Lord Marnoch

Standing on a grassy bank of the River Deveron,2 Lord Marnoch,3 an eminent Scottish Judge4, is attached – via a 12-foot fly rod, a bit of line and a hook – to an Atlantic Salmon.5 The creature struggling to dislodge Lord Marnoch’s fly from its jaw was spawned in Deveron, resided several years in the river and has spent the past year fattening up in the North Atlantic, probabaly near the Faroe Islands6 or Iceland, before completing its long migration home to reproduce. It is a strong, wild, young salmon of about five pounds, known as a grilse7 and it was doing fine until it entered the Deveron and succumbed to the allure of Lord Marnoch’s delicate orange fly.

Lord Marnoch is the very picture of the classic Atlantic salmon angler. A distinguished looking man of 62 with a thick head of graying hair, he is dressed on this cool July in moss green knickers, a beige cashmere sweater and a brown tie. Over his knickers he is wearing pale green waders. He carries a wooden walking stick and wears a tweed, olive-coloured deerstalker cap.8

He was born Michael Bruce, but upon being elevated to Scotland’s High Court9 he was given the title of Lord Marnoch,10 an honour he wears with ease.

He and several friends have come to the Deveron in north-eastern Scotland to catch the king of game fish, a highly civilised pursuit that involves much angling but also pleasant hours eating pate sandwiches and drinking single malt whisky in a green hut by the Deveron. It is a picturesque river, about 25 yards wide in this stretch, and flows placidly through a hilly landscape that is a checkerboard of green wheat fields, slopes of golden barley and tidy forests of larch,11 beech12 and alder.13

The fish is holding firm in the depths of a tea coloured pool, its resistance causing Lord Marnoch’s rod to bend and his line to shudder. Shadowing the judge is his gillie,14 or fishing guide, Harvey Grant, a man who comes to the river dressed in a windowpane tweed suit and who, in his Scottich brogue,15 gently dispenses words of advice: “Walk it upstream, sir, just like you’re walking a dog.”

Soon Lord Marnoch has reeled the silver creature on to the bank, where Grant nets it. “Not a bad wee grilse,” says Lord Marnoch. “Kill it sir?” asks Grant. “Absolutely”, replies Lord Marnoch, whereupon the gillie grabs a rock and ends the salmon’s migration with a firm tap to the head. “I really think these beautiful creatures are far too fine to be played with and put back”, says Lord Marnoch, a salmon conservationist who nonetheless believes in killing a few for the pot. “Catch and release fishing is rather like in the Roman arena going thumbs up or down.16 If a beautiful creature has succumbed to me, I think the right thing to do is hit it on the head.”

The scene is a timeless one, and the grilse caught by Lord Marnoch fits the image of an Atlantic Salmon: Salmo salar, the “leaper” in Latin, a sleek, chrome coloured fish that fights its way up on the Northern Rivers, jumping rapids and waterfalls on its spawning run.17 The truth is, however that wild Atlantic Salmon have been in steep decline for decades and today the North Atlantic is dominated by a new kind of Salmon. It can be found not far from Lord Marnoch’s fishing hole on the Deveron, packed into sea cages in the Lochs of Western Scotland.

