This will go on for hours. The women in Fisherrow, and in Musselburgh for that, are strong and confident. Strapping. Here the women keep their men.
The fishwives are playing football on the links across the River Esk: the women against the maids. They have tucked up their skirts, wear only their sarks. The two mobs push and shove, back and forth, striving to drive the bladder in a bulls-cod towards the gates at either end of the playing field. The unmarried women of Fisherrow contest the married for the ball. Their shouts and squeals and grunts drift across the river to where Marjory Porteus stands, on the Musselburgh side, watching the stramash. Picking out curses from the fog of noise.
It is Whitsunday[i]: a quarter-day. Hired men and servants are haggling for their fee for another year, abandoning bad masters, moving on. Marjory let her deemie go this morning. With the state of things, she sees no merit in replacing her.
The fish-wives across the river have ne need of a fee. Self-employed, woman and girl, they carry creels of haddock and herring, five miles to Edinburgh. Barefoot. Four days a week. 200lb of fish packed direct from the boats in the forenoon. The women carry their wares in relays, so the fish reach the Edinburgh market, fresh, by dinnertime.
Many of the women of Musselburgh ply a similar trade but with salt, sand, clean laundry and garden produce. They leave the town at 6 a.m. to trade, returning by early afternoon with merchandise and dirty laundry. Musselburgh and Fisherrow women bargain hard, are forthright and unashamed. The Musselburgh men bide at home – weave linen or make shoes for the market, mind the bairns that are not at the school.
Marjory’s father would be appalled and impressed. Women as merchants? But, in their way, they are though they belong to no Guild known to man.
The women drive the bladder past the lassies’ gate. A roar of triumph drifts across the estuary, like musket-smoke.
Marjory rubs the swelling under her left eye where Robert dinged her two days before.
Would he have struck her if she were one of those sturdy fish-wives? She would have dinged him back!
But Marjory is not a fish-wife, or even a day trader: she is a cossar’s wife: before that she was a merchant’s daughter.
Her husband, Robert Cossar, is a trader in the town, Cossar by name and cossar by trade. He trades in salt from the works at Prestonpans, where the salters are bound as serfs to their masters. He also trades in produce from the town or bought in Edinburgh. His salt is carried in the panniers of ponies, South and West.
Or is she now a soldier’s wife?
The whole congregation signed the National Covenant last year[ii]. Soon after, the Minister began to chivvy the congregation, exhorting their parishioners to “shak their purses”. Eight collectors were appointed in every shire to exact a ” voluntarie “ contribution of one dollar for every thousand merks of free-rent.[iii] There was talk of seizing the rents of non-Covenanters.
The King’s Commissioner, the Marquis of Hamilton, came down to meet the Covenanters right there on Musselburgh links where the football game was now unravelling. The Commissioner said they were all “possessed by the devil”, but the man had no steel in him. General Leslie, returned from service with the King of Sweden, raised an army.
Robert enlisted to a company of horse. Keen he was with pistols, jack and burgenet. In Musselburgh, the local foot drilled ‘in the Swedish manner’, with pikes and muskets. There was talk of hot fighting in the North East. Scottish ships were confiscated in English ports and Scots imprisoned for no reason South of the border.
From here she can see North towards the sea. The flat blue-grey horizon, always pregnant with opportunity and turbulence. Weeks before, an English fleet, its holds packed with 5000 English soldiers, passed Musselburgh and entered the Firth of Forth to anchor off of Leith. Their Admiral, Hamilton, the King’s High Commissioner, bade the magistrates there read out a proclamation by the King. The magistrates declined.
Robert went back to Leith to rejoin his company yesterday afternoon. He, and the other militiamen of the Lothians, fortify positions on the south side of the Forth whilst the English soldiers languish on Inchcolm & Inchkeith in the Firth. A stand-off. Robert is not trading: not earning. After his initial enthusiasm, Robert has grown bored with the waiting. On his brief visits home, he takes his frustrations out on Marjory after he has satisfied his baser appetites. The pattern is tedious, the fuck and then the fight, one as rough as the other.
And then – and now – he is away again and she minds an empty house: no bairns yet. An empty, undefended house in an undefended town. They say, the English have moved soldiers across the border now[iv]. And any English army marching towards Edinburgh will pass through Musselburgh and across that old bridge across the Esk. The town is barely rebuilt since the English razed it and harried all the lands about it after the Battle of Pinkie left the nearby fields strewn with mutilated men.[v]
The skailing fish-wives drift North towards the old bridge across the Esk, exuberant and fierce and raucous.
“I see you, harlot witch.”
On the South bank, one of the lassies, on losing side, is being taunted by a well-dressed youth waiting near the brig.
“Turd-tainted wicked hoor,”
Marjory cannot hear exactly what was said: frustrated by the fogginess of sound. She steps a little closer to the brig.
The crowd of women pause. A lean maid, hair like straw, her sark dark with the sweat of the game steps to the edge of the crowd. She glances back to her team mates for support.
