Fishy Stories from Skateraw
by Sheila Hamilton (Aberdeen Evening Express, no date)
(With thanks to Brian R Miller, Newtonhill)

All was well with Skateraw fisherman Peter Masson's world as he rowed out to sea one fine June morning in the year 1922. The sea was like glass, the sky was blue, there was no breeze to speak of.
	He was two or three miles offshore when there was a great commotion about half a mile distant and a "head and two humps" rose out of the water.
	"Just one of the monsters of the deep," was how James Masson casually dismissed the creature when he came ashore and reported the incident. 
	Loch Ness monster fever didn't hit the headlines until the 1930s and nothing much was made of this sighting.
"In those days they took things as they came. There was no query about it," said James' son, Johnny Masson, the last member of the old Skateraw fishing families left in the village.
	The monster was reportedly travelling north when spotted coming up for a breather and Johnny suggested mischievously that Nessie was on her way to take up residence in the loch which was to make her famous....
	A fishy story indeed...but then Skateraw was founded on fish, although today only one boat fishes out of the village for crabs and lobsters.
	Let us at once dispose of any theory that the name "Skateraw" has anything to do with the fish 'skate'.. It comes, says Johnny Masson, without hesitation, from the Gaelic meaning a 'row on a rock'.
	In fact, his father used to talk about there having been an old row of cottages on the cliff top above the cave in the little harbour... the very cave into which a piper is said to have disappeared forever, playing his pipes. Judging by the times we have heard that story, there must be a good many pipers trapped in the bowels of the earth.
	The Massons are quite adamant that the old part of the village known as Newtonhill is still Skateraw and that Skateraw Road is the oldest street in the village.
	"Newtonhill was always on the other side of the railway line," said Mrs Mary Masson who came to the village on her marriage 48 years ago. "And there were only three houses there when I first came here."
	Newtonhill and Skateraw have expanded beyond belief, although villagers have recently managed to fend off further development. Enough, it seems, is enough.
	Today, many of the cottages in the old village are unrecognisable as the humble fisher dwellings of yesteryear. The lofts have been converted, dormer windows built out...different times, different people, and different requirements.
	The Massons, who don't need the extra space, have left their cottage much as it was with the wooden rafters still showing and the loft, where the nets were kept, intact. According to Johnny, the fisherfolk would always keep a cat in the house to keep the mice from tearing the nets.
	An old photograph hanging on the wall at 27 Skateraw Road shows the fish haven as it was in the 1880s when 10 boats, each with a crew of six, put to sea from the little cove.
	Some of the boats are drawn up on the beach near the old jetty, which was removed because of its dangerous condition. Fish-houses are ranged along top of the cliffs and it was up the steep path to the village that the wives would trudge with their heavy creels of fish, followed by the menfolk bearing the sculls laden with lines.
	The wives had already done their bit by dragging in the boats...running round a windlass equipped with ropes and four poles - "like an old horse mill" in Johnny's words.
	He remembers running for a gill of undiluted blue rum for 6d to heat up his father on a day when he'd come in with the sail stiff with frost.
	The Massons have a fine collection of old family photographs showing the long-ago face of Skateraw. There is a particularly evocative one of Johnny's parents working in partnership outside the old smokehouse opposite, his father splitting fish, while his mother cleans them.
	The low, whitewashed building with its hard-packed earth floor and distinctive square black chimney is, claims Johnny, the oldest smokehouse in Skateraw - maybe 200 years old.
	Today, it is just a store, but Johnny pointed to the old fireplace in the corner where smoke from the peat and sawdust mixture rose up through the spits of fish.
	Pride of place over the fireplace in number 27 goes to an old painting by Sandy Fraser, one-time head of Gray's School of Art, of Johnny's mother with a creel on her back, his grandmother and two aunts sitting by the door of their thatched cottage.
	Johnny, who is close to 80, is full of stories of the days when Skateraw was a working fisher village.
	There was a boat-building yard in the village and Skateraw folk made the most of the launching of one of the open-decked 16-18 feet yawls. "The boat came down on rollers," said Johnny. "There was a fiddler and whisky galore at the front and a piper at the back."
	The whole village too joined in celebrations at 'Aul Eel' (Old Yule?) on January 5, going from house to house from one end of the village to the other, partaking of simple fare such as hard fish, cheese and oatcakes...and whisky if you weren't teetotal.
	Weddings were boisterous affairs again involving the whole village and there was one curious custom whereby the best man carried a stripped willow wand tied with blue ribbons throughout the service. The ribbons were tied to the bridegroom's arm that night.
	Johnny Masson's parents were married in 1897 and are believed to have been the last couple who took part in the quaint tradition.
	Funerals were a hard slog, for after prayers in the bereaved house, the coffin had to be carried on poles at arm's length, not on the shoulders, over the 5 rough miles of countryside from Skateraw to Cowie churchyard.
	Skateraw was almost completely Episcopalian and Evangelists who came out from Aberdeen to spread the word received short shrift. Johnny's father used to relate with relish how the local lads chased them out of the village with peat sods.
	Eventually, the laird built them a mission hall to keep them off the streets and prevent such disturbances of the peace.
	John Paul Hill's "The Episcopal Chapel of Muchalls" (does anyone have a copy to borrow?) notes: "All along the North-east coast of Scotland the fishermen of Skateraw are noted for their sobriety and regular attendance at church..."
	The book also makes reference to the Episcopal school at Skateraw, run from 1846 to 1855 at No 18 Skateraw, "a rented cottage most ruinous" by one Eppie Wishart.
	At first, Eppie's school had been praised, but was later found to be "wholly insufficient... owing partly to the smallness and unsuitableness of the school-room and partly to the age and infirmities of the teacher... and her inability to impart anything beyond the simplest rudiments of education... she being indeed but one of the villagers themselves."
	It was in the 1880s that the mass exodus of the fishermen from Skateraw to Torry and Stonehaven began. This is a cruel, rock-bound coast, there were too many tragedies, too many near-disasters.
	Men with colourful by-names like Loupie, Jing, Dodge, Swack, Goshen, Souter, Stroupie, Buckie, saw for themselves that Skateraw with its tidal harbour had had its day.
	Ninety-one year old James Christie, of Riverside Drive, Aberdeen, was born in Skateraw and tells how his grandfather, Peter Christie, was relied upon by the fishermen to keep an eye on times and tides and weather and tell them when it was safe to go out. But they couldn't go on like that.
	As the fisher-folk vacated their cottages, the well-off businessmen took them on as holiday homes, saving them from falling into ruin. Eventually, they became full-time homes and the village that died took on a new lease of life.