Footnotes

1. National Geographic, July 2003 at 104.
2. “The Deveron rises in the high hills above the Cabrach along with its main tributaries the Blackwater and the Bogie. The peaty water flows over a bottom of shingle and rock and is fast flowing in its upper reaches. Joined by the Isla it slackens its pace as it meanders through the fertile countryside until its 60 mile journey ends in the sea at Banff”: http://www.fishingthedeveron.co.uk/The_Deveron.htm.
3. “Lord Marnoch is to swap his judicial robes for a fishing rod and waders after a legal career spanning over four decades. The 66 year old, who has dispensed justice to some of Scotland’s most notorious criminals, intends to devote much of his free time fishing for salmon on the River Deveron in Banffshire, according to the Press and Journal. Born Michael Stewart Rae Bruce and raised in Aberdeen, where his father and grandfather had a law firm, Lord Marnoch studied law at Aberdeen University. He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1963 and appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1975. He served as an advocate depute from 1983-1986 and was appointed a judge in the Supreme Courts in 1990”: “Lord Marnoch retires, Senator plans fishing retirement after 15 years on the bench” News, 18 March 2005 http://www.journalonline.co.uk/news/1001642.aspx.
4. The Right Honourable Lord Marnoch is a retired judge who still sits occasionally in the Scottish Court of Session or the Court of Criminal Appeal to hear cases if needed when there is a shortage of available judges.  He is also referred to as a Senator of the College of Justice.
5. Atlantic salmon, known scientifically as Salmo salar, is a species of fish in the family Salmonidae, which is found in the northern Atlantic Ocean and in rivers that flow into the Atlantic:  see Shearer, The Atlantic Salmon (1992) Halstead Press.
6. The Faroe Islands or simply the Faeroes (Faroese: Føroyar, meaning “Sheep Islands”, Danish: Færøerne, Old Norse: Færeyjar) are a group of islands in Northern Europe, between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, roughly equidistant between Iceland, Scotland, and Norway. They have been an autonomous province of the Kingdom of Denmark since 1948, making it a member of the Rigsfællesskab:  see “The origin of the isolated population of the Faroe Islands investigated using Y chromosomal markers”, http://www.springerlink.com/content/4yuhf5m7a22gc4qm/, Tove H. Jorgensen, Henriette N. Buttenschön, August G. Wang, Thomas D. Als, Anders D. Børglum and Henrik Ewald1, April 8 2004.
7. Salmon grilse are often indistinguishable from multi sea winter (MSW) salmon except by scale reading. They are smaller on average (2-3lb in May, 5-7lb in July) but when they enter rivers in September often attain 8-10lb and in October 12-15lb: http://www.fishingnet.com/grilse_recognition.htm.
8. “The deerstalker was a type of cap favoured by deer hunters and other sportsmen in nineteenth-century England.  The deerstalker became especially fashionable between 1870 and 1890, when sports clothes became a more prominent feature of men’s dress.  The cap was often worn with Norfolk jackets and knickerbockers, short loosely fitting pants gathered at the knee, and considered an essential element of the Victorian (relating to the times of Britain’s Queen Victoria [1819—1901]) hunting ensemble.  Also called a “fore and aft,” the deerstalker was distinguished by its front and back visors.  Large exterior earflaps could be tied on top or allowed to cover the ears for warmth.  The cap was usually made of checked material, typically sportsman’s tweed or cloth.  The crown was lined with scarlet poplin and was reversible.  The deerstalker cap became especially fashionable when sports clothes became a more prominent feature of men’s dress.  The deerstalker is commonly associated with the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.  It became a recognized symbol of Holmes thanks to illustrator Sidney Paget (1860—1908).  Although Doyle never referred to his character Sherlock Holmes as wearing a deerstalker, Paget drew the cap on Holmes’s head in several stories, perhaps because he himself wore one.  Actors playing Holmes on stage and screen have consistently referred to Paget’s drawings as a model.  Another famous fictional deerstalker wearer was Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of author J. D. Salinger’s (1919—) famous novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951).”: http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/fashion_costume_culture/European-Culture-19th-Century/Deerstalker-Cap.html.  See also Chenoune, A History of Men’s Fashion. Paris, France: Flammarion, 1993, Harrison, Michael. The History of the Hat. London, England: Herbert Jenkins, 1960, Ulseth, Hazel, and Helen Shannon. Victorian Fashions. Cumberland, MD: Hobby House Press, 1989.
9. The High Court of Justiciary is the supreme criminal court of Scotland.  The High Court is both a court of first instance and also a court of appeal.  As a court of first instance, the High Court sits mainly in Parliament House (or in the former Sheriff Court building) in Edinburgh, but also sits from time to time in various other places in Scotland.  As a court of appeal, it sits only in Edinburgh:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Court_of_Justiciary.
10. The name Marnoch is believed to be derived from St Ernoc or from Marnach meaning a man of Mar or perhaps from the most obvious link through the Celtic marno, meaning a gap: http://www.kinnairdy-castle.co.uk/favorite.htm.
11. Larches are conifers in the genus Larix, in the family Pinaceae.  They are native to much of the cooler temperate northern hemisphere, on lowlands in the far north, and high on mountains further south. Larches are among the dominant plants in the immense boreal forests of Russia and Canada: Phillips, D. H., & Burdekin, D. A. (1992).  Diseases of Forest and Ornamental Trees. Macmillan.
12. A genus of ten species of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe and North America:  Preston, Pearman & Dines (2002) New Atlas of the British Flora. Oxford University Press.
13. Alder is the common name of a genus of flowering plants (Alnus) belonging to the birch family (Family Betulaceae).  The genus comprises about 30 species of monoecious trees and shrubs, few reaching large size, distributed throughout the North Temperate zone. Chen, Zhiduan and Li, Jianhua (2004). Phylogenetics and Biogeography of Alnus (Betulaceae) Inferred from Sequences of Nuclear Ribosomal DNA ITS Region. International Journal of Plant Sciences 165: 325—335.
14. Ghillie or gillie is a Scottish dialect term that refers to a man or a boy who acts as an attendant on a fishing or a hunting expedition.  In origin it referred especially to someone who attended on his employer or guests.  A ghillie may also serve as a gamekeeper employed by a landowner to prevent poaching on his lands, control unwelcome predators and monitor the health of the wildlife. The origin of this word dates from the late 16th century, from the Scottish Gaelic gille, “lad, servant”, cognate with the Irish gile or gi-olla.  A gilhie-wetfoot, a term now obsolete was the gillie whose duty it was to carry his master over streams:  see the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition.
15. A brogue is a strong dialectal accent.  It is from the Irish (Gaeilge) word “bróg”, meaning “shoe”. The term has been said to have been coined by an Englishman who met an Irishman whose accent was so thick that he spoke “as though he had a shoe in his mouth”.  The term is also used in reference to Scottish, and other Gaelic influenced dialects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brogue.
16. In Roman Empire Gladiator battles it is known that the audience (or sponsor or emperor) pointed their thumbs a certain way if they wanted the loser to be killed (called a pollice verso, literally “with turned thumb” or pollux infestus meaning “thumb turned down” The Retiarius Tunicatus of Suetonius, Juvenal, and Petronius” (1989) by Steven M. Cerutti and L. Richardson, Jr., The American Journal of Philology, 110, P589-594).  This signal was made famous by the 2000 film “Gladiator”.
17. The up-stream migration of Atlantic Salmon to Northern Portugal, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the east coast of North America and Arctic Canada to reproduce.