If it’s Friday, it must be fish

BY BRIAN MCGRADY

In the 1930s, when I was growing up in Ireland, Fridays were meatless days for Catholics. I often wondered why Friday should be a meatless day. Our father thought it was a form of spiritual discipline in memory of Christ’s crucifixion on a Friday. Our mother remembered the miracle when Jesus fed several thousand people with a few loaves and fishes. She would smile wryly and say: “I wish I could do that with my ravenous family.”

At that time the world was in the grip of the Great Depression, with massive unemployment and a consequent shortage of money. In Ireland fish was plentiful and cheap, so this nutritional food was a boon for many.

Normally the fish for our Friday meal was purchased from a larger-than-life character who dealt in fish and poultry. He was called Jiblets (from the word “giblets”), or Jib for short.

Jib’s pony-drawn cart was liberally spattered with an unlikely pattern of fish scales and chicken feathers. He toured the town on Friday mornings, crying out in stentorian tones: “Hern alloy!” This could be translated as “Herrings alive”. Local housewives would assemble round the cart with basins and trays. The banter was always of a teasing, light-hearted nature.

“Jib, ye miserable ould beggar, couldn’t ye throw in an extra couple of wee ones for good luck?”

“Listen ma’am,” Jib would respond with mock seriousness, “just like yourself, I’ve got a family to feed, plus this pony of mine who eats like a Clydesdale stallion. D’ye want us all to die of malnutrition?”

“And who is this Mal Nutrition?” one of the ladies would quip. Everyone, including Jib enjoyed the repartee. Still, at a penny or less for a plump herring, Jib could never be accused of daylight robbery.

Our Ma was a versatile cook. She could conjure up an appetising meal out of next to nothing. Ginger the family cat, purring like a dynamo, was very partial to fish. When Ma honed her special knife on the flagstones of the scullery floor, causing sparks to fly, Ginger would suddenly appear from nowhere. He always enjoyed the performance.

On the operating table two dozen “hern” lay, their glassy eyes staring at us reproachfully. With easy expertise Ma removed heads, tails and innards. The split herrings, floured and seasoned, were then cooked in a large frying pan. In hundreds of local kitchens the atmosphere would be thick with the Friday smell of frying fish.

At lunchtime, in the centre of our dining-table, surrounded by an array of sauces, was a large dish of steaming champ, a mixture of mashed potatoes, cream, butter and spring onions. The fried herrings on our plates were deliciously succulent. We learned how to remove the backbones with surgical precision. There was no need to remove the skins because we ate the lot. On rare occasions mackerel or whiting and, sometimes, crab or lobster would be served as a special treat. This was indeed food for the gods.

On a Friday, while the butchers had a quiet day, the fish-and-chip shops did a roaring trade. A sixpenny “supper” wrapped in soggy newspaper was reckoned to be a “good feed at a good price”. The fish, coated in a savoury batter, formed a great partnership with crispy potato chips.

People never seemed to worry about the un-hygienic packaging. Health risks from cholesterol and dubious fats were unknown. Yet many of the most avid consumers in town lived to be a hundred or more.

In the summer holidays there was nothing better than an early morning bicycle ride to the small fishing village a few miles away. With a glorious sun rising over the Irish Sea the trawlers would be returning from their night’s fishing. They docked quickly and soon baskets of silvery fish were lined up on the quayside. Dealers would haggle vociferously with the trawler captains over the prices. When agreement was reached, the herrings were loaded on to waiting lorries, vans, carts and barrows which sped away to deliver their un-refrigerated cargoes to the local markets. The fishermen were always obliging and would give us youngsters a few small specimens of marine life lying around the decks. Then, as the seagulls screamed overhead, we would pedal home happy with our “catch”.

George Bernard Shaw, the famous writer, once wrote: “If herrings were as scarce as caviar they would be the most precious food in the world.”

Shaw was born in Dublin, where Molly Malone in the famous song once wheeled her wheel-barrow through streets broad and narrow crying: “Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, O.”

I wonder if Molly ever had a few fresh Dublin Bay herrings staring in wide-eyed wonderment from the containers of shell-fish in her famous hand-cart!

Brian McGrady is a parishioner in Johannesburg.