“…cuntwracked pisspot poltroon,
wee shrivelt baas nae drappt.”
Marjory is still too far away from the south end of the bridge to hear all of the exchange. Intrigued, she hurries towards the altercation, one of several spectators content to replace the spectacle of the football match to the contest of the flyting.
“…Glamorous glaiket gype, fey fool
Dry-titted draggle stench of rank fish.” The young man’s voice is almost as high pitched as the maid’s.
Aware of the crowd audience behind and before her, the maid glances at the ground then raises her voice.
“Corrupt carrion, this wanfukkit fornicator,
Ay moonin in his gonerous mither’s kitchen,
pulling on his todger as her deemies darg.”
Marjory sees now that the youth is Andro Blackhall, son of a landward minister. The lad opens his mouth but before he says a word, the maid is on him.
“I hinna finished! Ignorant elf, ape, owl irregular,
you are but skyre an skrumple, skolderit skyn,
where real men hae a prick.”
Now it is Andro’s turn to look behind him for support but the women in the crowd far outnumber the men on both sides of the Esk. A moment brings him words.
“Light-fingered, lousy thief whore.
I’ve seen your grisly piteous port;
rank and reekin, plooky pultre, hingin mince.”
A few younger men in the crowd giggle. Marjory can place the maid now: Jonet Daill. A Musselburgh girl, lately gone to service. Gone to service with Andro’s father?
Jonet sneers, “Ah, call a cunt a cunt, cunt!
Confess your ettled fornications
At your fashious faither’s pulpit, glaiket gype!”
Gone to service with the Reverend Blackhall – yes. And it is Whitsunday.
“Hoor, harlot, witch bitch…”
The scholar, for all his book-learning, stumbles into silence.
“Gluntoch, word-less gawping glowering brat,
Piss-the-bed cross-dresser, whore, harlot, witch bitch
At least you have the means of self-description.” Jonet retorts.
Marjory senses that this battle is over: short but, given the lass’ superior skills, the result was inevitable. Jonet turns and the women open to accept her into their solidarity.
Andro hurls, “Hoor!” across the bridge.
Which adds, Marjory reflects, slander to flyting and probable fornication to the list of Andro’s misdemeanours. The session would hear soon enough about the pair of them. Marjory looks forward to Andro’s admonition from his father’s pulpit.
[i] 15th May.
[ii] In 1637, King Charles tried to replace Knox’s Book of Discipline with a Book of Canons and introduced a new Common Book of Prayer at odds with the Reformed Kirks Calvinist principles. Charles insisted that a version of the English liturgy be used throughout Scotland. The Scottish Prayer Book was even more ceremonial and ritualistic, and closer to the Roman Catholic mass, than its English counterpart. Imposing this new liturgy in Scotland, Charles made it clear that no other forms of service would be tolerated and that there would be no more extemporaneous prayers or preaching without a license. Some wifie in St. Giles threw a stool at the Dean. There were riots in the capital. In the next year, the Kirk and the nobles signed a Covenant, rebelled against their King.
[iii] “in everie shyre, and whyles in everie presbytrie, a particular committee for the bounds, to give order for all militarie affaires, the raising of men, provision of armes, getting of monie with all diligence.. . . . In all the land we appointed noblemen and gentlemen for commanders ; a divided so manie as had been officers abroad among the shyres ; put all our men who could bear armes to frequent drillings ; had frequent, both publick and privat, humiliations before our God, in whom was our onlie trust ; every one, man and woman, incouraged their neighbours : we took notice at Edinburgh of the names, disposition, forces, of all who joyned not with us in covenant.”
[iv] Thwarted in Edinburgh, the King next sent a contingent of his soldiers to Duns, close to the border, where his captain, Arundel, finally read his proclamation. In the early hours of the morning, Arundel caused the Sheriff of the county to proclaim the edict the Edinburgh magistrates had refused to read out. Only a few countrywomen ventured from their cottages to listen. The audience, “kneeled to the General, crying still ‘ God and the King,’ and cursing Lesley to hell, and praying [Arundel] ‘ for God’s cause not to burn their houses, kill their children, nor bring in popery, as Lesley told them the King meant to do ‘.
From Dunbar, Leslie summoned a great army to the colours at Cockburnspath: ” let as many lances with jacks, or without jacks, as may be had be brought out, and let no man stay upon anie other, but with all diligence march to the collours at Cobrunspath or where they shall hear the Lord’s people are.” A year ago, Leslie concentrated his 12,000 men at Duns. Many were experienced soldiers who had served as mercenaries in the Thirty Years War in Europe. They gathered under banners reading “FOR CHRISTS CROUN AND COVENANT, in golden letters. But hot war was averted. The King blustered but dared not fight. A temporary compromise. Now, they say, the King is intent on marching North again.
[v] March 1548 – Lord Grey razed Musselburgh and harried the area around.