Many odd old cottages remain here, some of them with outside staircases, and most roughly built of granite and slate, and whitewashed. The chief industry of Polperro is evident, not only in the fishy smells, or in the fishing-boats and the appearance of the people; but its specialised character is hinted at by the sign of the humble "Three Pilchards" inn on the quay, near the old weigh-beam. Good catches of pilchards or bad make all the difference here, where these peculiarly Cornish fish are largely prepared and packed for export to Italy. An Italian packing-house has indeed an establishment on the quay. The salted pilchards, long since known among the Cornish as "Fair maids" from the Italian "fumadoes"--the original method of preserving them having been by drying in smoke--are the chief source of the Polperro fishermen's livelihood. Thus the time-honoured toast of these otherwise sturdy Protestants:
"Here's a health to the Pope; may he never know sorrow, With pilchards to-day and pilchards to-morrow. Good luck to His Holiness; may he repent, And add just six months to the length of his Lent; And tell all his vassals from Rome to the Poles, There's nothing like pilchards for saving their souls."
Others beside the fisherfolk rejoice when the fishery is good. I refer to the gulls. Nowhere is the seagull happier than in Cornwall, if immunity from attack and the certainty of plenty to eat constitute happiness in the scheme of existence as it is unfolded to gulls. The Wild Birds' Protection Act is scarcely necessary for the protection of gulls in Cornwall, and the birds are so used to this affectionate tolerance that it might almost be denied that they are wild, except technically. I am afraid the gull presumes not a little upon all this. He seems to know that the fishermen dare not punish him, if sometimes they feel inclined, for to ill-treat a gull is notoriously the way in Cornwall to bring bad luck; and although they are incredibly ravenous eaters of fish, it is one of the fisher-folk's most deeply rooted convictions that the boats are lucky in proportion to the numbers of gulls that accompany them. There is, of course, a good reason at bottom for this, because the gulls are the first to note the whereabouts of the fish, and scream and swoop down upon the shoals long before any human eye can detect their existence. The gulls go out with the boats and come back with them, and often they are the first to return; the winged couriers who awaken the little port with news of the home-coming of its men.