Forgotten Treasures #7: MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER--PART 1

From:

CAMPS, QUARTER, AND CASUAL PLACES*



by Archibald Forbes



MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER



None of the greater rivers of Scotland makes so much haste to reach the
ocean as does the turbulent and impatient Spey. From its parent lochlet in
the bosom of the Grampians it speeds through Badenoch, the country of Cluny
MacPherson, the chief of Clan Chattan, a region to this day redolent of
memories of the '45. It abates its hurry as its current skirts the grave of
the beautiful Jean Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, who raised the 92nd
Highlanders by giving a kiss with the King's shilling to every recruit, and
who now since many long years



Sleeps beneath Kinrara's willow.



But after this salaam of courtesy the river roars and bickers down the long
stretch of shaggy glen which intervenes between the upper and lower Rocks of
Craigellachie, whence the Clan Grant, whose habitation is this ruggedly
beautiful strath, takes its slogan of "Stand fast, Craigellachie," till it
finally sends its headlong torrent shooting miles out through the salt water
of the Moray Firth. In its course of over a hundred miles its fierce current
has seldom tarried; yet now and again it spreads panting into a long smooth
stretch of still water when wearied momentarily with buffeting the boulders
in its broken and contorted bed; or when a great rock, jutting out into its
course, causes a deep black sullen pool whose sluggish eddy is crested with
masses of yellow foam. Merely as a wayfaring pedestrian I have followed Spey
from its source to its mouth; but my intimacy with it in the character of a
fisherman extends over the five-and-twenty miles of its lower course, from
the confluence of the pellucid Avon at Ballindalloch to the bridge of
Fochabers, the native village of the Captain Wilson who died so gallantly in
the recent fighting in Matabeleland. My first Spey trout I took out of water
at the foot of the cherry orchard below the sweet-lying cottage of Delfur.
My first grilse I hooked and played with trout tackle in "Dalmunach" on the
Laggan water, a pool that is the rival of "Dellagyl" and the "Holly Bush"
for the proud title of the best pool of lower Spey. My first salmon I
brought to the gaff with a beating heart in that fine swift stretch of water
known as "The Dip," which connects the pools of the "Heathery Isle" and the
"Red Craig," and which is now leased by that good fisherman, Mr. Justice
North. I think the Dundurcas water then belonged to the late Mr. Little
Gilmour, the well-known welter-weight who went so well to hounds season
after season from Melton Mowbray, and who was as keen in the water on Spey
as he was over the Leicestershire pastures. A servant of Mr. Little Gilmour
was drowned in the "Two Stones" pool, the next below the "Holly Bush;" and
the next pool below the "Two Stones" is called the "Beaufort" to this day--
named after the present Duke, who took many a big fish out of it in the days
when he used to come to Speyside with his friend Mr. Little Gilmour.



In those long gone-by days brave old Lord Saltoun, the hero of Hougomont,
resided during the fishing season in the mansion-house of Auchinroath, on
the high ground at the mouth of the Glen of Rothes. One morning, some
five-and-forty years ago, my father drove to breakfast with the old lord and
took me with him. Not caring to send the horse to the stable, he left me
outside in the dogcart when he entered the house. As I waited rather
sulkily--for I was mightily hungry--there came out on to the doorstep a very
queer-looking old person, short of figure, round as a ball, his head sunk
between very high and rounded shoulders, and with short stumpy legs. He was
curiously attired in a whole-coloured suit of gray; a droll-shaped jacket
the great collar of which reached far up the back of his head, surmounted a
pair of voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the knee. I imagined
him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he accosted me
good-naturedly, asking to whom the dogcart and myself belonged, I answered
him somewhat shortly and then ingenuously suggested that he would be doing
me a kindly act if he would go and fetch me out a hunk of bread and meat,
for I was enduring tortures of hunger.



