There was an air of bustle about the little quay,—
The silvery shoals of fish no longer come so near the shore as they used in the olden time, for then the kirk bell of St. Monan’s had its tongue tied when the ‘draive’ was off the coast, lest its knell should frighten away the shining myriads of the deep.
We climbed the shoulder of a great green cliff until we could sit on the rugged rocks at the top and overlook the sea. The bluff is well named Nirly Scaur, and a wild desolate spot it is, with grey lichen-clad boulders and stunted heather on its summit. In a storm here, the wind buffets and slashes and scourges one like invisible whips, and below the sea churns itself into foaming waves, driving its ‘infinite squadrons of wild white horses’ eternally toward the shore. It was calm and blue to-day, and no sound disturbed the quiet save the incessant shriek and scream of the rock birds, the kittiwakes, black-headed gulls, and guillemots that live on the sides of these high sheer craigs. Here the mother guillemot lays her single egg, and here, on these narrow shelves of precipitous rock, she holds it in place with her foot until the warmth of her leg and overhanging body hatches it into life, when she takes it on her back and flies down to the sea. Motherhood under difficulties, it would seem, and the education of the baby guillemot is carried forward on Spartan principles; for the moment he is out of the shell he is swept downward hundreds of feet and plunged into a cold ocean, where he can sink or swim as instinct serves him. In a life so fraught with anxieties, exposures, and dangers, it is not strange that the guillemots keeps up a ceaseless clang of excited conversation, a very riot and wrangle of altercation and argument which the circumstances seem to warrant. The prospective father is obliged to take turns with the prospective mother, and hold the one precious egg on the rock while she goes for a fly, a swim, a bite, and a sup. As there are five hundred other parents on the same rock, and the eggs look to be only a couple of inches apart, the scene must be distracting, and I have no doubt we should find, if statistics were gathered, that thousands of guillemots die of nervous prostration.
Willie and I interpreted the clamour somewhat as follows:—
[Between parent birds.]
“I am going to take my foot off. Are you ready to put yours on? Don’t be clumsy! Wait a minute, I’m not ready. I’M NOT READY, I TELL YOU! NOW!!”
[Between rival mothers.]
“Your egg is so close to mine that I can’t breathe–”
“Move your egg, then, I can’t move mine!”
“You’re sitting so close, I can’t stretch my wings.”
“Neither can I. You’ve got as much room as I have.”
“I shall tumble if you crowd me.”
“Go ahead and tumble, then! There is plenty of room in the sea.”
[From one father to another ceremoniously.]
“Pardon me, but I’m afraid I shoved your wife off the rock last night.”
“Don’t mention it. I remember I shoved off your wife’s mother last year.”
We walked among the tiny whitewashed low-roofed cots, each with its silver-skinned fishes tacked invitingly against the door-frame to dry, until we came to my favourite, the corner cottage in the row. It has beautiful narrow garden strips in front,—solid patches of colour in sweet gillyflower bushes, from which the kindly housewife plucked a nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls ‘granny’s mutches’; and indeed they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns, ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence. Outside, looming white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot high, perhaps. We did not recognise the head at once, and asked the little woman who it was.
“Homer, the graund Greek poet,” she answered cheerily; “an’ I’m to have anither o’ Burns, as tall as Homer, when my daughter comes hame frae E’nbro’.”
If the shade of Homer keeps account of his earthly triumphs, I think he is proud of his place in that humble Scotchwoman’s gillyflower garden, with his head under the drooping petals of granny’s white mutches.
What do you think her ‘mon’ is called in the village! John o’ Mary! But he is not alone in his meekness, for there are Jock o’ Meg, Willie o’ Janet, Jem o’ Tibby, and a dozen others. These primitive fishing-villages are the places where all the advanced women ought to congregate, for the wife is head of the house; the accountant, the treasurer, the auditor, the chancellor of the exchequer; and though her husband does catch the fish for her to sell, that is accounted apparently as a detail too trivial for notice.
When we passed Mary’s cottage on our way to the sands next day, Burns’s head had been accidentally broken off by the children, and we felt as though we had lost a friend; but Scotch thrift, and loyalty to the dear Ploughman Poet, came to the rescue, and when we returned, Robert’s plaster head had been glued to his body. He smiled at us again from between the two scarlet geraniums, and a tendril of ivy had been gently curled about his neck to hide the cruel wound.
After such long, lovely mornings as this, there is a late luncheon under the shadow of a rock with Salemina and Francesca, an idle chat, or the chapter of a book, and presently Lady Ardmore and her daughter Elizabeth drive down to the sands. They are followed by Robin Anstruther, Jamie, and Ralph on bicycles, and before long the stalwart figure of Ronald Macdonald appears in the distance, just in time for a cup of tea, which we brew in Lady Ardmore’s bath-house on the beach.
Chapter XIX. Fowk o’ Fife
We have lived in Pettybaw a very short time, but I see that we have already made an impression upon all grades of society. This was not our intention. We gave Edinburgh as our last place of residence, with the view of concealing our nationality, until such time as we should choose to declare it; that is, when public excitement with regard to our rental of the house in the loaning should have lapsed into a state of indifference. And yet, modest, economical, and commonplace as has been the administration of our affairs, our method of life has evidently been thought unusual, and our conduct not precisely the conduct of other summer visitors. Even our daily purchases, in manner, in number, and in character, seem to be looked upon as eccentric, for whenever we leave a shop, the relatives of the greengrocer, flesher, draper, whoever it may be, bound downstairs, surround him in an eager circle, and inquire the latest news.
In an unwise moment we begged the draper’s wife to honour us with a visit and explain the obliquities of the kitchen range and the tortuosities of the sink-spout to Miss Grieve. While our landlady was on the premises, I took occasion to invite her up to my own room, with a view of seeing whether my mattress of pebbles and iron-filings could be supplemented by another of shavings or straw, or some material less provocative of bodily injuries. She was most sympathetic, persuasive, logical and after the manner of her kind proved to me conclusively that the trouble lay with the too-saft occupant of the bed, not with the bed itself, and gave me statistics with regard to the latter which established its reputation and at the same moment destroyed my own.