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Artificial and Compulsory Drinking Usages of the United Kingdom
Artificial and Compulsory Drinking Usages of the United Kingdom Author:John Dunlop Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Scottish Usages—continued. Usages at Herring Fisheries—at Agricultural Auctions—Cattle Dealers and Butchers—Drinking at Sales and Bargains in g... more »eneral—Rue-bargain—Commercial Orders—Case of direct Combination being successfully used against Drinking at Bargains—Case of Relapse from this Usage—Cast in a Cart— Marriage Usages—Courtship. The regulations of drinking in the herring fisheries are somewhat complicated. At importing salt, several glasses are given to each man ; and at sailing for the Isles, the men are frequently put on board intoxicated : in hiring boats at the fishing-grounds, whisky flows profusely—those are esteemed the best employers who give the most spirits, and masters supplant one another by bribes of whisky. Each well-fitted boat, on arriving at the receiving vessel, gets a bottle of whisky, besides a couple of glasses each man. The women who clean the fish have three glasses a-day ; at the first introduction of this practice, they could not be prevailed upon to take above half a glass. In a slack fishing, a vessel having three or four hundred barrels, requires about sixty gallons of spirits. Thus educated, the fishermen, not content with their morning's supply, frequently go ashore, and, drinking at their own cost, spend the day in rioting and wickedness. With respect to the loch-fishing adjacent to the Frith of Clyde, in Lochfine, and elsewhere, the customs are very pernicious. The merchant boats, or coupers, are necessitated to be copiously supplied with spirits to meet the various usages among the fishers; and accordingly spirit dealers are frequently interested in these, and lend capital to the coupers to purchase herrings; their remuneration consisting in the consumption of their whisky in the drinking usages of the trade. If a couper...« less