At Portessie and along the shore of the Moray Firth, on the Banff and Morayshire coasts, before a storm from the north or north-east, the sea becomes perfectly calm, "like a beuk (book) leaf," as my informant expressed it, and the phenomenon is called a "weather gaa."
The swell before the storm is called "the win-chap."[1] (Portessie.) The broken water on the shore goes by the name of "the breach." (Nairn.) When the waves are heavy at the month of the harbour (Nairn), so that the boats cannot go to sea, the fishermen say, "There's ower muckle sea-gate."
The fisher folks of Portessie say that the sea before any disaster of drowning has "a waichty (weighty) melody," "a dead groan," or simply "a groan." In Nairn they speak of "a waichty groan" before any fatality takes place.[2]
In Portessie and Buckie the belief exists that the sea cannot become calm till the body of the drowned that is destined to be buried has been found;—in the words of my informant, "gehn (if) the body is t' get cirsent meels (consecrated ground), the sea's never at rist (rest) till the body's ashore."
Said a Portessie fisherman: "We were going to Beauly with fish and oil. The wind came down strong against us, and we had to go into Burghead. We lay there for two days, with the wind always a-head. There was a queer woman in Forres, and we did not know whether the woman, in whose house we were, sent for her or not, but she came into the house. She asked us what we were doing here. We told her. She said we would be in Beauly in two hours. We went out, and, though the wind was against us when the woman came in, found it had changed in our favour. We put out at once, and in two hours we were in Beauly."
"We were in Potmahomack once. A woman there baked a bannock, and gave it to one of the crew, with strict orders not to break it till he reached home, in order to get a 'roon win'.' The bannock was carefully rolled in a napkin, and put into his breast. In
