the users of them are “shrimpers.” The old word is a mystery, no one knows its origin; but it was in use all along the south coast. It survives {only in the generic name given to the deep-water shrimp — Pandalus — by Dr. Leach; and it owes this form of survival to the facts that Dr. Leach was born at Plymouth and that he died more than sixty years ago. All sorts of linguistic importations were to be detected in the vocabulary of the fishermen, who were themselves evidently more Norse than Anglo-Saxon. Swain, a common name among them — was it not modern for Sweyn ?
Hastings had existed a century when Hesting the pirate ravaged both coasts of the Channel. It probably owes its origin to the Norse tribe of Hastingas; and in Anglo-Saxon times it was frequently referred to in still extant documents as distinct from Sussex. The Danish axe gave a nick-name to the people of Hastings which was frequently heard, though probably seldom understood, when I was a boy there, “Hastings chop-backs” was the opprobrious epithet applied to us by invidious neighbours; and we were told that our sailors and privateers — and I fear our pirates and smugglers—had been wont to attack their foes by chopping them down the back. There was no little of the old Viking left in our fishermen. They held themselves proudly aloof from the other inhabitants; and poor as many of them were, they were wont to despise matrimonial alliances with the artizan class. A fisher-girl would toss her head and say of even a decent suitor, “ He’s only a mechanic.” There was the pride both of race and profession among the fishermen. On a Sunday afternoon, knots of burly, handsome fishermen might be seen in their cleaned-up attire—jerseys or sleeved waistcoats — slowly parading the streets with the air of aristocrats of a much bluer blood than the shopkeepers.
Among them were still to be found traces of their ancient Christianised paganism. On my first nocturnal mackerel yoyage with an old fisherman and his crew, I noticed that the old man, when he threw out the small barrel which acts as float to the line to which the nets are attached, uttered a kind of sing-song incantation. I persuaded him to repeat it that I might take it down. It is, perhaps, altogether forgotten now — for the schoolmaster has been abroad—and even then, it was probably a corrupt fragment, It ran as follows :—
“Watch, barrel! watch,
Mackerels for to catch;
White may they be
Like blossom on the tree.
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