Living Silver 



the ocean floor where food could hardly have been plentiful. Only 

 a very successful hunter could have maintained such a population 

 in such an environment. 



Though it usually found a buyer it w^as not really a profitable 

 fish from the fisherman's point of view^. He had to go north for it 

 and he had to go deep. He v^^as exposed to troubled waters that 

 often ran to massive seas and he had to spend a great deal of time 

 and energy in shooting and hauling his gear. If he caught nothing 

 else, then he could hardly hope to make more than a bare living 

 out of his landings of rock turbo t, as the fishmongers usually 

 labelled it. Not that it bore any resemblance to the true turbot. 

 And anyhow it lived perpetually among layers of dismal black mud. 

 'Rock', Jan discovered, meant the same thing to the fish trade as 

 *coney' meant to furriers. It was really a synonym for 'not' . 'Not 

 turbot' or 'false turbot' or, even, 'phoney turbot' would have 

 been a better name. But, to Jan, it seemed silly that they didn't 

 simply call it ling ; for it was an excellent fish, finely flavoured and 

 much in demand among fishermen ; and many of the other things 

 that fishmongers referred to as 'rock turbot' were far inferior. It 

 thus adopted a bad name in place of a good one. The roe of the 

 ling compared well with any titbit that the sea could produce. 

 Not that it was small. It came from a large and fecund fish. But 

 its solid milkiness was so rich to the tongue that, by simple deli- 

 cacy of flavour, it somehow put itself among the few foods that 

 were too good to make a meal of. When the people who ate fish 

 had knowTi more about them, there had been no need to disguise 

 the identity of the ling. Its own name had stood high in any cal- 

 endar of favourite dishes. 



Particularly in the north west of Scotland. There, among the 

 islands, it had been more than an industry and more than a mere 

 food for centuries. It had borne something of the status of a cere- 

 monial dish, even though it had been economically important. It 

 served those isolated peoples as one of the main sources of animal 

 protein and was carefully preserved salted and dried, as a safeguard 

 against the annual winter shortages. The men of these parts had 



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