Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [89]
Such things had gone on for ever, would go on for ever. The vast shoals would appear as usual at the expected times and places, even if their arrival was no longer predicted by the arrival of the Scottish fisher girls in their striped skirts as it once was. These women knew the seasons and would appear up and down the coast, ready to gut and barrel the herrings, a vast trade for export. A whole complete world enclosed the herring trade, with its own customs and movement and vocabulary. Do you know the meaning of klondyking, farlanes, gipping, crabs, lasts, redding? Did you know that the herring’s scales are described as deciduous because they fall as easily as leaves from autumn trees? Did you know that the word herring means ‘army’ – because of the vast shoals they travel in? One shoal, measured in 1877, was 18 fathoms deep (118 feet): it covered an area which would have reached from Marble Arch to the London docks beyond the Tower, and from the House of Commons to Euston Station. At one time people thought the herrings moved about, like the fisher girls, but in fact it is different races of herring that appear together at certain times in certain parts of the sea on both sides of the Atlantic.
Even a tiny shoal of herring in an aquarium swimming round and round is an impressive and unnerving sight, millions of ‘soldiers’ moving blindly on. Perhaps this explains why the herring was rather beyond the capacity, outside the interest of early fishermen. This fish which caused battles, wars and created vast wealth from the late Middle Ages has left no traces in the prehistoric settlements of northern Europe. Salmon bones appear in excavation, but never a herring bone. Amsterdam is said to have been built on herring bones, but Amsterdam is a late town with no prehistory. Archaeologists have speculated on the matter. Boats were developed enough, since curraghs, which are survivals of early boats, have been used for fishing herring until recent times.
The conclusion seems to be that the construction of a drift net, the long wall of net which the herring swim in to and are caught by, takes too much time for a small community to bother with. Vast catches were just not needed, or not until the fast days of Christian Europe ruled that people, however far inland they might be, had to eat fish at least once a week, sometimes twice or more. And so the herring, the curable herring, became the great fish of northern life, the trade having its origin in the Dark Ages (the first recorded use of our word ‘herring’ occurs in the eighth century AD). Other towns were built on herrings, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft for instance. Herrings caused skirmishes as East Anglian and Dutch fishermen raced for the first huge catch in the spring. The way of life of millions of people has been shaped by the herring. Not bad for a small fish weighing on average 150 g (5 oz).
It never occurred to most of us that herring might vanish from our shops. They were eternal, a natural plunder that would never fail. But they did fail. Nets and trawling techniques became so efficiently vacuum-cleaner-like that even the vaster shoals were sucked up. So depleted were they that for several years herring fishing was forbidden. Only in 1984 was it allowed again.
Herrings are on the slab once more, it is true, but what has happened to them? The ones I see are poor limp things compared to the crisp bright ‘silver darlings’ of the old days. Is this because they are lying about too long in ice? Is it because my local fishmongers do not buy the top of the catch? Is it because we fished the heart out of the herring tribe and the few