Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places by Archibald Forbes
A >>
Archibald Forbes >> Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 | 10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21
In those long gone-by days brave old Lord Saltoun, the hero of Hougomont,
resided during the fishing season in the mansion-house of Auchinroath, on
the high ground at the mouth of the Glen of Rothes. One morning, some
five-and-forty years ago, my father drove to breakfast with the old lord
and took me with him. Not caring to send the horse to the stable, he left
me outside in the dogcart when he entered the house. As I waited rather
sulkily--for I was mightily hungry--there came out on to the doorstep a
very queer-looking old person, short of figure, round as a ball, his head
sunk between very high and rounded shoulders, and with short stumpy legs.
He was curiously attired in a whole-coloured suit of gray; a droll-shaped
jacket the great collar of which reached far up the back of his head,
surmounted a pair of voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the
knee. I imagined him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he
accosted me good-naturedly, asking to whom the dogcart and myself
belonged, I answered him somewhat shortly and then ingenuously suggested
that he would be doing me a kindly act if he would go and fetch me out a
hunk of bread and meat, for I was enduring tortures of hunger.
Then he swore, and that with vigour and fluency, that it was a shame that
I should have been left outside; called a groom and bade me alight and
come indoors with him. I demurred--I had got the paternal injunction to
remain with the horse and cart. "I am master here!" exclaimed the old
person impetuously; and with further strong language he expressed his
intention of rating my father soundly for not having brought me inside
along with himself. Then a question occurred to me, and I ventured to ask,
"Are you Lord Saltoun?" "Of course I am," replied the old gentleman; "who
the devil else should I be?" Well, I did not like to avow what I felt, but
in truth I was hugely disappointed in him; for I had just been reading
Siborne's _Waterloo_, and to think that this dumpy old fellow in the
duffle jacket that came up over his ears was the valiant hero who had held
Hougomont through cannon fire and musketry fire and hand-to-hand bayonet
fighting on the day of Waterloo while the post he was defending was
ablaze, and who had actually killed Frenchmen with his own good sword, was
a severe disenchantment. When I had breakfasted he asked leave of my
father to let me go with him to the waterside, promising to send me home
safely later in the day. When he was in Spey up to the armpits--for the
"Holly Bush" takes deep wading from the Dundurcas side--the old lord
looked even droller than he had done on the Auchinroath doorstep, and I
could not reconcile him in the least to my Hougomont ideal. He was
delighted when I opened on him with that topic, and he told me with great
spirit of the vehemence with which his brother-officer Colonel Macdonnell,
and his men forced the French soldiers out of the Hougomont courtyard, and
how big Sergeant Graham closed the door against them by main force of
muscular strength. Before he had been in the water twenty minutes the old
lord was in a fish; his gillie, old Dallas, who could throw a fine line in
spite of the whisky, gaffed it scientifically, and I was sent home
rejoicing with a 15 lb. salmon for my mother and a half-sovereign for
myself wherewith to buy a trouting rod and reel. Lord Saltoun was the
first lord I ever met, and I have never known one since whom I have liked
half so well.
Spey is a river which insists on being distinctive. She mistrusts the
stranger. He may be a good man on Tweed or Tay, but until he has been
formally introduced to Spey and been admitted to her acquaintance, she is
chary in according him her favours. She is no flighty coquette, nor is she
a prude; but she has her demure reserves, and he who would stand well with
her must ever treat her with consideration and respect. She is not as
those facile demi-mondaine streams, such as the Helmsdale or the Conon,
which let themselves be entreated successfully by the chance comer on the
first jaunty appeal. You must learn the ways of Spey before you can
prevail with her, and her ways are not the ways of other rivers. It was in
vain that the veteran chief of southern fishermen, the late Francis
Francis, threw his line over Spey in the _veni, vidi, vici_ manner of one
who had made Usk and Wye his potsherd, and who over the Hampshire Avon had
cast his shoe. Russel, the famous editor of the _Scotsman_, the Delane of
the north country, who, pen in hand, could make a Lord Advocate squirm,
and before whose gibe provosts and bailies trembled, who had drawn out
leviathan with a hook from Tweed, and before whom the big fish of Forth
could not stand--even he, brilliant fisherman as he was, could "come nae
speed ava" on Spey, as the old Arndilly water-gillie quaintly worded it.
