270 THE PROCESS OF GUTTING. [CHAP. vi. 



tion. This is performed by females, hundreds of whom 

 annually find well-paid occupation at the gutting-troughs. 

 It is a bloody business ; and the gaily-dressed and dashing 

 females whom we had observed lounging about the curing- 

 yards, waiting for the arrival of the fish, are soon most 

 wonderfully transmogrified. They of course put on a suit of 

 apparel adapted to the business they have in hand generally 

 of oil-skin, and often much worn. Behold them, then, about 

 ten or eleven o'clock in the forenoon, when the gutting scene 

 is at its height, and after they have been at work for an hour 

 or so : their hands, their necks, their busts, their 



" Dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms " 



their every bit about them, fore and aft, are spotted and be- 

 sprinkled o'er with little scarlet clots of gills and guts ; or as 

 Southey says of Don Koderick, after the last and fatal fight 

 " Their flanks incarnadined, 

 Their poitral smear'd with blood " 



See yonder trough, surrounded by a score of fierce eviscerators, 

 two of them wearing the badge of widowhood ! How deftly they 

 ply the knife ! It is ever a bob down to seize a herring, and a 

 bob up to throw it into the basket, and the operation is over. 

 It is performed with lightning-like rapidity by a mere turn of 

 the hand, and thirty or forty fish are operated upon before you 

 have time to note sixty ticks of your watch. These ruthless 

 widows seize upon the dead herrings with such a fierceness as 

 almost to denote revenge for their husbands' deaths ; for they, 

 alas ! fell victims to the herring lottery, and the widows 

 scatter about the gills and guts as if they had no bowels of 

 compassion. 



In addition to herrings that are pickled and those sold in a 

 fresh state, great quantities are made into what are called 

 "bloaters," or transformed into "reds." At Yarmouth immense 

 quantities of bloaters and reds are annually prepared for the 

 English markets. The bloaters are very slightly cured and as 



