It would be unchivalrous, as well as dishonest, not to mention in some detail the strong women of Scotland, most of whom unfortunately are anonymous.

The fishwives of Newhaven used to supply Edinburgh with their wares, carrying their wicker baskets or creels, surmounted by a shallow creel or skull. The load of fish, herrings, haddock or shellfish was frequently two hundredweight, or a hundred kilos. Many of the fishwives were active young women but not a few were elderly, yet they climbed the steep gradient from sea-level to the High Street, a distance of two miles and an ascent of three hundred feet, with these loads. The Fisherrow women had a longer if less steep journey to Auld Reekie, but they daily trudged the six miles each way with loads that the average man could not even lift.

No wonder these women were totally independent and cared little for the criticism of the sober-sided citizens. Once their fish was disposed of, usually by midday, they treated themselves to a dram and a bite, and linked arms, their baskets now light, to sing their way back to the sea-shore. Woe betide the poor male who was bold enough to encounter them as they swung down the broad avenue of Leith Walk, or by the narrow Fishwives' Causeway to Musselburgh.

There is a quaint record of a competition held in the year 1661, shortly after the Merry Monarch had returned from exile and the sour-faced Puritans were themselves under a cloud.

The  Caledonian Mercury newspaper of that time gives an account of a footrace for Fisherrow fishwives. They had to trot from Musselburgh to the Cross in the Canongate. Sixteen of these amazons entered for the six mile race, for which there were twelve prizes. Each prize consisted of 'a pair of lamb's harrigals', that is, the heart, lungs and liver, of a lamb. It seems a pretty tough ordeal to trot six miles for a load of offal.

But this was only a consolation race. The big prizes had been competed for the previous day. Twelve browster-wives, or brewers of ale, all of them in a condition which makes violent exercise unsuitable to the female form,'were to have a footrace from the Figgate Burn (where Portobello now stands, but which was then a barren moor), to the summit of Arthur's Seat. The distance is two miles and the summit is 822 ft above sea-level. But the prizes were really worth the effort for these pregnant pedestrian ale-wives. The first arrival at the peak got a hundred-weight of cheese, which no doubt she could easily carry home, but the second prize was so much more attractive that it makes us wonder if there was not a temptation to fix the race. Second home won a budgell of Dunkeld aquavitae and a rumpkin of Brunswick rum, both provided by the Dutch midwife, who no doubt expected a rush of customers after this mountaineering feat.