Yet Russel of the _Scotsman_ was perhaps the most whole-souled salmon
fisher of his own or any other period. His piscatorial aspirations
extended beyond the grave. Who that heard it can ever forget the
peroration, slightly profane perhaps, but entirely enthusiastic, of his
speech on salmon fishing at a Tweedside dinner? "When I die," he exclaimed
in a fine rapture, "should I go to heaven, I will fish in the water of
life with a fly dressed with a feather from the wing of an angel; should I
be unfortunately consigned to another destination, I shall nevertheless
hope to angle in Styx with the worm that never dieth." To his editorial
successor Spey was a trifle more gracious than she had been to Russel; but
she did not wholly open her heart to this neophyte of her stream, serving
him up in the pool of Dellagyl with the ugliest, blackest, gauntest old
cock-salmon of her depths, owning a snout like the prow of an ancient
galley.
Spey exacts from those who would fish her waters with success a peculiar
and distinctive method of throwing their line, which is known as the "Spey
cast." In vain has Major Treherne illustrated the successive phases of the
"Spey cast" in the fishing volume of the admirable Badminton series. It
cannot be learned by diagrams; no man, indeed, can become a proficient in
it who has not grown up from childhood in the practice of it. Yet its use
is absolutely indispensable to the salmon angler on the Spey. Rocks,
trees, high banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead
cast. The essence and value of the Spey cast lies in this--that his line
must never go behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from
a howitzer's mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To
watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal
education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low trajectory,
and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a dexterous swish of
the lifting and propelling power of the strong yet supple rod, illustrate
a phase at once beautiful and practical of the poetry of motion. Among the
native salmon fishermen of Speyside, _quorum ego parva pars fui,_ there
are two distinct manners which may be severally distinguished as the easy
style and the masterful style. The disciples of the easy style throw a
fairly long line, but their aim is not to cover a maximum distance. What
they pride themselves on is precise, dexterous, and, above all, light and
smooth casting. No fierce switchings of the rod reveal their approach
before they are in sight; like the clergyman of Pollok's _Course of Time_
they love to draw rather than to drive. Of the masterful style the most
brilliant exponent is a short man, but he is the deepest wader in Spey. I
believe his waders fasten, not round his waist, but round his neck. I have
seen him in a pool, far beyond his depth, but "treading water" while
simultaneously wielding a rod about four times the length of himself, and
sending his line whizzing an extraordinary distance. The resolution of his
attack seems actually to hypnotise salmon into taking his fly; and, once
hooked, however hard they may fight for life, they are doomed fish.
Ah me! These be gaudy, flaunting, flashy days! Our sober Spey, in the
matter of salmon fly-hooks, is gradually yielding to the garish influence
of the times. Spey salmon now begin to allow themselves to be captured by
such indecorous and revolutionary fly-hooks as the "Canary" and the
"Silver Doctor." Jaunty men in loud suits of dittoes have come into the
north country, and display fly-books that vie in the variegated brilliancy
of their contents with a Dutch tulip bed. We staunch adherents to the
traditional Spey blacks and browns, we who have bred Spey cocks for the
sake of their feathers, and have sworn through good report and through
evil report by the pig's down or Berlin wool for body, the Spey cock for
hackle, and the mallard drake for wings, have jeered at the kaleidoscopic
fantasticality of the leaves of their fly-books turned over by adventurers
from the south country and Ireland; and have sneered at the notion that a
self-respecting Spey salmon would so far demoralise himself as to be
allured by a miniature presentation of Liberty's shop-window. But the
salmon has not regarded the matter from our conservative point of view;
and now we, too, ruefully resort to the "canary" as a dropper when
conditions of atmosphere and water seem to favour that gaudy implement.
And it must be owned that even before the "twopence-coloured" gentry came
among us from distant parts, we, the natives, had been side-tracking from
the exclusive use of the old-fashioned sombre flies into the occasional
use of gayer yet still modest "fancies." Of specific Spey hooks in favour
at the present time the following is, perhaps, a fairly correct and
comprehensive list: purple king, green king, black king, silver heron,
gold heron, black dog, silver riach, gold riach, black heron, silver
green, gold green, Lady Caroline, carron, black fancy, silver spale, gold
spale, culdrain, dallas, silver thumbie, Sebastopol, Lady Florence March,
gold purpie, and gled (deadly in "snawbree"). The Spey cock--a cross
between the Hamburg cock and the old Scottish mottled hen--was fifty years
ago bred all along Speyside expressly for its feathers, used in dressing
salmon flies; but the breed is all but extinct now, or rather, perhaps,
has been crossed and re-crossed out of recognition. It is said, however,
to be still maintained in the parish of Advie, and when the late Mr. Bass
had the Tulchan shootings and fishings his head keeper used to breed and
sell Spey cocks.
