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Banff
"Cargo
baith wyes!"
Women
of the fishing villages, sometimes family but also widows
with little income whose husbands had been drowned at sea,
known as fish wives, laden usually with the smallest of the
catch in wicker creels hoisted onto their backs and held with
a rope sling, walked many miles in one day to barter with
farmers and crofters for butter, eggs and vegetables. As one
Whitehills fisher described; "Cargo baith wyes!".
Often it was the men who replaced the creels on the women’s
backs. In Whitehills near Banff the women waded out to the
boats anchored in a sheltered cove - the Hythe - with their
men on their backs! This was not exploitation but a necessary
act, for the men had to spend hours, or sometimes at the Great
Line, days at sea and exposure to the elements in wet clothes
heightened the risk of illness and with it absence from the
fishing and no income.
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