Then he swore, and that with vigour and fluency, that it was a shame that I
should have been left outside; called a groom and bade me alight and come
indoors with him. I demurred--I had got the paternal injunction to remain
with the horse and cart. "I am master here!" exclaimed the old person
impetuously; and with further strong language he expressed his intention of
rating my father soundly for not having brought me inside along with
himself. Then a question occurred to me, and I ventured to ask, "Are you
Lord Saltoun?" "Of course I am," replied the old gentleman; "who the devil
else should I be?" Well, I did not like to avow what I felt, but in truth I
was hugely disappointed in him; for I had just been reading Siborne's
_Waterloo_, and to think that this dumpy old fellow in the duffle jacket
that came up over his ears was the valiant hero who had held Hougomont
through cannon fire and musketry fire and hand-to-hand bayonet fighting on
the day of Waterloo while the post he was defending was ablaze, and who had
actually killed Frenchmen with his own good sword, was a severe
disenchantment. When I had breakfasted he asked leave of my father to let me
go with him to the waterside, promising to send me home safely later in the
day. When he was in Spey up to the armpits--for the "Holly Bush" takes deep
wading from the Dundurcas side--the old lord looked even droller than he had
done on the Auchinroath doorstep, and I could not reconcile him in the least
to my Hougomont ideal. He was delighted when I opened on him with that
topic, and he told me with great spirit of the vehemence with which his
brother-officer Colonel Macdonnell, and his men forced the French soldiers
out of the Hougomont courtyard, and how big Sergeant Graham closed the door
against them by main force of muscular strength. Before he had been in the
water twenty minutes the old lord was in a fish; his gillie, old Dallas, who
could throw a fine line in spite of the whisky, gaffed it scientifically,
and I was sent home rejoicing with a 15 lb. salmon for my mother and a
half-sovereign for myself wherewith to buy a trouting rod and reel. Lord
Saltoun was the first lord I ever met, and I have never known one since whom
I have liked half so well.



Spey is a river which insists on being distinctive. She mistrusts the
stranger. He may be a good man on Tweed or Tay, but until he has been
formally introduced to Spey and been admitted to her acquaintance, she is
chary in according him her favours. She is no flighty coquette, nor is she a
prude; but she has her demure reserves, and he who would stand well with her
must ever treat her with consideration and respect. She is not as those
facile demi-mondaine streams, such as the Helmsdale or the Conon, which let
themselves be entreated successfully by the chance comer on the first jaunty
appeal. You must learn the ways of Spey before you can prevail with her, and
her ways are not the ways of other rivers. It was in vain that the veteran
chief of southern fishermen, the late Francis Francis, threw his line over
Spey in the _veni, vidi, vici_ manner of one who had made Usk and Wye his
potsherd, and who over the Hampshire Avon had cast his shoe. Russel, the
famous editor of the _Scotsman_, the Delane of the north country, who, pen
in hand, could make a Lord Advocate squirm, and before whose gibe provosts
and bailies trembled, who had drawn out leviathan with a hook from Tweed,
and before whom the big fish of Forth could not stand--even he, brilliant
fisherman as he was, could "come nae speed ava" on Spey, as the old Arndilly
water-gillie quaintly worded it.



Yet Russel of the _Scotsman_ was perhaps the most whole-souled salmon fisher
of his own or any other period. His piscatorial aspirations extended beyond
the grave. Who that heard it can ever forget the peroration, slightly
profane perhaps, but entirely enthusiastic, of his speech on salmon fishing
at a Tweedside dinner? "When I die," he exclaimed in a fine rapture, "should
I go to heaven, I will fish in the water of life with a fly dressed with a
feather from the wing of an angel; should I be unfortunately consigned to
another destination, I shall nevertheless hope to angle in Styx with the
worm that never dieth." To his editorial successor Spey was a trifle more
gracious than she had been to Russel; but she did not wholly open her heart
to this neophyte of her stream, serving him up in the pool of Dellagyl with
the ugliest, blackest, gauntest old cock-salmon of her depths, owning a
snout like the prow of an ancient galley.