Probably the most extensive collection of salmon fly-hooks ever made was
that which belonged to the late Mr. Henry Grant of Elchies, a property on
which is some of the best water in all the run of Spey. His father was a
distinguished Indian civil servant and of later fame as an astronomer; and
his elder brother, Mr. Grant of Carron, was one of the best fishermen that
ever played a big fish in the pool of Dellagyl. Henry Grant himself had
been a keen fisherman in his youth, and when, after a chequered and roving
life in South Africa and elsewhere, he came into the estate, he set
himself to build up a representative collection of salmon flies for all
waters and all seasons. His father had brought home a large and curious
assortment of feathers from the Himalayas; Mr. Grant sent far and wide for
further supplies of suitable and distinctive material, and then he devoted
himself to the task of dressing hundred after hundred of fly-hooks of
every known pattern and of every size, from the great three-inch hook for
heavy spring water to the dainty little "finnock" hook scarcely larger
than a trout fly. A suitable receptacle was constructed for this
collection from the timber of the "Auld Gean Tree of Elchies"--the largest
of its kind in all Scotland--whose trunk had a diameter of nearly four
feet and whose branches had a spread of over twenty yards. The "Auld Gean
Tree" fell into its dotage and was cut down to the strains of a "lament,"
with which the wail and skirl of the bagpipes drowned the noise of the
woodmen's axes. Out of the wood of the "Auld Gean Tree" a local artificer
constructed a handsome cabinet with many drawers, in which were stored the
Elchies collection of fly-hooks classified carefully according to their
sizes and kinds. The cabinet stood--and, I suppose, still stands--in the
Elchies billiard-room; but I fear the collection is sadly diminished, for
Henry Grant was the freest-handed of men and towards the end of his life
anybody who chose was welcome to help himself from the contents of the
drawers. Yet no doubt some relics of this fine collection must still
remain; and I hope for his own sake that Mr. Justice A.L. Smith the
present tenant of Elchies, is free of poor Henry's cabinet.
It is a popular delusion that Speyside men are immortal; this is true only
of distillers. But it is a fact that their longevity is phenomenal. If Dr.
Ogle had to make up the population returns of Strath Spey he could not
fail to be profoundly astonished by the comparative blankness of the
mortality columns. Frederick the Great, when his fellows were rather
hanging back in the crisis of a battle, stung them with the biting taunt,
"Do you wish to live for ever?" If his descendant of the present day were
to address the same question to the seniors of Speyside, they would
probably reply, "Your Majesty, we ken that we canna live for ever; but,
faith, we mak' a gey guid attempt!" A respected relative of mine died a
few years ago at the age of eighty-five. Had he been a Southron, he would
have been said to have died full of years; but of my relative the local
paper remarked in a touching obituary notice that he "was cut off
prematurely in the midst of his mature prime." When I was young, Speyside
men mostly shuffled off this mortal coil by being upset from their gigs
when driving home recklessly from market with "the maut abune the meal;"
but the railways have done away in great measure with this cause of death.
Nowadays the centenarians for the most part fall ultimate victims to
paralysis. In the south it is understood, I believe, that the third shock
is fatal; but a Speyside man will resist half a dozen shocks before he
succumbs, and has been known to walk to the kirk after having endured even
a greater number of attacks.
Among the senior veterans of our riverside I may venture to name two most
worthy men and fine salmon fishers. Although both have now wound in their
reels and unspliced their rods, one of them still lives among us hale and
hearty. "Jamie" Shanks of Craigellachie is, perhaps, the father of the
water. He himself is reticent as to his age and there are legends on the
subject which lack authentication. It is, however, a matter of tradition
that Jamie was out in the '45; and that, cannily returning home when
Charles Edward turned back at Derby, he earned the price of a croft by
showing the Duke of Cumberland the ford across Spey near the present
bridge of Fochabers, by which the "butcher duke" crossed the river on his
march to fight the battle of Culloden. It is also traditioned that Jamie
danced round a bonfire in celebration of the marriage of "bonnie Jean,"
Duchess of Gordon, an event which occurred in 1767. Apart from the Dark
Ages one thing is certain regarding Jamie, that the great flood of 1829
swept away his croft and cottage, he himself so narrowly escaping that he
left his watch hanging on the bed-post, watch and bed-post being
subsequently recovered floating about in the Moray Firth. The greatest
honour that can be conferred on a fisherman--the Victoria Cross of the
river--has long belonged to Jamie; a pool in Spey bears his name, and many
a fine salmon has been taken out of "Jamie Shanks's Pool," the swirling
water of which is almost at the good old man's feet as he shifts the "coo"
on his strip of pasture or watches the gooseberries swelling in his pretty
garden. His fame has long ago gone throughout all Speyside for skill in
the use of the gaff: about eight years ago I was witness of the calm,
swift dexterity with which he gaffed what I believe was his last fish. In
the serene evening of his long day he still finds pleasant occupation in
dressing salmon flies; and if you speak him fair and he is in good humour
"Jamie" may let you have half a dozen as a great favour.
