180
SOME FOLK-LORE OF THE SEA.
ANY fishermen and sailors still have scruples about Friday. Sailors do not like to sail on Friday. Fishermen would have great misgivings about laying the keel of a new boat on Friday, as well as launching one on that day.[1] If there is preference for a day for boat-launching it is Thursday (Rosehearty). The boat must be launched to a flowing tide,[2] and, when it has to be turned, it must be after the course of the sun.[3]
In St. Combs, Lonmay, Aberdeenshire, when a new boat was brought home, as there is no harbour, it was run up on the beach as far as possible. When the tide had retreated, and left the boat dry, bread, cheese, and whisky were carried down and distributed in abundance. The first glass of whisky, along with the glass, was thrown in the bow of the boat, the glass being broken by the dash.[4] In this village neither a white stone nor one with holes in it—"a hunger-stone"—is used as ballast. It is the same in Rosehearty, Pittulie, and Broadsea.[5] In Broadsea a stone, that has been used in building, and has still some of the mortar adhering, is rejected as ballast. In Portknockie, Banffshire, granite stones are avoided.
There are still those that will not give in loan the smallest article during the time of the herring fishing, or when they are from home prosecuting the cod and ling fishing on the west of Scotland, or otherwhere. It is thought all the luck of the fishing goes along with anything given in loan. J. R., of Rosehearty, was cooking for a crew that was fishing on the west coast. She wanted to borrow a washing-tub from the housekeeper of a neighbouring crew, and, accordingly, went to her to ask it. She was quite willing to give it, but one of the crew, a man about seventy years of age, from Broadsea, near Fraserburgh, in most vigorous words forbade the loan.[6]