Spey exacts from those who would fish her waters with success a peculiar and
distinctive method of throwing their line, which is known as the "Spey
cast." In vain has Major Treherne illustrated the successive phases of the
"Spey cast" in the fishing volume of the admirable Badminton series. It
cannot be learned by diagrams; no man, indeed, can become a proficient in it
who has not grown up from childhood in the practice of it. Yet its use is
absolutely indispensable to the salmon angler on the Spey. Rocks, trees,
high banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead cast. The
essence and value of the Spey cast lies in this--that his line must never go
behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from a howitzer's
mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To watch it performed,
strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal education in the art of
casting; the swiftness, sureness, low trajectory, and lightness of the fall
of the line, shot out by a dexterous swish of the lifting and propelling
power of the strong yet supple rod, illustrate a phase at once beautiful and
practical of the poetry of motion. Among the native salmon fishermen of
Speyside, _quorum ego parva pars fui,_ there are two distinct manners which
may be severally distinguished as the easy style and the masterful style.
The disciples of the easy style throw a fairly long line, but their aim is
not to cover a maximum distance. What they pride themselves on is precise,
dexterous, and, above all, light and smooth casting. No fierce switchings of
the rod reveal their approach before they are in sight; like the clergyman
of Pollok's _Course of Time_ they love to draw rather than to drive. Of the
masterful style the most brilliant exponent is a short man, but he is the
deepest wader in Spey. I believe his waders fasten, not round his waist, but
round his neck. I have seen him in a pool, far beyond his depth, but
"treading water" while simultaneously wielding a rod about four times the
length of himself, and sending his line whizzing an extraordinary distance.
The resolution of his attack seems actually to hypnotise salmon into taking
his fly; and, once hooked, however hard they may fight for life, they are
doomed fish.



Ah me! These be gaudy, flaunting, flashy days! Our sober Spey, in the matter
of salmon fly-hooks, is gradually yielding to the garish influence of the
times. Spey salmon now begin to allow themselves to be captured by such
indecorous and revolutionary fly-hooks as the "Canary" and the "Silver
Doctor." Jaunty men in loud suits of dittoes have come into the north
country, and display fly-books that vie in the variegated brilliancy of
their contents with a Dutch tulip bed. We staunch adherents to the
traditional Spey blacks and browns, we who have bred Spey cocks for the sake
of their feathers, and have sworn through good report and through evil
report by the pig's down or Berlin wool for body, the Spey cock for hackle,
and the mallard drake for wings, have jeered at the kaleidoscopic
fantasticality of the leaves of their fly-books turned over by adventurers
from the south country and Ireland; and have sneered at the notion that a
self-respecting Spey salmon would so far demoralise himself as to be allured
by a miniature presentation of Liberty's shop-window. But the salmon has not
regarded the matter from our conservative point of view; and now we, too,
ruefully resort to the "canary" as a dropper when conditions of atmosphere
and water seem to favour that gaudy implement. And it must be owned that
even before the "twopence-coloured" gentry came among us from distant parts,
we, the natives, had been side-tracking from the exclusive use of the
old-fashioned sombre flies into the occasional use of gayer yet still modest
"fancies." Of specific Spey hooks in favour at the present time the
following is, perhaps, a fairly correct and comprehensive list: purple king,
green king, black king, silver heron, gold heron, black dog, silver riach,
gold riach, black heron, silver green, gold green, Lady Caroline, carron,
black fancy, silver spale, gold spale, culdrain, dallas, silver thumbie,
Sebastopol, Lady Florence March, gold purpie, and gled (deadly in
"snawbree"). The Spey cock--a cross between the Hamburg cock and the old
Scottish mottled hen--was fifty years ago bred all along Speyside expressly
for its feathers, used in dressing salmon flies; but the breed is all but
extinct now, or rather, perhaps, has been crossed and re-crossed out of
recognition. It is said, however, to be still maintained in the parish of
Advie, and when the late Mr. Bass had the Tulchan shootings and fishings his
head keeper used to breed and sell Spey cocks.



