Page:Ancient and modern history of Buck-haven in Fifeshire.pdf/4

4 Their freedoms were to take all kinds of fish contained in their tickets, viz lobsters, partans, podles, spout-fish, sea-cats, sea-dogs, flukes, pikes, dike-paddocks, and p— fish.

Among these people were said to be one Tom and his two sons, who were fishers on the coast of Norway, and in a violent storm were blown over, and got ashore at Bucky-harbour, where they settled, and the whole of his children were called Thomsons. This is a historical saying, handed down from one generation to another. So in course of time they grew up and multiplied, that they soon became a little town by themselves; few of any other name dwelt among them, and were all called the Thomsons; they kept but little communication with the country people, for a farmer, in those days, thought his daughter cast awa if she married one of the fishers in Bucky-harbour, and Witty Eppie the ale-wife, wad a sworn, be-go' laddie, I wad rather see my

boat and a' my three sons upset against the Bass, or I saw ony ane o' them married on a muck-a-byre's daughter, a wheen useles taupies that can do naething