For Quiet Contemplation

The Ghost of the Blejan Eyhre
Davy Lanyon was sitting on the Portreal harbourside looking at his boat, the Blejan Eyhre, waiting for the tide to recede so that he could start cleaning her bottom. His grandfather had told him that Blejan Eyhre was a corruption of Blejan Ergh the Cornish for flower of the snow - so, basically snowdrop. He was also thinking that the boat had become something of a problem, the source of a dilemma. He wanted to move on to another project. The fishermen had been talking about setting up a cooperative, to get better prices for their fish, for quite some time, now he and a couple of others had decided the this was the right time. His problem was the boat. He knew that he couldn’t be involved in running the cooperative and devote time to the boat. Time had come to hand over. This problem had been on his mind for some time now. There was not going to be an easy solution. The boat had been in the family since it was built way back in the mists of time, sometime in the early 1800s. It was a traditionally built boat that had had many repairs and modifications over its lifetime.

The Blejan Eyhre was a problem in more ways than one. Davy would like to have another aboard as crew, but no one in the village would ever come aboard. The only time there were ever two people aboard was when a son was learning to take over the boat from his father. Apparently the boat was ‘bad luck’. None of the other fishermen would tie up against her because it was bad luck to even touch the Blejan Eyhre. The problem derived from the history of the boat. One of his great grandfathers, Peran, had disappeared from it. The boat had been found drifting in circles with no one aboard, and had been towed back to harbour. The old man had never been seen again, neither had his body reappeared anywhere. No local would ever refer to him by name, it was always ‘the old man’, because even that was supposed to be bad luck. It was rumoured that Peran haunted the boat, just another reason why the others all thought the boat was ‘bad luck’. Davy had little time for all of those old superstitions. However, he lent some credence to the idea of the boat being haunted.

Both his grandfather and his father had told him ‘listen to the boat boy, do what she say’ when he had taken over from his father. They told him to listen to the whispers. Do what they suggested. If he did she would look after him. He would do well for himself. He hadn’t understood what they meant, and thought they were pulling his leg with some ghost story or other. That is until being left alone with the boat when his father finally retired. It was his first time out alone, as he left the harbour a voice whispered that he should head for the Eddystone reef. He looked up but there was no one on the harbour. He knew there was no one else in the boat. He had nothing to lose so changed direction. There was quite a haul that day. The next day the voice told him there was a storm coming and he should move his lobster pots into the shadow of Pen-a-maen. He did. Other men lost a lot of their pots in the storm. This convinced him that his father and grandfather were right. He should listen to the boat.

The tide had now fallen far enough to start the cleaning process, a mundane task very conducive to creative thinking. Whilst the boat was at the heart of Davy’s problem, he knew the bigger part of the problem lay in tradition and superstition. Family tradition dictated that the boat was handed on to the eldest son, and this was the problem. Davy had two children, Katrin the eldest, and Louis, named after his grandfather. Davy knew that tradition meant the boat should be handed on to Louis. This was the dilemma. Louis had no real interest in the boat. The kids loved going out with him. Louis always had to be told what needed doing. Katrin instinctively knew and just got on with it. She seemed to have an affinity with the boat. It wasn’t that Louis was lazy, it was just that he had no interest whatever in working the boat. Logic dictated that there should be a break with tradition. Louis had no interest, so Katrin should take over the boat. Just before he died his father had said ‘listen to the boat boy she’ll let yer know yer’ve made the right decision’.

The problem was not just about tradition, it would also be mired in superstition. Davy had endured many of these superstitions himself. Most of the other fishermen were old boys who had been around a very long time. They still had a great propensity for superstition. He knew that if he told any of them that the boat talked to him they would have thought him mad. Some of those old boys believed that if they saw a hare or a rabbit in the cliffs, or if either were mentioned on the boat, it was a pointless going out and they would turn back to harbour. It was not only the older men who were superstitious, the younger men continued to keep these beliefs alive, just in case. Where superstition entered Davy’s problem was that if he followed his instinct and handed the boat on to Katrin the other fishermen would be horrified. Apparently, women and working boats didn’t mix, a woman on board was bad luck according to the superstitions. Another one was Fridays, it was considered bad luck to set out on a Friday. Davy could never understand why it was bad luck but knew that it gave him a long weekend now and then when it was too rough to set out on a Saturday.

Having had a Grammar School education he had never believed any of that rubbish. But he had endured it all for the sake of peace in the harbour. That was about to come to an end, Davy had made up his mind, and they were not going to like it. Many had already voiced their opinion, ‘tain’t right to take the maid out on a working boat’. So, for them Katrin taking over the boat would be anathema, he could see conflict ahead, not that it worried him much.

He knew full well that there was one person he had to win over, Francis (Frank) Tremayne, and that if he did the others would follow like sheep. Frank was something of a black sheep of his family because he had bought a boat and decided to work it rather than sit around waiting for his inheritance. This caused Davy to have a deal of respect for him, whereas the others showed a serf-like deference because Frank was from a well to do local family. He thought that he might just be able to use Frank’s ‘black sheep’ status as an argument for handing the boat over to Katrin. However, he would first have to talk to her and see if she wanted to take over, he was quite sure she would be delighted. He was also aware that there was something between Frank and Katrin but was not sure what. When they were both around the harbour they behaved like two tom cats warily circling one another. This was something else he would have to talk to her about, when she was back for the weekend. Of course, he would have to talk to Louis as well, just to be sure, but he had a fair idea that he would express the usual disinterest.

It was also tradition that the son worked for a year with the father before he handed over the reins, just to be sure of a smooth transition. It also meant that the son learnt the little quirks of the boat along with the best fishing grounds. It was now getting to that point, Davy had another project in mind and wanted to move on and hand over the boat. Tradition dictated that it should be Louis, but Davy knew that would be a mistake, especially in the light of recent events. Both kids had done well for themselves, Louis had some sort of land management job, and Katrin had studied hard and had become a marine biologist. They both still loved going out when they came to visit. It was more often Katrin as she lived closer to home. It was a couple of weeks back that she was home, and they went out, returning with quite a catch. After landing they went to the pub for a couple of beers as usual. Katrin, for her, had been a little quite until Davy asked if anything was wrong. She thought for a minute
‘We were on our own today weren’t we?’
‘Of course we were, why do you ask?’
‘In that case who told me that we should pull the lobster pots tomorrow?’
Davy was somewhat taken off guard, but now knew what his father had meant by the boat letting him know if he made the right decision.