Probably the most extensive collection of salmon fly-hooks ever made was
that which belonged to the late Mr. Henry Grant of Elchies, a property on
which is some of the best water in all the run of Spey. His father was a
distinguished Indian civil servant and of later fame as an astronomer; and
his elder brother, Mr. Grant of Carron, was one of the best fishermen that
ever played a big fish in the pool of Dellagyl. Henry Grant himself had been
a keen fisherman in his youth, and when, after a chequered and roving life
in South Africa and elsewhere, he came into the estate, he set himself to
build up a representative collection of salmon flies for all waters and all
seasons. His father had brought home a large and curious assortment of
feathers from the Himalayas; Mr. Grant sent far and wide for further
supplies of suitable and distinctive material, and then he devoted himself
to the task of dressing hundred after hundred of fly-hooks of every known
pattern and of every size, from the great three-inch hook for heavy spring
water to the dainty little "finnock" hook scarcely larger than a trout fly.
A suitable receptacle was constructed for this collection from the timber of
the "Auld Gean Tree of Elchies"--the largest of its kind in all
Scotland--whose trunk had a diameter of nearly four feet and whose branches
had a spread of over twenty yards. The "Auld Gean Tree" fell into its dotage
and was cut down to the strains of a "lament," with which the wail and skirl
of the bagpipes drowned the noise of the woodmen's axes. Out of the wood of
the "Auld Gean Tree" a local artificer constructed a handsome cabinet with
many drawers, in which were stored the Elchies collection of fly-hooks
classified carefully according to their sizes and kinds. The cabinet
stood--and, I suppose, still stands--in the Elchies billiard-room; but I
fear the collection is sadly diminished, for Henry Grant was the
freest-handed of men and towards the end of his life anybody who chose was
welcome to help himself from the contents of the drawers. Yet no doubt some
relics of this fine collection must still remain; and I hope for his own
sake that Mr. Justice A.L. Smith the present tenant of Elchies, is free of
poor Henry's cabinet.



It is a popular delusion that Speyside men are immortal; this is true only
of distillers. But it is a fact that their longevity is phenomenal. If Dr.
Ogle had to make up the population returns of Strath Spey he could not fail
to be profoundly astonished by the comparative blankness of the mortality
columns. Frederick the Great, when his fellows were rather hanging back in
the crisis of a battle, stung them with the biting taunt, "Do you wish to
live for ever?" If his descendant of the present day were to address the
same question to the seniors of Speyside, they would probably reply, "Your
Majesty, we ken that we canna live for ever; but, faith, we mak' a gey guid
attempt!" A respected relative of mine died a few years ago at the age of
eighty-five. Had he been a Southron, he would have been said to have died
full of years; but of my relative the local paper remarked in a touching
obituary notice that he "was cut off prematurely in the midst of his mature
prime." When I was young, Speyside men mostly shuffled off this mortal coil
by being upset from their gigs when driving home recklessly from market with
"the maut abune the meal;" but the railways have done away in great measure
with this cause of death. Nowadays the centenarians for the most part fall
ultimate victims to paralysis. In the south it is understood, I believe,
that the third shock is fatal; but a Speyside man will resist half a dozen
shocks before he succumbs, and has been known to walk to the kirk after
having endured even a greater number of attacks.



Among the senior veterans of our riverside I may venture to name two most
worthy men and fine salmon fishers. Although both have now wound in their
reels and unspliced their rods, one of them still lives among us hale and
hearty. "Jamie" Shanks of Craigellachie is, perhaps, the father of the
water. He himself is reticent as to his age and there are legends on the
subject which lack authentication. It is, however, a matter of tradition
that Jamie was out in the '45; and that, cannily returning home when Charles
Edward turned back at Derby, he earned the price of a croft by showing the
Duke of Cumberland the ford across Spey near the present bridge of
Fochabers, by which the "butcher duke" crossed the river on his march to
fight the battle of Culloden. It is also traditioned that Jamie danced round
a bonfire in celebration of the marriage of "bonnie Jean," Duchess of
Gordon, an event which occurred in 1767. Apart from the Dark Ages one thing
is certain regarding Jamie, that the great flood of 1829 swept away his
croft and cottage, he himself so narrowly escaping that he left his watch
hanging on the bed-post, watch and bed-post being subsequently recovered
floating about in the Moray Firth. The greatest honour that can be conferred
on a fisherman--the Victoria Cross of the river--has long belonged to Jamie;
a pool in Spey bears his name, and many a fine salmon has been taken out of
"Jamie Shanks's Pool," the swirling water of which is almost at the good old
man's feet as he shifts the "coo" on his strip of pasture or watches the
gooseberries swelling in his pretty garden. His fame has long ago gone
throughout all Speyside for skill in the use of the gaff: about eight years
ago I was witness of the calm, swift dexterity with which he gaffed what I
believe was his last fish. In the serene evening of his long day he still
finds pleasant occupation in dressing salmon flies; and if you speak him
fair and he is in good humour "Jamie" may let you have half a dozen as a
great favour.



