The Kingdom of Fife

The East Neuk is situated within the Kingdom of Fife, and like Fife itself, it is the very essence of Scotland, and the Scottish way of life. In Fife we see the Scottish landscape and history concentrated. This landscape has its varied coastline. Sometimes we see cliffs and twisted sea-curdled rocks, sometimes gentle ample sands. It has its hills: the Lomonds, and Largo Law and the Cleish Hills.

Not such mighty hills these as we can see farther north, but grandly shaped and raising dignified heads above the fertile valleys. It has its great acres of rich farmland and it has its moors, and woods, and gentle glens. And it has, perhaps more frequent along its roads than along roads anywhere else in Scotland, villages and towns of great antiquity and charm, such as those fishing ports where we shall see pantile roofs crowded at the water's edge, and inland burghs like Auchtermuchty and Strathmiglo with their thatched roofs curled along the edge of lush fields, and proud places like Falkland, grey, cobbled, historic.

Its lovely East Neuk is beaded with fishing towns, St Monance, Pitteenweem, Anstruther, Crail, brilliant clusters of red roofs and yellowed walls bunched on the shores of the Firth. We shall see in the streets of these burghs the fishermen putting out to sea as their fathers and their fathers have done for generation after generation; and some of them, darker browed than we would expect to find on this eastern coast, claiming descent, according to the tradition here, from the Spaniards of the Armada.

The call of the sea is strong on this coast. It could hardly be otherwise. All day the waves pound within earshot, and even if we are on one of the narrow wynds and quite out of sight of the sparkling Firth, then there is the cry of wheeling gull or the scent of the salt air to remind us how near we are to it. Homes of the Sea-dogs At the water's edge we see the broad scarf of the Forth romantically adorned with the Islands of the May and Inchcolm and the stark precipitous Bass, and to the east we look out to the open sea which has called to its service so many men of Fife. From this coast came such great seafarers as Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, who battered England's men-o'-war to surrender, and Sir Michael of Wemyss, Scotland's first admiral. From Largo too came "Robinson Crusoe" Selkirk. Such is the south coast of the Kingdom. The north coast is swept by the wide Firth of Tay, thick with the salmon that have made it rich and famous.

And between these two great sea-boards are the rolling acres of verdant farmland, such as the broad stretch of the Howe of Fife where, under the shadow of the Lomond Hills, we can look across the wide golden acres and realise how it is that for centuries Fife was the coveted and jealously guarded granary of Scotland. That historian who was also Sheriff of the Kingdom, SL. J. Mackay, writes of the Kingdom's "howes and carses watered by the Leven and the Ore and the sunny sides of the Forth and Tay". Fife, he says, "had to contend with raw winds and a cold soil, which 'girned all winter and greeted all summer', but it contended bravely and with success. 'Ilka blade o' grass keps its ain drap o' dew' was one of its hopeful proverbs. It produced more corn than any district of equal extent."

The Jewel of the Kingdom

Another stretch of coast there is the romantic eastern sea-board, a ragged-edged coast with here wide sad stretches of sand and muir, and there rocks and cliffs. On this coast, on a promontory proudly set, is the rich jewel of St Andrews. To this promontory, tradition has it, there came 17 centuries ago, a monk bearing by Heavenly command to "the westermost island in the world" the relics of Saint Andrew, and now we see out-lined against its bay a grey town of antique spires and romantic tower, and we feel that there is in this vision something of the character of Fife, a place where neither landscape nor people strive after grandeur, but withal achieve in their simplicity a dignity which establishes, more than any charter could, that title of Kingdom.

To the west we travel and find the Kingdom's industrial wealth. To the mining villages, where coal has been dug for 700 years. To Dunfermline, at once magnificent sepulchre of Scotland's kings and the old capital of the linen industry. To Kirkcaldy, where Thomas Carlyle was schoolmaster and wrote of the "little burghs and sea villages, with their poor little havens, salt-pans and weather-beaten bits of Cyclopean breakwaters and rude innocent machineries".

Capital of Golf

Golf cannot be spoken of without reference to St Andrews. Indeed, it can scarcely even be played without reference to St Andrews, for the Royal and Ancient Club is the great Court of Appeal, the High Temple of the game, and no golfer, unknown or world-famous, can feel he has played his game to the full until he has played at St Andrews. But all along the coast of Fife are links. The game is in the very landscape, those stretches of lovely seaside turf with sand-pits as their natural hazards, and not a village but has at least one arch-priest of the sport living on the very edge of the course: a famous coach or one who fashions with devoted care the implements of the sport.

But as we come to know Fife better, as we follow her winding roads through the pleasant hills or along the coast, there is one aspect of this corner of Scotland which will begin to affect us perhaps more strongly than any other, that is the sense that here we move indeed in the very shadow of Scottish history.

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