THE PEOCESS OF GUTTING, 193 



inextricable ; but there is method in their madness, and even 

 out of the chaos of Wick harbour comes regularity, as I have en- 

 deavoured to show. 



So soon as a sufficient quantity of fish has been brought from 

 the boats and emptied into the gutting troughs, another of the 

 great scenes commences — ^viz. the process of evisceration. This 

 is performed by females, hundreds of whom annually find well- 

 paid occupation at the gutting-troughs. It is a Woody 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 feces tbrong'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 — 



" Thyeir fiarnks incarnadined, 

 Their poitral smear'd witb Hood " — 



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 perfornied 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 numbers are made into what are called 

 "bloatersy" or transformed into "reds." At Yarmouth, im- 

 mense quantities of bloaters and reds are annually prepared for 

 the English markets. The bloaiters are very slightly cured and 

 as slightly smoked, being prepared for immediate sale ; but the 

 herrings brought into Yarmouth are cured in various ways : the 



