"Thou old gray sea,
Thou broad briny water,
With thy ripple and thy plash,
And thy waves as they lash
The old gray rocks on the shore.
With thy tempests as they roar,
And thy crested billows hoar,
And thy tide evermore
Fresh and free."
--Dr. Blackie.
On the shore of a little land-locked haven, into which the gulls and
terns bring tidings of the sea, stands the fishing hamlet of Pittenloch.
It is in the "East Neuk o' Fife," that bit of old Scotland "fronted with a
girdle of little towns," of which Pittenloch is one of the smallest
and the most characteristic. Some of the cottages stand upon the sands,
others are grouped in a steep glen, and a few surmount the lofty
sea-washed rocks.
To their inhabitants the sea is every thing. Their hopes and fears, their
gains and losses, their joys and sorrows, are linked with it; and the
largeness of the ocean has moulded their feelings and their characters.
They are in a measure partakers of its immensity and its mystery. The
commonest of their men have wrestled with the powers of the air, and the
might of wind, and wave, and icy cold. The weakest of their women have
felt the hallowing touch of sudden calamity, and of long, lonely,
life-and-death, watches. They are intensely religious, they hold
tenaciously to the modes of thought and speech, to the manner of living
and dressing, and to all the household traditions which they have
cherished for centuries.
Two voices only have had the power to move them from the even spirit of
their life--the voice of Knox, and the voice of Chalmers. It was among the
fishers of Fife that Knox began his crusade against popery; and from their
very midst, in later days, sprang the champion of the Free Kirk. Otherwise
rebellions and revolutions troubled them little. Whether Scotland's king
sat in Edinburgh or London--whether Prince Charles or George of Hanover
reigned, was to them of small importance. They lived apart from the battle
of life, and only the things relating to their eternal salvation, or their
daily bread, moved them.
Forty-two years ago there was no landward road to Pittenloch, unless you
followed the goats down the steep rocks. There was not a horse or cart in
the place; probably there was not a man in it who had ever seen a
haymaking. If you went to Pittenloch, you went by the sea; if you left it,
there was the same grand highway. And the great, bearded, sinewy men,
bending to the oars, and sending the boat spinning through clouds of
spindrift, made it, after all, a right royal road.