This book has left me filled with admiration for the fishwives of Fraserburgh.

Christian Watt is, for I hear her still, so proud and so strong, despite all kinds of hardship and loss. Four of her seven brothers die at sea leaving her parents in despair. It is not long until her mother dies, physically exhausted from years as a fishwife.

“… with their skirts kilted above the knees they waded into the sea summer and winter with their men on their backs to ensure the men would go to sea dry …”.

Yet despite the hardships Christian marries a fisherman herself, and it is as a fishwife, and mother of ten children, that life begins to overwhelm her. She faces more deaths by drowning, including that of a favourite son and then her husband, the impact leaving her struggling with poverty, the law, and her mental health. Eventually, strained beyond coping, she is certified and admitted to the asylum in Aberdeen on a permanent basis. There she begins to write. Calmer and cared for, she details the wars and events, lives and challenges that surround her, her children and their community as they move into the new century.

Christian dies in 1933, trusting implicitly in God.

This version of her papers – first published in 1988, and edited by General Sir David Fraser, a descendant of the Fraser family that knew her so well, and to which she was related – keeps her voice alive. Brave and kind, it speaks out consistently against subservience, poverty, prejudice, racism, snobbery and war. I loved it.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023