The other veteran of our river of whom I would say something was that most
worthy man and fine salmon fisher Mr. Charles Grant, the ex-schoolmaster
of Aberlour, better known among us who loved and honoured the fine old
Highland gentleman as "Charlie" Grant. Charlie no longer lives; but to the
last he was hale, relished his modest dram, and delighted in his quiet yet
graphic manner to tell of men and things of Speyside familiar to him
during his long life by the riverside. Charles Grant was the first person
who ever rented salmon water on Spey. It was about 1838 that he took a
lease from the Fife trustees of the fishing on the right bank from the
burn of Aberlour to the burn of Carron, about four miles of as good water
as there is in all the run of Spey. This water would to-day be cheaply
rented at £250 per annum; the annual rent paid by Charles Grant was two
guineas. A few years later a lease was granted by the Fife trustees of the
period of the grouse shootings of Benrinnes, the wide moorlands of the
parishes of Glass, Mortlach, and Aberlour, including Glenmarkie the best
moor in the county, at a rent of £100 a year with four miles of salmon
water on Spey thrown in. The letting value of these moors and of this
water is to-day certainly not less than £1500 a year.
Charles Grant had a great and well-deserved reputation for finding a fish
in water which other men had fished blank. This was partly because from
long familiarity with the river he knew all the likeliest casts; partly
because he was sure to have at the end of his casting-line just the proper
fly for the size of water and condition of weather; and partly because of
his quiet neat-handed manner of dropping his line on the water. There is a
story still current on Speyside illustrative of this gift of Charlie in
finding a fish where people who rather fancied themselves had failed--a
story which Jamie Shanks to this day does not care to hear. Mr. Russel of
the _Scotsman_ had done his very best from the quick run at the top of the
pool of Dalbreck, down to the almost dead-still water at the bottom of
that fine stretch, and had found no luck. Jamie Shanks, who was with Mr.
Russel as his fisherman, had gone over it to no purpose with a fresh fly.
They were grumpishly discussing whether they should give Dalbreck another
turn or go on to Pool-o-Brock the next pool down stream, when Charles
Grant made his appearance and asked the waterside question, "What luck?"
"No luck at all, Charlie!" was Russel's answer. "Deevil a rise!" was
Shanks's sourer reply. In his demure purring way Charles Grant--who in his
manner was a duplicate of the late Lord Granville--remarked, "There ought
to be a fish come out of that pool." "Tak' him out, then!" exclaimed
Shanks gruffly. "Well, I'll try," quoth the soft-spoken Charlie; and just
at that spot, about forty yards from the head of the pool, where the
current slackens and the fish lie awhile before breasting the upper rapid,
he hooked a fish. Then it was that Russel in the genial manner which made
provosts swear, remarked, "Shanks, I advise you to take a half year at Mr.
Grant's school!" "Fat for?" inquired Shanks sullenly. "To learn to fish!"
replied the master of sarcasm of the delicate Scottish variety.
