Putting a Skirt on a Herring, and Other Fishy Folklore From the British Isles

While doctors today will tell you that it is good to include fish in your diet (high levels of mercury notwithstanding) they were not always thought to be healthy. In 1663 the governor of Massachusetts heard the following bit of medical news: “I thought good to advertise you of a discourse I lately heard, that the Leprosie is caused by eating too much fish; for in Scotland where they eate much fish there is more Leapers then in all Europ besides; as it is said.” John Evelyn had heard the same hypothesis in the Low Countries when he saw lepers living by a river in 1641.

The British have relied on their access to the sea for trade and food for millennia. For those lucky enough to live near the coast there was always a meal available in the waters. Fishing was a source of livelihood to many, and not all these associated jobs were pleasant. One of the most tedious jobs in history must have been sitting atop cliffs waiting to see signs of shoals of herrings migrating through coastal waters.

In Cornwall it was a huer’s job to watch for the migrating pilchards. When he spotted them he would lift his huge horn, around five feet long, and bellow, “Hevva!”—Here they are!—to the fishermen below. He would also signal the direction with a couple of “bushes,” originally bits of shrubbery covered in cloth.

It was said that “a good year for fleas is a good year for herring.” One fisherman in Cromer, Norfolk, in the nineteenth century was convinced this was true: “Times is as you may look in my shirt, and scarce see a flea, and then there won’t be but few herring. But when you see my shirt alive with fleas, then there is certain to be a good tidy lot of fish.” On Skye it was said that herring would never enter any part of the sea from where it was possible to see a grave.

Once you had your herring, though, you might want to give it something to wear. Herring were once a popular gift for “first-footers” at Hogmanay. As the New Year began you would seek to bring good luck into your house by having a, preferably handsome, man cross your threshold first bringing gifts of food, drink, and coal. In Dundee herring was a popular food to be presented with, but fish is not always the most appealing of presents. So the herrings were dressed up. They would be adorned with skirts, bonnets, wedding gowns, or kilts made of paper. These were known as Dundee Dressed Herring.

Understandably fishermen were a superstitious bunch. Their livelihoods and indeed lives were at risk every time they boarded a boat. Some would never set out to sea on a Friday. Should a crew member be so foolish as to say “good luck!” they were thought to have brought a curse down on the ship. Only punching the offender could ward off the doom. A dead wren was taken by the fishermen of the Isle of Man as an amulet against ill luck. And it was always fishermen as women onboard were thought to be harbingers of disaster.

The salmon fishers of the River Tweed held a blessing ceremony around Valentine’s Day, near the beginning of the salmon season. The vicar of Berwick would go out on a boat and bless everything from the nets, to the salmon, to the river itself around midnight. Today the vicar merely wades a little way into the water to perform the blessing before the first fly of the year is cast.

The fish themselves could be marked by the Devil. It is said that the Devil was building the peninsula of Filey Brigg in Yorkshire when he dropped his hammer into the sea. Cursing, he reached in to grab it but ended up picking up a fish and exclaiming, “Ha, dick!” This explains why to this day haddock are marked with two black spots—known as the Devil’s thumbprint. Others preferred a more saintly explanation and claimed the spots came from the hand of St Peter (a fisherman) touching them. 

Other saints have had run-ins with fish that left their mark. The twisted mouth of the flat flounder is said to have come from the fish having a sharp tongue. One day St Columkille was wading into the sea when a flounder, perched on a rock, began to mock the holy man. Divine wrath soon fell on the fish and forever after the flounder’s mouth was set at an awkward angle.

Catching flounders used to take an unusual form in Scotland and Cumbria. There you did not need a boat to catch them, just your two feet and perhaps a trident. Flounder tramping involves slowing treading your way through the sea at low tide until you step on one of the flat fish. Standing on a fish is a bit upsetting since it might try to wriggle free, but you just need to hold it down. Then you either shove your fingers in its gills and lift it up or stab it with your trident—taking care, one imagines, not to impale your own toes. A flounder tramping championship was held at Palnackie in Dumfries and Galloway but this has been in abeyance since 2015.

