Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Fish and fowl at the Land's End
FISH AND FOWL AT THE LAND’S END.
At this time of year there are a great many people who are in want of a sea-place easily accessible, and not requiring any length of time to enjoy it properly; besides these, there are a good many who can only have a half-holiday, and must do a good deal of work in the day, who yet would be glad of a place which combines amusement and exercise, with opportunities for reading, especially in the case of University men wanting to “read in the Long.” To both these classes I recommend the Land’s End. There is fine scenery, good lodging, and, for any one fond of sea birds and fish, sport ad libitum. It is of course a trifle spoilt by excursionists not generally of a very good class; but they have one good point about them,—they all go away directly, having enjoyed themselves in their own way; viz., they never interfere with the scenery, except to be marched by a guide to the actual Land’s End Point, where they drink beer on the grass, make one joke (invariably) on the name of the village inn, “The First and Last Hotel in England,” and then go away. Of course there are many of a better sort, who really come to admire, but it is not a general rule.
Unless you lodge exactly in the high road, you will escape all the excursion vans, and pursue your own course quietly. Of course the first thing to be “done” is the coast line of cliffs, but the description of them may safely be left to the livre rouge.
I will only say that the Land’s End itself is not the finest part; but for some miles towards the south-east the coast breaks out into glorious masses of granite, and the colours of the sea and rocks on a sunny day are worth a month’s sojourn at least. If you come tolerably early in the year, that is, before the end of July, there is very good sport all along the cliffs in the way of fowling, and though the natives are not so good as the St. Kilda men, they are tolerable hands at it. All along the ledges of the rock are nests of different sorts of sea-gulls, and on the little islands (accessible at a low spring tide) you may find the nest of the black-backed gull, a noble fellow, as big as a goose. They lay two large eggs, strongly marked with black on a white ground: and if you take the young to rear in the garden, you must take care of their beaks as you climb down with them. One of the natives was coming down a rock with two young black-backs slung over his back, and the birds took a bit out of his leg before he could get to terra-firma.
On these islands the razor-bills, or “mers,” breed, and the quaint little puffins, who form the prettiest sight imaginable on a fine morning, as they skim the water in a long white line.
In some parts of the cliffs you may have the luck to see peregrine falcons and ravens building; or to see a fight in the air between a raven and the peregrine, in which the “leary” raven generally escapes from “the king of birds.” On every rock are cormorants or shags sunning their wings, and sometimes a flock of loons (a very large species of cormorant) will pass, or a gannet shoot down into the water like a stone from a sling.
I need not say that you require a cool head not to turn giddy when let down over a cliff, or drawn up from the bottom, with a rope round your chest, especially if about fifty feet up the wind gives you a rotary motion, so that you think you will be too giddy to see the shags’ or gulls’ eggs on their ledge, but you soon get accustomed to it in a small way; though I should be sorry to say that any one could come up to some of the feats given to the fowlers of St. Kilda, that is, letting oneself down alone by a rope over a cliff, and when you have, in the excitement of the sport, let the rope slip, springing out into the air, catching it, and climbing up. We do not do things quite as strongly as that down here. However, in a small way, there is very good sport of the kind, and with a good 100-foot rope, and two men to haul, you may get both eggs and exercise ad libitum.
For those who prefer birds easier to get at, there are plenty of plovers, godwits, dottrells, and terns, which breed in the sand of the bay, or may be shot for eating.
But, besides the birds, there are great opportunities for those who like sea-fishing, and the strain of a good big codfish on their line.
The fishing is either off the rocks with a stout sea rod, or from the fishermen’s boats, about the Longships Lighthouse.
From the rocks we catch bream, pollock-whiting, the Land’s End pollock, and various sorts of wrasse of all colours, shapes, and weights; but to get the bigger fish, such as cod, and the larger pollocks and breams, one should go out for a mile or so and fish with lines, when the sport is very good.
There are other ways of fishing as well, such as “whistling” and “deep-sea fishing.” The former is done among the stones at low water, with an inch of line and a basket, into which you whip red, soft, roundheaded fish, from eight to twelve inches long, which they call “pettifoggers;” they taste very much like enormous shrimps.
The deep-sea fishing is a very formidable undertaking indeed; for this you start about 3 or 4 p.m., and do not come back till the next morning. The boats go out to a bank of sand about twenty miles out, and there fish for great skates and congers, and sometimes for cod and ling. Forty or fifty congers are a good night’s work, and it is no joke getting a conger on your line if you have never tried it before. They catch them of a hundred weight or more, and the great delight of the natives is to get a stranger with them who thinks that he can easily haul them up. They laugh and say:
“Ye waent hale (haul) un into boât, sir; ye waent hale un long, if there be girt skeât or girt conger on t’ hook! Lev un for me to hale, sir, or you’ll lost un!”
The congers are very unpleasant when they do come up, realising the sketch of Mr. Briggs’s pike, by “standing up on their tails and barking like a dog;” at least they bite like a mad dog if the fishermen do not nearly cut their heads off before they get them in. When they bring up a very large skate they cut it loose, being afraid of lumbering up their boat, and perhaps getting a ragged tear from the skate’s tail; they are generally glad enough to get rid of a shark or a sunfish, if they take the hook, but they sometimes bring in young sharks for bait. Sometimes they get out on a blowy night by mistake, and are glad to get to Scilly for shelter. One sailor here was driven in an undecked boat a hundred miles past Scilly in an Atlantic storm, and got back safe after all!
