Forty-two years ago, one wild March afternoon, a young woman was standing
on the beach of Pittenloch. There was an ominous wail in the sea, telling
of the fierce tide yet to come; and all around her whirling wraiths of
vapor sweeping across the level sands. From a little distance, she
appeared like a woman standing amid gray clouds--a sombre, solid, figure;
whose attitude was one of grave thoughtfulness. Approaching nearer, it was
evident that her gaze was fixed upon a fishing boat which had been drawn
high upon the shingle; and from which a party of heavy-footed fishermen
were slowly retreating.
She was a beautiful woman; tall, supple, erect; with a positive splendor
of health and color. Her dress was that of the Fife fisher-girl; a
blue flannel jacket, a very short white and yellow petticoat, and a
white cap drawn over her hair, and tied down with a lilac kerchief
knotted under the chin. This kerchief outlined the superb oval of her
face; and made more remarkable the large gray eyes, the red curved
mouth, and the wide white brow. She was barefooted, and she tapped
one foot restlessly upon the wet sands, to relieve, by physical motion,
her mental tension and sorrow.
It was Maggie Promoter, and the boat which had just been so solemnly
"beached" had been her father's. It was a good boat, strong in every
timber, an old world Buckie skiff, notorious for fending in foundering
seas; but it had failed Promoter in the last storm, and three days after
he and his sons had gone to the bottom had been found floating in Largo
Bay.
If it had been a conscious criminal, a boat which had wilfully and
carelessly sacrificed life, it could hardly have been touched with more
dislike; and in accordance with the ancient law of the Buchan and Fife
fishers, it was "put from the sea." Never again might it toss on
the salt free waves, and be trusted with fishermen's lives. Silently it
was drawn high up on the desolate shingle, and left to its long and
shameful decay.
Maggie had watched the ceremony from a little distance; but when the
fishers had disappeared in the gathering mist, she slowly approached the
boat. There it lay, upside down, black and lonely, far beyond the highest
mark of any pitying tide. She fancied that the insensate timber had a look
of shame and suffering, and she spoke to it, as if it had a soul to
comprehend her:-"Lizzie! Lizzie! What cam' o'er you no to bide right side up? Four gude
men to your keeping, Lizzie, and you lost them a'. Think shame o' yersel',
think shame o' yersel', for the sorrow you hae brought! You'll be a heart
grief to me as long as you lie there; for I named you mysel', little
thinking o' what would come o' it."