to him.  When he goes to school he sometimes puts the hated footgear on; but as soon as the prison-doors are passed he slings the boots round his neck and goes merrily home with his brown feet moving freely.  He will charge through a clump of nettles quite indifferently; and this wondrous power strikes civilized children with awe.  The fisher-boy’s language is a strange mixture.  No southerner can understand him; for, besides using old words, the fisher speaks with harsh gutturals that make a burring sound in his throat.  He calls a wild cherry a “guigne;” he calls a swede turnip a “baygee,” a gooseberry a “grozer,” mud “clarts,” a horse-collar a “brime.”  If he had to say “I fell head over heels,” he would remark, “Aw cowped me creels.”  The stranger is puzzled by this surprising tongue, but the fisher is proud of it.  No words can express his scorn for a boy who learns to talk “Massingem” (which is the fisher’s word for English):  he scouts that degenerate boy and refuses to consort with him.  When the fisher-lad gets measured for his first oilskins he is very proud.  To “get away Norrad” is the right of men; and he feels himself manly as he sits amidships while the coble skims out into the bay.  He is usually sent to the trouting first; and then all night long he glides about on the dark bay and hears the sounds from the moor and the woods.  It falls cold toward the dawn, and the boy grows hard and strong through his nightly ordeal.  When his hands are properly hardened like his horny feet, he is allowed to row the coble with crossed oars; and then he becomes very useful, for the men are left free to haul nets and plash on the water to frighten the trout.  When he reaches the age of sixteen, the fisher-lad clothes himself in thick pilot-cloth and wears a braided cap on Sundays.  He pierces his ears too, and his thin golden rings give him a foreign look.  The young fisher-folk are very shamefaced about sweet-hearting.  A lad will tramp eight miles after dark to see his sweetheart; but he would be stupefied with shame if anyone saw him walking with her.  The workman of the towns escorts his lover on Sunday afternoons, and is not ashamed; but the fisher-folk never walk openly in couples.

Courtship is a very unpoetic affair with them.  No one ever heard a fisher use such a word as “love:”  he would not consider himself a man if he once learned such a fragment of “Massingem.”  If by any chance the village grows crowded and some of the young men have to go southward to the seaports, then those who return may bring sailor-like ways with them; but the natives always remain hard and undemonstrative.

It is difficult to say when the fisher-lad is considered to have reached man’s estate.  A good deal depends on his physical development.  The work to be done at sea is so very heavy that only a very powerful fellow can perform it.  It sometimes happens that a very strong lad of eighteen can do a “man’s turn;” but usually a fisherman must be thoroughly “set” before he is