Friday 10 February 2012

Silver Darlings.

Fame for Fraserburgh!!  Bunty Davidson, aged 80, has lived all her life in Fraserburgh.  She was asked to go down to London to be on the One Show and show them how to fillet herring, "Silver Darlings".  As she had never left Fraserburgh the One Show had to come up here!


Herring Fishing was a great source of income to this part of Scotland and became a huge industry.









But it was the women who processed the fish.  They also apparently carried their men folk 'piggy back' to the boats so they did not get wet and had dry clothes to begin their fishing!



Just look at all these boats!  All around this North East Coast the herrings were turned into money.  What is even more interesting/odd is that the herrings were/are a seasonal fish.  Appearing June - July.  That's here.  Some of the women would follow the silver darlings and journey down into England to use their skills for preparing the fish that were caught.



I think the Silver Darlings were the women.  Although its the men who do the singing.

6 comments:

Annie said...

Brilliant and fascinating post. Did you know the herring girls were mostly knitters too?

Christine Laennec said...

Great post - and I really hope you are feeling better now.

justjill said...

I will try and remember to do a post on the 'ganzies' that they knitted. One reason for Peterhead being called The Blue Toon is that the ganzies worn by the whalers were blue.

justjill said...

Thanks Christine, I shall be back to normal once I have taken all these horse pill size antibiotics.

BadPenny said...

My God... I couldn't carry my husband if I tried ! Great post.

Gigi said...

Oh my -- what a job! And I thought teaching Special Ed. was bad ;).
Feel better soon!
Blessings,
G