fierlanders

Updated: June 24, 2025

We approached a group of three mounted officers, and in a few words the officer, whose prisoner I was, explained the affair to the chef de baton, whereupon I was immediately placed under the care of' a sergeant and six rank and file, and marched along the chief canal for a mile, where I could not help remarking the numberless large rafts you could not call them boats of unpainted pine timber, which had arrived from the upper Elbe, loaded with grain: with gardens, absolute gardens, and cowhouses, and piggeries on board; while their crews of Fierlanders, men, women, and children, cut a most extraordinary appearance, the men in their jackets, with buttons like pot lids, and trowsers fit to carry a month's provender and a couple of children in; and the women with bearings about the quarters, as if they had cut holes in large cheeses, three feet in diameter at least, and stuck themselves through them such sterns and as to their costumes, all very fine in a Flemish painting, but the devils appeared to be awfully nasty in real life.

Michael Scott - Tom Cringle's Log