The other veteran of our river of whom I would say something was that most
worthy man and fine salmon fisher Mr. Charles Grant, the ex-schoolmaster of
Aberlour, better known among us who loved and honoured the fine old Highland
gentleman as "Charlie" Grant. Charlie no longer lives; but to the last he
was hale, relished his modest dram, and delighted in his quiet yet graphic
manner to tell of men and things of Speyside familiar to him during his long
life by the riverside. Charles Grant was the first person who ever rented
salmon water on Spey. It was about 1838 that he took a lease from the Fife
trustees of the fishing on the right bank from the burn of Aberlour to the
burn of Carron, about four miles of as good water as there is in all the run
of Spey. This water would to-day be cheaply rented at £250 per annum; the
annual rent paid by Charles Grant was two guineas. A few years later a lease
was granted by the Fife trustees of the period of the grouse shootings of
Benrinnes, the wide moorlands of the parishes of Glass, Mortlach, and
Aberlour, including Glenmarkie the best moor in the county, at a rent of
£100 a year with four miles of salmon water on Spey thrown in. The letting
value of these moors and of this water is to-day certainly not less than
£1500 a year.



Charles Grant had a great and well-deserved reputation for finding a fish in
water which other men had fished blank. This was partly because from long
familiarity with the river he knew all the likeliest casts; partly because
he was sure to have at the end of his casting-line just the proper fly for
the size of water and condition of weather; and partly because of his quiet
neat-handed manner of dropping his line on the water. There is a story still
current on Speyside illustrative of this gift of Charlie in finding a fish
where people who rather fancied themselves had failed--a story which Jamie
Shanks to this day does not care to hear. Mr. Russel of the _Scotsman_ had
done his very best from the quick run at the top of the pool of Dalbreck,
down to the almost dead-still water at the bottom of that fine stretch, and
had found no luck. Jamie Shanks, who was with Mr. Russel as his fisherman,
had gone over it to no purpose with a fresh fly. They were grumpishly
discussing whether they should give Dalbreck another turn or go on to
Pool-o-Brock the next pool down stream, when Charles Grant made his
appearance and asked the waterside question, "What luck?" "No luck at all,
Charlie!" was Russel's answer. "Deevil a rise!" was Shanks's sourer reply.
In his demure purring way Charles Grant--who in his manner was a duplicate
of the late Lord Granville--remarked, "There ought to be a fish come out of
that pool." "Tak' him out, then!" exclaimed Shanks gruffly. "Well, I'll
try," quoth the soft-spoken Charlie; and just at that spot, about forty
yards from the head of the pool, where the current slackens and the fish lie
awhile before breasting the upper rapid, he hooked a fish. Then it was that
Russel in the genial manner which made provosts swear, remarked, "Shanks, I
advise you to take a half year at Mr. Grant's school!" "Fat for?" inquired
Shanks sullenly. "To learn to fish!" replied the master of sarcasm of the
delicate Scottish variety.



Respectful by nature to their superiors, the honest working folk of Speyside
occasionally forget themselves comically in their passionate ardour that a
hooked salmon shall be brought to bank. Lord Elgin, now in his Indian
satrapy, far away from what Sir Noel Paton in his fine elegy on the late Sir
Alexander Gordon Cumming of Altyre called



