See Mudcat ThreadId=159358, I would link to it if I wasn't lousy at it.

Just came from a Google search, and had my ignorance... corrected a little.

1941, Neil Gunn published a novel called The Silver Darlings.
Sad to admit, I never before heard of Neil Gunn.
In this novel, protagonist Finn sings a version of The Cambric Shirt,
and it was this lyric which prompted Mudcatter Jack Campin
to starte ThreadId=159358 in search of info about this variation.

Neil Gunn's novel is a historical-fiction rendering
of the era following the Highland Clearances;
the Highlanders who have been evicted, and pushed to the shore,
must now earn their living fishing for herring.
Hence the title.

Since then, playwright John McGrath, he of
The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black Black Oil,
has adapted Gunn's novel into a stage play of the same name.
It is this adaptation of which I first heard.

And when it was premiered in Glasgow, at the Citizen's Theatre,
young Finn was played by a young fellow in his first big professional stage appearance:
Kevin McKidd, no less.