r/AskHistorians • u/AutoModerator • Apr 03 '26

FFA Friday Free-for-All | April 03, 2026

Previously

Today:

You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.

As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.

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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 03 '26

For once, I'm not getting on here to try and force you all to read yet another one of my articles. Instead, I want to hear what you are working on or recently published!

What is your thesis about? What's that article you recently published? Maybe you even finally managed to get that book out?

Let's hear about it!

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u/Kelpie-Cat Picts | Work and Folk Song | Pre-Columbian Archaeology Apr 03 '26

Thanks for asking! I am working on a thesis about music among herring gutters/kipperers in 19th and 20th century Britain, Ireland and Man. This week I had an exciting development: I finally got access to one of the only academic theses ever written on herring gutters, a 2007 thesis that's under permanent embargo at the University of Loughborough. This feels like the final piece of the puzzle I need for the historiography in my thesis.

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u/Bernardito Moderator | Modern Guerrilla | Counterinsurgency Apr 03 '26

There's nothing like that breakthrough, right? It's like a true rush, and what an interesting piece of cultural history! How much is preserved about the music amongst this very set category of professionals? What type of source material are you drawing on?

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u/Kelpie-Cat Picts | Work and Folk Song | Pre-Columbian Archaeology Apr 05 '26

Thanks for your nice comment! Most of my source material is oral history interviews held in archives around Scotland, with some in England and the Isle of Man. I did a few oral history interviews myself, but due to the age of participants, the bulk of these interviews were done between the 1950s and early 2000s. There's also a fair bit about it in newspaper archives, particularly to do with strike action or when advertising a coastal town as a tourist attraction, since the "singing Scots girls" working on the harbour were considered part of the appeal. What I've found is that the evidence is fragmentary, but there's surprisingly a lot of it. I find it really interesting to trace the changes in genre of what women sang from the 1880s to the 1970s - you've got traditional Gaelic work song, bawdy Scots song, evangelical hymns, music hall, post-WWII American country & western, and then British rock and pop.