The rushing thunder of the Spey,



one day hooked a big fish in the "run" below "Polmet". The fish headed
swiftly down stream, his lordship in eager pursuit, but afraid of putting
any strain on the line lest the salmon should "break" him. Down round the
bend below the pool and by the "Slabs" fish and fisherman sped, till the
latter was brought up by the sheer rock of Craigellachie. Fortunately a
fisherman ferried the Earl across the river to the side on which he was able
to follow the fish. On he ran, keeping up with the fish, under the bridge,
along the margin of "Shanks's Pool," past the "Boat of Fiddoch" pool and the
mouth of the tributary; and he was still on the run along the edge of the
croft beyond when he was suddenly confronted by an aged man, who dropped his
turnip hoe and ran eagerly to the side of the young nobleman. Old Guthrie
could give advice from the experience of a couple of generations as poacher,
water-gillie, occasional water-bailiff, and from as extensive and peculiar
acquaintance with the river as Sam Weller possessed of London public-houses.
And this is what he exclaimed: "Ma Lord, ma Lord, gin ye dinna check him,
that fush will tak' ye doun tae Speymouth--deil, but he'll tow ye oot tae
sea! Hing intil him, hing intil him!" His lordship exerted himself
accordingly, but did not secure the old fellow's approval. "Man! man!"
Guthrie yelled, "ye're nae pittin' a twa-ounce strain on him; he's makin'
fun o' ye!" The nobleman tried yet harder, yet could not please his
relentless critic. "God forgie me, but ye canna fush worth a damn! Come back
on the lan', an' gie him the butt wi' pith!" Thus adjured, his lordship
acted at last with vigour; the sage, having gaffed the fish, abated his
wrath, and, as the salmon was being "wetted," tendered his respectful
apologies.



In my time there have been three lairds of Arndilly, a beautiful Speyside
estate which is margined by several miles of fishing water hardly inferior
to any throughout the long run of the river. Many a man, far away now from
"bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the river's roll over its rugged
bed, recalls in wistful recollection the swift yet smooth flow of "the Dip;"
the thundering rush of Spey against the "Red Craig," in the deep, strong
water at the foot of which the big red fish leap like trout when the
mellowness of the autumn is tinting into glow of russet and crimson the
trees which hang on the steep bank above; the smooth restful glide into the
long oily reach of the "Lady's How," in which a fisherman may spend to
advantage the livelong day and then not leave it fished out; the turbulent
half pool, half stream, of the "Piles," which always holds large fish lying
behind the great stones or in the dead water under the daisy-sprinkled bank
on which the tall beeches cast their shadows; the "Bulwark Pool;" the "Three
Stones," where the grilse show their silver sides in the late May evenings;
"Gilmour's" and "Carnegie's," the latter now, alas! spoiled by gravel; the
quaintly named "Tam Mear's Crook" and the "Spout o' Cobblepot;" and then the
dark, sullen swirls of "Sourdon," the deepest pool of Spey.



The earliest of the three Arndilly lairds of my time was the Colonel, a
handsome, generous man of the old school, who was as good over High
Leicestershire as he was over his own moors and on his own water, and who,
while still in the prime of life, died of cholera abroad. Good in the saddle
and with the salmon rod, the Colonel was perhaps best behind a gun, with
which he was not less deadly among the salmon of the Spey than among the
grouse of Benaigen. His relative, old Lord Saltoun, was hard put to it once
in the "Lady's How" with a thirty-pound salmon which he had hooked foul, and
which, in its full vigour, was taking all manner of liberties with him,
making spring after spring clean out of the water. The beast was so
rebellious and strong that the old lord found it harder to contend with than
with the Frenchmen who fought so stoutly with him for the possession of
Hougomont. The Colonel, fowling-piece in hand, was watching the struggle,
and seeing that Lord Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited his
opportunity when the big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring, and,
firing in the nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail, hardly
marking it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river with
cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now considered
rather the "Whitechapel game." He resorted to the cross-lines, not in greed
for fish but for the sake of the shooting practice they afforded him. When
the hooked fish were struggling and in their struggles showing their tails
out of water, he several times shot two right and left breaking the spine in
each case close to the tail.



The Colonel was succeeded by his brother, who had been a planter in Jamaica
before coming to the estate on the death of his brother. Hardly was he home
when he contested the county unsuccessfully on the old never-say-die
Protectionist platform against the father of the present Duke of Fife; on
the first polling-day of which contest I acquired a black eye and a bloody
nose in the market square of a local village at the hands of some gutter
lads, with whose demand that I should take the Tory rosette out of my bonnet
I had declined to comply. Later, this gentleman became an assiduous fisher
of men as a lay preacher, but he was as keen after salmon as he was after
sinners. He hooked and played--and gaffed--the largest salmon I have ever
heard of being caught in Spey by an angler--a fish weighing forty-six
pounds. The actual present laird of Arndilly is a lady, but in her son are
perpetuated the fishing instincts of his forbears.



___________________________________________

End, Part 1.


*LONDON, _June_ 1896.