie are so happy in houses of their own, and somebody told her only the other night that at the end of the drave it would be her turn too. Girls resting on sofas, with nothing in the world to do but work crotchet and turn the pages a novel, may, and often do, at such times give themselves to no end of moonshine and dreams; and, after all, Hope never , paints more beautiful pictures, or colours her scenes with more crimson and gold, than to the eyes of the lover and bride, whatever or wherever her sphere may be. But the daily task at this season of our fisher maiden is too difficult and complicated to allow her judgment to swing wrong for want balance. Think of this: the herring net on which she is busy, and which is sadly rent and tattered, sixty yards long and about ten yards deep, and is composed of no fewer than 388.800 inch squares, every one of which she is expected to make complete, and the texture of which, in the case the light cotton nets so much in ‘favour in the early deep sea fishing, has almost the fineness of sewing thread. The blood came to our maiden’s cheek, as her heart beat with quicker pulsation at the thought of the great future before her; but her fingers and her song are as busy as before when an eager step bounds the stairway. She knows it to be the footfall of a cherished companion. “Will she have heard the news who can have told her?” already asks our maiden at her heart as her friend springs into the apartment; but the mystery is soon explained. Maggie s heart is running over with delight, but no less at times with doubts and fears ; her sweetheart also has pressed her into a promise of marriage at the end of the fishing, and more than half -a-dozen lasses besides are sure to be proclaimed if it “only turns out a good drave,” continued the anxious Maggie. “Oh, how I wish oor folk wud dae weel this year, its sair thing to gang the gither wi’ little; at least that’s what Tam’s minither says noo, though if a’ be true that’s said in Cellardyke she was ance as as ither folk for a the boats and hooses she has this day. Our maiden has stopped her work first to rejoice and then to sympathise with her friend, and lastly to confess that she is in the very same interesting position herself. “I hope wi’ a’ heart,” continued the bride, “the boats will bring in plenty o’ herrin’; but neither him nor me are tae fret aboot it, we’re to do the best we can; and, as he says, if it rains the tae day it’ll maybe be fair the next; an’ aftera’, what is life without love?. And mind, Maggie, yon bonny words in Kilrenny kirk the ither Sabbath, turning up my book at njcht I see that Willie has marked the place, I like to read them for somebody’s sake: Except the Lord build the house, they labour vain that build it : except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows : for so he giveth his beloved sleep.'” Maggie heard the beautiful passage read with heartfelt devotion, but as she rises to go, she cannot restrain the great wish with which she is evidently filled night and day—” Eh ! what a blessin’ a guid drave wud be.” You hear the coast merchant, the shoemaker, and the mason, constantly repeat the same sentiment, and describe the benefits of a prosperous herring fishing, with the consequent ruin of the district if failure. But the cry can never move the heart so much as when we hear it from the industrious fisher community, to whom it is not merely a thing of gain, but a matter of bread, which concerns, as we see, in the most vital manner the joys and happiness of the year ; and to whom, the first instance, it entails an amount of toil and sacrifice which no other class is called upon to bear, and which, as in the case of the present long failure of the home fishing, must be met year after year however fruitless the return may be; but you cannot turn your step without seeing that the preparations for this season is the absorbing work of the fisher household. This is especially seen in that curious busy operation —the “barking” of the nets—but this phase of fisher life like the going to sea of the boats, we must refer to another chapter.