A
tackle hooked to one of the baulks of timber forming the staith was
being hauled at by five women and two men! Two others were in a
listless fashion leaning their shoulders against the boat itself. With
the last 'Heave-ho!' at the shortened tackle the women laid hold of the
nets, and with casual male assistance laid them out on the shingle,
removed any fragments of fish, and generally prepared them for stowing
in the boat again.
A change has come over the inhabitants of Staithes since 1846, when Mr.
Ord describes the fishermen as 'exceedingly civil and courteous to
strangers, and altogether free from that low, grasping knavery peculiar
to the larger class of fishing-towns.' Without wishing to be
unreasonably hard on Staithes, I am inclined to believe that this
character is infinitely better than these folk deserve, and even when
Mr. Ord wrote of the place I have reason to doubt the civility shown by
them to strangers. It is, according to some who have known Staithes for
a long long while, less than fifty years ago that the fisherfolk were
hostile to a stranger on very small provocation, and only the entirely
inoffensive could expect to sojourn in the village without being a
target for stones.
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