A wash tub full of whisky

James P Christie recalls a fisher lifestyle that has vanished 
by Sheila Hamilton (Aberdeen Evening Express, January 22, 1976)
(With thanks to Brian R Miller, Newtonhill)

A halt was called at the height of the wedding festivities and the happy - if somewhat abashed - couple were ushered into the next room.
	No royal wedding this, but the 'bedding' ceremony was given as much importance in this 19th century fisher cottage as it was in a medieval castle.
	A sixpence was placed under each pillow and with many jests and much advice, the newly-weds were rolled into the box bed in the well of the kitchen. The doors were shut on them and the pair were left in comparative privacy. The merrymakers then retired to the next room to carry on with the serious business of celebrating.
	A wedding in the fisher village of Skateraw was an occasion to remember - and 85-year old Mr James P Christie (b. 1891 d ?) still has vivid memories of the weddings he attended as a boy.
	"The wedding fun lasted a week. It started with the bidding - everyone was invited by word of mouth.
	"Then there was 'seeing the bonny things'. The bride's new washing tub was filled up with whisky - whisky was then about half a crown a bottle - and of course it had to be tasted to make sure it was alright!"
	The night before the wedding, the fishermen had their own version of a stag night - the bridegroom was caught and the feet washing ceremony took place.
	If the bridal party met a horse and wagon on the way to or from the church, it was tradition that it had to be turned around to face the way the party was going. But there was a consolation for the driver - he was always sure of a drink.
	One crafty baker's man got wise to the custom - and every time he heard of a wedding he'd be there with his cart facing the wrong way.
	January 6 - Old Yule - was another day of celebration at Skateraw. The fishermen wandered in groups from house to house dispensing and partaking of traditional hospitality.
"They all finished up in Granny's house with its stone-floored kitchen," said James. "The table was laden with big piles of butter and oatcakes and hard fish... and, of course, whisky. The wives came over for a sing-song and everyone had to sing or do something."
	The children didn't miss out. They went round all the houses for their Yule Quarter - oatcakes and cheese with maybe a glass of ginger ale thrown in.
	There was little enough excuse for celebration. Life in the Skateraw that James Christie knew as a boy was hard. But it was a life that was rich in tradition - James remembers when the village supported 70 fishermen and their families. Not one fishing family remains now.
	How many people even know that Skateraw is the old name for Newtonhill?
	"We are awfully disappointed that no one has recorded the story of old Skateraw," said James, now (1976) of 72 Riverside Drive, Aberdeen. He and his brother Andrew (75) of 10 Leggart Terrace, Aberdeen, often reminisce about the old days and Andrew has even immortalised Skateraw in two poems "The Skateraw Fisherman" and "Skateraw, The Village That Died".
Early in the morning the fishermen could be heard clattering down to the shore in their sea boots. Their little boats ventured 15 to 20 miles out - on a fine day; the wives would point out the hulls far out at sea.
On a stormy day in winter, the men would return, frozen to the marrow and soaking wet. But there was a warm welcome waiting.
Each wife went down to the shore to greet her man with a mutchkin of whisky, not as a welcome home celebration, but to get the circulation going again.
But before the men reached shore, it was the wives' job to run round the windlass - the old fashioned capstan with four poles and ropes in the centre - to bring the boat ashore.
It was often a difficult job with waves breaking over the boat's stern. And after the fish had been divided out, it was the wife's task to struggle up the long winding path from the shore with a creel of fish. James remembers his mother carrying up over a hundredweight. "Sometimes it took two men to lift the creel on her back. The men had enough to do carrying up the sculls with the wet and heavy lines with their 800 hooks.
The work was only started when the fish was in.
"When breakfast's ower they start to gut,
The fish, an' wash an' split them;
An' then they're sautit in a tub,
Until its time to spit them."
Fish would be salted and laid out on wires on the rocks to dry. "But when the rain came on, we had to run and turn the fish over with their skins uppermost, so the salt wouldn't be washed away," James recalled. Andrew remembers the smoking process:
"Twa hours it taks tae smoke them richt,
Wi' sawdust and wi' peat,
The smoke's sae thick when ye're lookin'
It nearly mak's ye gret."
And on Fridays, the fisherwomen would walk the 12 miles from Skateraw into Aberdeen with the week's smoked fish, taking up their stance at the Green until the fish were sold. Then they brought back the week's groceries and trudged back into the village.
"If they received a gold sovereign, there was hunger and misery that week," said James. "It couldn't be broken and was put in the sock under the bed."
"One of my earliest memories is of being taken into Aberdeen to see my uncles going away to the fishing at Scalloway in Shetland," said James. "All they had in the way of food for two days on the sail was a barrel of hard ships' biscuits. But when they were made soft in tea and eaten with herring, they made a grand meal."
James remembers a terrible storm which raged up and down the coast in the 1880s. "My grandfather and father were caught in a boat at sea and they came on an upturned boat near Downies or Portlethen with three men clinging to it.
"Other fishermen had passed by the boat, fearing to take the men aboard in case it lessened their own chances of reaching shore.
"They saved the men, but the storm was so bad that they had to breach the boat three times before they got in."
There was no sharp division between the fishing and farming families as in some communities. "We were just like one big family," said James.
The community was also a close one. "If some man was ill, another would take his lines out to sea and he got all the fish on them. No one would have cheated. If a woman was sick, another would bait her lines for her."
The fishermen gave each other colourful nicknames - Loupie, Swak, Major Dodge, Frenchy, Stroupie, Codlin...
But by the turn of the century, they had given up the struggle against the Northeast gales which battered the Skateraw shores and moved to the kinder harbours of Stonehaven and Torry.
And so the fishing village finally died. In Andrew's words:
"They were a breed of hardy folk
That we will see nae mair"

BOX NOTE (1976): James Masson and his brother, John, of 3 Elsick Place Newtonhill are the last surviving members of the old fishing families still living in the village. Their people - as far back as they can remember - were fisher folk. And the walls of James' home are hung with reminders of former days - a painting of himself "redding" the lines while his mother baited them; another painting of his mother, scull on her back, standing outside their low-slung, white painted thatched cottage, relatives grouped around the doorway.
All the cottages in Skateraw used to be thatched - the fisherfolk had their own land where they grew corn and used the straw for thatching.
John pointed out the old smokehouse, opposite his brother's home - "the oldest smoke house in Skateraw."
The building, with its earth floor, is now (1976) used as a storehouse, but you can still see the fireplace where the smoke from the peat and sawdust mixture would have risen up through the wooden slats of fish.
John points out the north shore, where the fishermen stored their mussels for bait - mussels imported from as far away as Morecambe - in "scaps" or sea pools to keep them fresh.
It was the women's job to gather the mussels, plunging their hands into the icy water and prising the shells loose from the rocks.
Now the shore is empty, the jetty deserted - a whole way of life has vanished forever.