“I somehow thought we should pull through wi’ un,” was all his remark on landing, as he fell on shore, with his face the colour of boiled pork.
In the winter time this is a fine place for wild fowl of all sorts—snipe, woodcock, teal, widgeon, &c., and last winter a great many wild geese and swans were shot on the little meres by the cliffs. It is a fine time for the Land’s Enders when they can get a few wild-fowl to eat, otherwise in the winter time they have nothing but salt fish, potatoes, and rye-bread.
They go on the principle that the land ought to support them entirely, for they eat (as they say) “most everything that comes along.”
Some of the dishes are very peculiar—some are very good. Among the most peculiar I may mention squab-pies, of alternate slices of mutton and apples, and conger-pie with Cornish cream (!) This last we have tried, and found very good when the feeling of horror has worn off.
Then there are roasted breams with chicken stuffing, stewed seagulls, puffins and razorbills boiled and roast, every possible preparation of every sort of eggs, and, lastly, roasted cormorants which they consider a delicacy. We shot a cormorant one day and brought it home, chiefly because we had had such work to get it, for in shooting our boat near a zawn or cave to pick it up, a large wave carried us far into the hole, snapping off the mast and breaking the oars against the rocks. However, we got our cormorant, and were induced to eat it, and it certainly was not so bad as it looked, but tasted like “hare cut with a widgeony knife,” and was not very unlike a coarse widgeon. We tried lemon and cayenne, but I have no doubt the orthodox mode is “cormorant and clotted cream;” at any rate the natives take their cream with veal, mutton, conger, butter, and jam! However, there cannot be too much of such a good thing.
The natives are a delightful mixture of child-like good humour and deep plots to waylay tips from strangers. You can never take them unprepared for a “tip.” I heard of one the other day being asked if he wanted a common fern which he was switching about. Without a moment’s hesitation he ignored its companions all along the road, and demanded a shilling, on the plea of its being a very curious “artificial sort of one,” which he had just gone nine miles to fetch, and had bought for tenpence himself! But, on the other hand, when once you know them, you may often see what is so repugnant to any rustics, viz., a wish to return a “tip” if they think they have not fairly earned it, “fear you should think we’re imposing, sir.” Yet, to the evident stranger come to “do the Land’s End,” they show no mercy.
The genuine Cornisher’s manner of talking is in a languid drawl, very much prolonged on the last syllable, and resolving all diphthongs and long vowels, e.g., they talk of a bre-am, a bo-at, and a ro-ap (rope). Another peculiarity is that every village with a church is only known as Churchtown (or Ch’town), and not only this, but when you are in Ch’town itself, and ask for anyone who may be in a house a few yards nearer to the church than you are, the reply is “He be to Ch’town, I blaw” (I believe). Like the Scotch, they all use the word “brae” for “very”; it is always “a brae and fine day to fishey off t’rock;” or “t’ sea’s brae and coor (coarse), tu coor, sir!” (too coarse).
Of course their great time is when the pilchards come in; when the “huer” signals the fish, all the men, women, and children know that there is work cut out for them: at other times the only active part the women take in the fishing is to dig in the sand with iron hooks for “lances,” or sand-eels, which, when salted, are thought a great delicacy here.
I think the only animal that they do not eat is the cuttle-fish, which they object to as being “too naked.” However the “skids” make the best of baits about January, if the sea is calm, and the fishermen will often give as much as half-a-crown for a small one.
They have nothing to do with mining at the Land’s End, though the submarine mine at Botallack is within an hour’s walk: but they all seem to have a salutary dread of the men of St. Just, or “St. Joosters,” from the next mining parish. These miners are good hands at “wrastling,” and prepared on sight of a stranger, if they do not “’eave ’arf a brick at him,” to give him the falls known as “the Heap,” “the “In-turn,” and the “Flying-mare.” A little time ago, on some festive occasion, two champions fought, one being lame, with his crutches, the other with a carving-knife and fork, the latter of which he stuck into the other’s cheek, and carved it like a round of beef! A nose or ear was once considered there rather a proud trophy, although I believe now, between the police and the volunteers, their manners are softened, and not allowed to be ferocious. It is a fine sight to see some of the volunteer corps here, the stalwart farmers and head-miners recalling the days of Jack-the-giant-killer and Blunderbore, when there were giants in the land.
In conclusion, I will only repeat that anyone who comes here will find a village smacking of pure sea-salt, where every labourer is half a sailor. If he likes scenery he can climb about the granite, and on a rough day he may see real waves, one hundred and eighty feet high, come rolling against the cliffs. They sometimes wash clean over the lighthouse, the top of which is one hundred and twenty feet above the water. Add all this up—cliffs, waves, birds, and fishes, with perfect quiet and a railway within ten miles—and if you do not know where to spend a week or two, you will be tempted to come to the Land’s End.