THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 5 
by their husbands and sons is disposed of at the side of 
the boat in wholesale fashion, to buyers from those 
large seats of population, which are always demanding 
supplies of fish, and are never able to obtain all they want. 
Some of the fishwives make excellent auctioneers; they 
possess a rude eloquence which is difficult to resist. The 
fishwives of Newhaven and Fisherrow in the days of old 
used to bear on their backs in baskets called “ creels ” large 
burdens of fish daily to Edinburgh, with which they 
wandered from door to door in search of customers—a 
practice that still to some extent prevails, but which has 
been largely rendered unnecessary by the increase of shops 
for the sale of fish. Their achievements in fish carrying 
have been often chronicled. When the boats were late in 
arriving, two or three of the women would join in carrying a 
heavy creel full of cod and haddocks, to Edinburgh. Each 
woman carried the creel in turn, and by this means fish 
have been heard calling in the streets of the modern Athens, 
that had only been brought into Newhaven thirty-five 
minutes before. Once upon a time, four women walked, or 
rather “trotted,” with a creel full of fish, from Dunbar to 
Edinburgh, a distance of twenty-six miles, in five hours! 
And after all, each hundredweight of cod and turbot 
carried so gallantly could only realise a few shillings. A 
big cod-fish for tenpence in those days was an every-day 
bargain, whilst “fine caller herrin’, three a penny,” was a 
stereotyped call of the fish hawkers. 
In addition to Newhaven there are numerous other 
quaint fishing communities in Scotland where the manners 
and customs of the people are worthy of study. Newhaven, 
from its proximity to Edinburgh, and the fame of its fish 
dinners is often referred to, and is frequently visited by 
strangers from the most distant places. All fisher folk, no 