Respectful by nature to their superiors, the honest working folk of
Speyside occasionally forget themselves comically in their passionate
ardour that a hooked salmon shall be brought to bank. Lord Elgin, now in
his Indian satrapy, far away from what Sir Noel Paton in his fine elegy on
the late Sir Alexander Gordon Cumming of Altyre called
The rushing thunder of the Spey,
one day hooked a big fish in the "run" below "Polmet". The fish headed
swiftly down stream, his lordship in eager pursuit, but afraid of putting
any strain on the line lest the salmon should "break" him. Down round the
bend below the pool and by the "Slabs" fish and fisherman sped, till the
latter was brought up by the sheer rock of Craigellachie. Fortunately a
fisherman ferried the Earl across the river to the side on which he was
able to follow the fish. On he ran, keeping up with the fish, under the
bridge, along the margin of "Shanks's Pool," past the "Boat of Fiddoch"
pool and the mouth of the tributary; and he was still on the run along the
edge of the croft beyond when he was suddenly confronted by an aged man,
who dropped his turnip hoe and ran eagerly to the side of the young
nobleman. Old Guthrie could give advice from the experience of a couple of
generations as poacher, water-gillie, occasional water-bailiff, and from
as extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the river as Sam Weller
possessed of London public-houses. And this is what he exclaimed: "Ma
Lord, ma Lord, gin ye dinna check him, that fush will tak' ye doun tae
Speymouth--deil, but he'll tow ye oot tae sea! Hing intil him, hing intil
him!" His lordship exerted himself accordingly, but did not secure the old
fellow's approval. "Man! man!" Guthrie yelled, "ye're nae pittin' a
twa-ounce strain on him; he's makin' fun o' ye!" The nobleman tried yet
harder, yet could not please his relentless critic. "God forgie me, but ye
canna fush worth a damn! Come back on the lan', an' gie him the butt wi'
pith!" Thus adjured, his lordship acted at last with vigour; the sage,
having gaffed the fish, abated his wrath, and, as the salmon was being
"wetted," tendered his respectful apologies.
In my time there have been three lairds of Arndilly, a beautiful Speyside
estate which is margined by several miles of fishing water hardly inferior
to any throughout the long run of the river. Many a man, far away now from
"bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the river's roll over its
rugged bed, recalls in wistful recollection the swift yet smooth flow of
"the Dip;" the thundering rush of Spey against the "Red Craig," in the
deep, strong water at the foot of which the big red fish leap like trout
when the mellowness of the autumn is tinting into glow of russet and
crimson the trees which hang on the steep bank above; the smooth restful
glide into the long oily reach of the "Lady's How," in which a fisherman
may spend to advantage the livelong day and then not leave it fished out;
the turbulent half pool, half stream, of the "Piles," which always holds
large fish lying behind the great stones or in the dead water under the
daisy-sprinkled bank on which the tall beeches cast their shadows; the
"Bulwark Pool;" the "Three Stones," where the grilse show their silver
sides in the late May evenings; "Gilmour's" and "Carnegie's," the latter
now, alas! spoiled by gravel; the quaintly named "Tam Mear's Crook" and
the "Spout o' Cobblepot;" and then the dark, sullen swirls of "Sourdon,"
the deepest pool of Spey.
The earliest of the three Arndilly lairds of my time was the Colonel, a
handsome, generous man of the old school, who was as good over High
Leicestershire as he was over his own moors and on his own water, and who,
while still in the prime of life, died of cholera abroad. Good in the
saddle and with the salmon rod, the Colonel was perhaps best behind a gun,
with which he was not less deadly among the salmon of the Spey than among
the grouse of Benaigen. His relative, old Lord Saltoun, was hard put to it
once in the "Lady's How" with a thirty-pound salmon which he had hooked
foul, and which, in its full vigour, was taking all manner of liberties
with him, making spring after spring clean out of the water. The beast was
so rebellious and strong that the old lord found it harder to contend with
than with the Frenchmen who fought so stoutly with him for the possession
of Hougomont. The Colonel, fowling-piece in hand, was watching the
struggle, and seeing that Lord Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited
his opportunity when the big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring,
and, firing in the nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail,
hardly marking it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river
with cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now
considered rather the "Whitechapel game." He resorted to the cross-lines,
not in greed for fish but for the sake of the shooting practice they
afforded him. When the hooked fish were struggling and in their struggles
showing their tails out of water, he several times shot two right and left
breaking the spine in each case close to the tail.
The Colonel was succeeded by his brother, who had been a planter in
Jamaica before coming to the estate on the death of his brother. Hardly
was he home when he contested the county unsuccessfully on the old
never-say-die Protectionist platform against the father of the present
Duke of Fife; on the first polling-day of which contest I acquired a black
eye and a bloody nose in the market square of a local village at the hands
of some gutter lads, with whose demand that I should take the Tory rosette
out of my bonnet I had declined to comply. Later, this gentleman became an
assiduous fisher of men as a lay preacher, but he was as keen after salmon
as he was after sinners. He hooked and played--and gaffed--the largest
salmon I have ever heard of being caught in Spey by an angler--a fish
weighing forty-six pounds. The actual present laird of Arndilly is a lady,
but in her son are perpetuated the fishing instincts of his forbears.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 | 10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21