The scene along the seabord from Buckhaven on the Firth of Forth to Buckie on the Firth of Moray is one of active preparation, and all concerned are hoping for a “lucky” fishing; “winsome” young lassies are praying for the success of their sweethearts’ boats, because if the season turns out well they will be married women at its close. Curers look sanguine, and the owners of free boats seem happy. The little children too—those wonderful little children one always finds in a fishing village, striving so manfully to fill up “daddy’s” old clothes—participate in the excitement: they have their winter’s “shoon” and “Sunday breeks” in perspective. At the quaint village of Gamrie, at Macduff, or Buckie, the talk of old and young, on coach or rail, from morning to night, is of herrings. There are comparisons and calculations about “crans” and barrels, and “broke” and “splitbellies,” and “full fish” and “lanks,” and reminiscences of great hauls of former years, and much figurative talk about prices and freights, and the cost of telegraphic messages. Then, if the present fishery be dull, hopes are expressed that the next one may be better. “Ony fish this mornin’?” is the first salutation of one neighbour to another: the very infants talk about “herrin’;” schoolboys steal them from the boats for the purpose of aiding their negotiations with the gooseberry woman: while wandering paupers are rewarded with one or two broken fish by good-natured sailors, when “the take” has been so satisfactory as to warrant such largess. At Wick the native population, augmented by four thousand strangers, wakens into renewed life; it is like Doncaster on the approach of the St. Leger. The summer-time of Wick’s existence begins with the fishery: the shops are painted on their outsides and are replenished within; the milliner and the tailor exhibit their newest fashions; the hardware merchant flourishes his most attractive frying-pans; the grocer amplifies his stock; and so for a brief period all is _couleur de rose_. They are not all practical fishermen who go down to the sea for herring during the great autumnal fishing season. By far the larger portion of those engaged in the capture of this fish—particularly at the chief stations—are what are called “hired hands,” a mixture of the farmer, the mechanic, and the sailor; and this fact may account in some degree for a portion of the accidents which are sure to occur in stormy seasons. Many of these men are mere labourers at the herring-fishery, and have little skill in handling a boat; they are many of them farmers in the Lewis, or small crofters in the Isle of Skye. The real orthodox fisherman is a different being, and he is the same everywhere. If you travel from Banff to Bayonne you find that fishermen are unchangeable.