It would take up too much space, and weary the reader besides, were I to give in detail an account of all the fishing places I have visited during the last ten years. My purpose will be amply served by a glance at a few of the Scottish fishing villages, which, with the information I can interpolate about the fisher-folks of the coast of France, and the eel-breeders of Comacchio, not to mention those of Northumberland and Yorkshire, will be quite sufficient to give the general reader a tolerable idea of this interesting class of people; and to suit my own convenience I will begin at the place where I witnessed the marriage, for Newhaven, near Edinburgh—“Our Lady’s Port of Grace” as it was originally named—is the most accessible of all fishing villages; and, although it is not the primitive place now that it was some thirty years ago, having been considerably spoiled in its picturesqueness by the encroachments of the modern architect, and the intrusion of summer pleasure-seekers, it is still unique as the abode of a peculiar people who keep up the social distinctiveness of the place. How Newhaven and similar fishing colonies originated there is no record; it is said, however, that this particular community was founded by King James III., who was extremely anxious to extend the industrial resources of his kingdom by the prosecution of the fisheries, and that to aid him in this design he brought over a colony of foreigners to practise and teach the art. Some fishing villages are known to have originated in the shipwreck of a foreign vessel, when the people saved from destruction squatted on the nearest shore and grew in the fulness of time into a community.
NEWHAVEN FISHWIVES.
Newhaven is most celebrated for its “fishwives,” who were declared by King George IV. to be the handsomest women he had ever seen, and were looked upon by Queen Victoria with eyes of wonder and admiration. The Newhaven fishwife must not be confounded by those who are unacquainted in the locality with the squalid fish-hawkers of Dublin; nor, although they can use strong language occasionally, are they to be taken as examples of the genus peculiar to Billingsgate. The Newhaven women are more like the buxom dames of the market of Paris, though their glory of late years has been somewhat dulled. There is this, however, to be said of them, that they are as much of the past as the present; in dress and manners they are the same now as they were a hundred years ago; they take a pride in conserving all their traditions and characteristics, so that their customs appear unchangeable, and are never, at any rate, influenced by the alterations which art, science, and literature produce on the country at large. Before the railway era, the Newhaven fishwife was a great fact, and could be met with in Edinburgh in her picturesque costume of short but voluminous and gaudy petticoats, shouting “Caller herrings!” or “Wha’ll buy my caller cod?” with all the energy that a strong pair of lungs could supply. Then, in the evening, there entered the city the oyster-wench, with her prolonged musical aria of “Wha’ll o’ caller ou?” But the spread of fishmongers’ shops and the increase of oyster-taverns is doing away with this picturesque branch of the business. Thirty years ago nearly the whole of the fishermen of the Firth of Forth, in view of the Edinburgh market, made for Newhaven with their cargoes of white fish; and these, at that time, were all bought up by the women, who carried them on their backs to Edinburgh in creels, and then hawked them through the city. The sight of a bevy of fishwives in the streets of the Modern Athens, although comparatively rare, may still occasionally be enjoyed; but the railways have lightened their labours, and we do not find them climbing the Whale Brae with a hundredweight, or two hundredweight, perhaps, of fish, to be sold in driblets, for a few pence, all through Edinburgh.
The industry of fishwives is proverbial, their chief maxim being, that “the woman that canna work for a man is no worth ane;” and accordingly they undertake the task of disposing of the merchandise, and acting as Chancellor of the Exchequer.[18] Their husbands have only to catch the fish, their labour being finished as soon as the boats touch the quay. The Newhaven fishwife’s mode of doing business is well known. She is always supposed to ask double or triple what she will take; and, on occasions of bargaining, she is sure, in allusion to the hazardous nature of the gudeman’s occupation, to tell her customers that “fish are no fish the day, they’re just men’s lives.” The style of higgling adopted when dealing with the fisher-folk, if attempted in other kinds of commerce, gives rise to the well-known Scottish reproach of “D’ye tak’ me for a fishwife?” The style of bargain-making carried on by the fishwives may be illustrated by the following little scene:—
A servant girl having just beckoned to one of them is answered by the usual interrogatory, “What’s yer wull the day, my bonnie lass?” and the “mistress” being introduced, the following conversation takes place:—
“Come awa, mem, an’ see what bonnie fish I hae the day.”
“Have you any haddocks?”
“Ay hae I, mem, an’ as bonnie fish as ever ye clappit yer twa een on.”
“What’s the price of these four small ones?”