SEA SUPERSTITIONS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4322, 26 September 1921, Page 4

SEA SUPERSTITIONS.

By Stephanie Stansford. “ Bon’Voyage,” I said to the friend who was going yachting round and about the isles of the west coast of Scotland. “ I hope you have a good time. Goo >. Farewell.” Just in time my tongue slipped the good-bye into the right parting salutation. Once you have lived among the fishers you learn to avoid with dread the saying of good-bye to those who depart pn the seas. Farewell is always the parting benediction; it holds a sense of good luck, whereas the other word in the ears of those who dwell upon the coast is fulh of the ominous. The man of the sea-board to whom good-bye is said may never return. Up on the Yorkshire and Northumberland coasts the women shrink back in fear if ever the word is inadvertently uttered. Pig is the unluckiest thing a fisher can run across. A girl with a silver bracelet on her arm to which was attached a . mascot silver pig aroused the terrified protestations of a crew of fishermen at Cullercoats as she wa§ about to step on their boat fur a pleasure trip. It was not until the offending pig was removed' that she was allowed aboard. So strong is the superstition that pork is a forbidden article of diet in some boats. Upon the great trawlers which come into Grimbsy there is .the supers’ ition that the youngest aboard—usually a lad—should be allowed .to open the trawl ne.t when it holds its sea harvest for the sake of luck. It is down in Cornwall, where the mackerel is seined, that you hearAalk of the ill-luck which has come to a fishing village after a great glut of fish. Glut means waste, and ill-luck will always follow. They wil tell you in some Cornish villages of how at times in the past the pilchards have come and the men were not ready; Hence the “ pitcher ” have gone. As if in support of the superstition, at one port paid watchers are always on the cliff waiting for the return of the pilchards which have not been there in any quantity during the last ten years. Oceanagraphers may have their own theories for the drifting away of the pilchards, but the fishers have theirs too. It is in the fishing places of glorious Devon that no offer of help is ever refused as a fishing craft beaches. The beachcomber dr the wastrel who puts leisurely hands to a rowlock or the end of a rope, for the sake of a few pence, is never pushed aside. For the time may come when all help will be needed to save boats and men, and it is ill-luck to cast aside aid in the hour of safety.