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    GAMBLES NORTHWARD. 173

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    We Will Take At Random Some Fifty People...

    tlie London and Aberdeen steamers . Many a family to whom expense is of little consequence prefers the sea transit to the land , as

    less fatiguing " , and in the summer season the passages are very generallgood .

    Get there y as we may , Aberdeen is the point from which we will start , and having visited the fish market , or surveyed it at our

    leisure from the windows of Douglas ' s excellent hotel ; having seen the huge baskets of fish brought in , emptied of their contents ,

    ¦ which are cleaned and sold in the quickest possible time , the fishwives , in their short blue whinsey petticoats and jackets , and

    snow-white mutches , dexterously officiating at the various processes ; having strolled _throLigh the handsome marketfilled with fruit ,

    , flowers , vegetables , poultry , and meat ,- —let us pause for a few moments at a certain stallpresided over by a magnificent specimen

    , of the Aberdeen fish-wife , a bonny matron whose large handsome features beam with intelligence and pleasure at the approach of an

    old friend or customer ; and as we stand chatting about the bairns , that never-failinkey to the mother's heartlet us taste of an

    Aberdeen bonne g bouche , called " parten-taes , , " which translated means crabs' claws , fresh from their native element , sweet and full

    of flavor . Of " parten-taes , caller-herring , and finnan-haddie , " New- Aberdeen may be as justly proudas Old Aberdeen of its

    , cloistered and sequestred nooks , its academical quietness and repose . Fish is a staple commodity of the one , learning of the other ; and

    there is about each that rare fitness , which , meet it where we may , imparts a pleasurable sense of completeness , leaving an indelible

    remembrance of the place , person , or thing which called it forth _. From Aberdeen we take the railroad to Inverness , halting at any

    or all the places of interest en route , such as Huntley for Huntley Castle , the seat of the present Dowager Duchess of Gordon ; at

    Fochabers for Gordon Castle , the princely residence of the Dukes of Richmond , whose inheritance it became by marriage with a

    daughter of the old Duchess of Gordon , a woman of considerable intellect and great tasteof whom we shall have occasion to speak

    , hereafter . Fochabers boasts of a free school , recently erected and endowed by means of a bequest from one Alexander Milne , of

    whom the following story is told by the gossips of the place , j It was in the days of pig-tails , when this same Alexander Milne ,

    then a youth holding some office in the establishment of the late Duke of Gordonglorying in this handsome appendage ,

    , resisted an edict which went forth , that all servants in the employment of his grace should at once and for ever , under penalty of

    losing their placess renounce pig-tails . Now , at that time , a pigtail was the insignia of flunkey gentility , and Alexander Milne felt

    his personal dignity outraged by the rash edict . Sacrifice his place he miht ; sacrifice his pig-tail he would not ! Soforth Trent the

    bold g youth from the duke's household , and , disgusted , at such

    arbitrary exercise of power , left his native land for the land of

    Gambles Northward. 173

    GAMBLES NORTHWARD . 173

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Nov. 1, 1859, page 173, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01111859/page/29/