A Fishwives Tail

Acrylic on canvas

Dimensions (each) 150cm x 50cm

This summer I was commissioned by the Peter Potter Gallery, Haddington, to make new work exploring the ‘Herring Road’, the historic 45km route from Dunbar to Lauder once walked by fishwives with creels of salted herring on their backs.

With my love of textiles, I was instantly drawn to the traditional distinctive outfits that the fishwives wore, in particular, their striped double-layered skirts, which are the focus of these paintings ‘A Fishwife’s Tail – West, South and East’.

Christie Johnstone brilliantly described these garments in 1853:

‘On their heads they wear caps of Dutch or Flemish origin, with a broad lace border, stiffened and arched over the forehead, about three inches high, leaving the brow and cheeks unencumbered. They have cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in pattern, confined at the waist; short woollen petticoats, with broad vertical stripes, red and white, most vivid in colour; white worsted stockings, and neat though high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets they wear a thick spotted cotton handkerchief, about one inch of which is visible round the lower part of the throat. Of their petticoats, the outer one is kilted, or gathered up towards the front, and the second, of the same colour, hangs in the usual way. Their short petticoats reveal a neat ankle, and a leg with a noble swell; for Nature, when she is in earnest, builds a beauty on the ideas of ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters, who with their airy-like sylphs and their smoke-like verses fight for want of flesh in women and want of fact in poetry as parallel beauties. These women have a grand corporeal tract; they have never known a corset! so they are straight as javelins; they can lift their hands above their heads! – actually! Their supple persons move as Nature intended; every gesture is ease and grace and freedom’.

Extract from Groomes Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland c.1895

I have a feeling that these ‘costumes’ were kept for special occasions, with a simpler arrangement being worn whilst walking the Herring Road, however, the interesting use of the two layered skirt, with the upper one being tucked up to form a pocket (as well as reveal it’s striped lining) may well have been used by these women whilst selling the herring or bartering them for meal and eggs.