Cran is defined in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language as: “A measure of capacity for fresh herrings before cleaning, fixed by the Fishery Board at 37½ Imperial Gallons, roughly the contents of four baskets or, more precisely, one barrel. General Scots. Now in general use also in England”.
An early citation comes from 1741 in an Essay on Improving Inland Navigation: “They [herrings] are sold by the Fishers by the Crane, which is the full of a Barrel, from Sixpence to Three Shillings”. In 1795, the Statistical Account of Scotland recorded: “They both fished, and bought the herring fresh from the country people, at the great price of from 9s. to 12s. per crane (which is the full of a barrel of green fish [fresh, unsalted] as taken out of the net)”.
In F Anson’s Fishing Boats (1930) a division of the measure is noted: “On coming alongside, the fish are gathered up by special wooden shovels, or handscoops, and unloaded in a round basket, supposed to hold a quarter of a cran”. The phrase “supposed to hold” implies some fiddling may have been going on.
Moving to the late 20th century (1985), the hard lives of fisher-folk are recorded by Christopher Rush in Twelve Month and a Day: “We got three cran that morning, the first catch of the season, and me ten years old. Twenty-three shillings apiece these crans were sold at. Each man got ten shillings and the boat got five”.
The word is thought to have a Gaelic origin.
Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here