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Music of the Waters. 243 |
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for so long been a thorough-going sea people that many expressions and terms now used in sailors' parlance may be traced to them. It is not at all surprising to meet withj a Dutch sailor who will tell you he knows the Germany-French, and English sea-songs thoroughly; indeed, some of the Low German songs I give in the pages devoted to Germany are almost as much Dutch as German. The song, " The Jolly Cook," which is written in such a strange-dialect, is well known to the sailors of Holland, and the same may be said of many of our chanties. Any day ir* Rotterdam, that most quaint old-world town, with its thronged busy quays, where are found a cosmopolitan lot of seamen, you may hear snatches of English song, as the men are busy with their work:—
" For there will come the sailors, Their voices I shall hear, And at the casting of the anchor, The yo-ho loud and clear ; And at hauling of the anchor, The yo-ho and the cheer."
There is one phase of sea life, though, in which the Dutch are a people par excellence, namely, the fisheries; it seems almost incredible to read of the amount of barrels of fish daily exported from Holland ; in fact, as some one wisely remarks, " The history of the country might be written in the fishing-nets," for there are dozens and dozens of little villages where the life of the inhabitants is simply herrings. Inside the dwellings, nets that are needing repair, tackle of all sorts, boat appliances, barrels for the salted fish, and women knitting their husbands', fathers', sons', or brothers' coarse warm jerseys : outside, signs of ships over the doorways, lines of boats on the rugged and dangerous coast, herrings being salted and packed as fast as the busy hands of the brave daring fishermen can pack them, and over all a calm, satisfied "cheerful contentment that is almost sad to witness when one thinks of the rude dispelling it must
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