4 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK. 
are not in possession of special sources of information, that 
in all fishing communities, the woman is head of the house, 
and nowhere, in all fisherland, at home or abroad, is this 
more the case than on the Firth of Forth. The Newhaven 
fishwife has become a celebrity, and she is indebted to King 
George the Fourth for much of her fame. That monarch 
during his memorable visit to Edinburgh, in the year 1822, 
said to Sir Walter Scott, that some of the Newhaven 
women were the handsomest he had ever seen; and her 
present Gracious Majesty has been likewise pleased to 
admire them. Indeed, since the Queen’s first visit to 
Edinburgh, the Newhaven fishwife, with her picturesque 
peculiarities and the dulcet notes with which she charms 
the public ear, as she cries her oysters (Caller Ou) has 
become quite a pictorial personage. She has been painted 
in oil, modelled in card board, made up as a whisky bottle, 
given to children as a doll, printed in numerous Cartes de 
visite, and generally, has been made much more public 
all over the world than any other honest woman. She 
is a familiar figure in the Café Greco at Rome, as well 
as in the print shops of Berlin and Venice; and although 
the praises of the Newhaven fishwife with passing com- 
pliments to her “shapely shanks,” and the sweet voice 
that made the heart of the Ettrick shepherd “dirl” with 
emotion, have been celebrated by Christopher North 
in the Woctes Ambrosiane, it has not spoiled her, nor yet 
interfered with her determined and ceaseless industry. 
She is ruler over her household and chancellor of her 
husband’s exchequer; it is a saying, indeed, of the 
fishwives, that the woman who is not able and willing to 
work for a man ought not to have one. 
The labour of the females in the olden time was heavy, 
but it is less so now that so much of the fish caught 
