A Daughter of Fife

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."