Eating fish may be a delight but there is always the risk of getting a fishbone caught in your throat. Worry not, though, as there is a saint who can help. St Blaise, who died in 316 CE, was a doctor in his youth and is today the patron saint of ear, nose and throat specialists. He earned this honour by helping a boy who was choking on a fishbone. Each year at St Etheldreda’s Church in London there is a service known as the Blessing of the Throats on St Blaise’s Day, 3 February.

The danger of fishbones has been employed in darker rituals. Those who wished death on a person were advised to take a thin fishbone and poke it into their enemy’s clothing. As well as probably making them smell a little, it was thought that as the bone dried out the victim would become ever more ill.

Eating fishbones deliberately was sometimes required by folklore. In the Outer Hebrides prophetic dreams could be brought on by eating an entire salted herring in three bites and then going quietly to bed. You were not even allowed a glass of water to help wash down the bones.

There were a number of fishy cures available. To cure whooping cough the severed head of a trout should be put into the patient’s mouth for them to breathe through. Alternatively a live fish could be laid on the patient’s chest where it flopped around until it died. When the fish expired so the cough would be gone. Milk in which a live trout had swum was also thought to be a good treatment as well because of the ‘slime’ of the trout being taken from its gills into the milk.

Eels are some of the strangest fish to be found in Britain. They live in rivers but head out to sea to mate and spawn. Even today the exact location of where eels breed is not known, though because small eels are found in the Sargasso Sea that is presumed to be where they go. Being unlike other fish in appearance and mode of living has given eels a special place in folklore. To cure a wart you could cut the head off a live eel and rub the bloody end onto it. The head should then be buried. By the time the head had rotted away the wart would be gone. 

Eel heads could be dangerous, however. In Scotland it was said that they caused insanity. One man was driven so mad after consuming an eel that he slaughtered his horse and was found eating its flesh. His brother shot him to halt his rampage. That the madman attacked his horse might have been rational in its way as the most popular theory was that eels grew from horse hairs that had fallen in water and were left for nine days. This theory of the equine generation of eels led to particularly thin and threadlike eels being called horsehair eels. 

This antipathy towards eels was widespread throughout Scotland. Many considered the snake-like form of the eel to be a mark of their satanic nature. It was thought to ruin a pan if you cooked an eel in it. The Scots were canny, though—they had no problem selling eels to their English neighbours.

Eel skin was supposed to be an amulet against cramps. When a person suffered a sprain they could call for the “stamp-strainer”—a person who would stamp on eel skin before applying it to the wounded limb. Sometimes the skin was lined with goose fat.

Lampreys, an eel-like fish, seem like something from a bizarre body horror film. In place of a traditional mouth they have a sucker filled with rows of rasping teeth. They use these to attach themselves to other fish then gnaw into their flesh to suck their blood. According to the Roman author Pliny the Elder, a man named Vedius Pollio kept a pool of lampreys and, should any of his slaves displease him, he would cast them into it. Later authors said that Pollio then ate the lampreys that had feasted on human flesh.

Being vampiric monstrosities did not prevent the lamprey from gracing the dining tables of even the highest in the land. King Henry I of England was said by the historian Henry of Huntingdon to have had such an immoderate fondness for lampreys, even though they always made him ill, that he died of a “surfeit” of them.

This apparently did not put subsequent English monarchs off eating lampreys. Throughout the medieval period the city of Gloucester would send a lamprey pie to the king each Christmas. When they failed to do so under King John they were fined the large sum of ￡26 13s. 4d. This tradition was allowed to lapse in 1836 as the cost of catching the increasingly rare lamprey and lavishly decorating a gilded pie was considered too great.

Occasionally such pies are still presented to the Crown. For the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 a large lamprey pie was baked, but the fish had to be sourced from elsewhere in the country due to their absence from the River Severn. When one was prepared for the Diamond Jubilee in 2012 the lampreys had to be brought from North America.

Alas, it seems that in recent years the pie was not even eaten by the monarch. When the council of Gloucester ordered a pie in 2023 because of environmental concerns it contained no lampreys at all—it was merely decorated with lamprey motifs. The monarch did not even look at it. It was presented to the Lord Lieutenant and then given to a charity.

Excerpted with permission from A Feast of Folklore: The Bizarre Stories Behind British Food by Ben Gazur. Published by Unbound and out in the UK September 2024 and U.S. November 2024. Pick up your copy here.