Clementine's shoe size?

Subject: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Gurney
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 04:36 AM

I should have been thinking about work, but... among other inconsequentialities I was humming Clemantine to the tune of Bread of Heaven (OK, thinking it) when it occurred to me that size 9 isn't that big. Certainly not herring-box big, about 7.5 English when I looked it up. I'm assuming that Clemantine is an American song, so when did you change the sizes, and how big were her feet? Bet there's some-one on Mudcat who knows!

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 05:23 AM

I think possibly this relates to her having very petite feet

"Light she was and like a fairy
And her shoes were number nine
Herring boxes without topses
Sandals were for Clemantine"

Shoe sizes in the UK are (apparently) related to the 'barleycorn' (1/3 inch). But childrens shoe sizes run up to size 13 before starting again at adult size 1. Thus size 9 would be a small childs size

Nigel

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: fogie
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 05:38 AM

Come on now ! Herring boxes are not petite by any stretch of the imagination. See under sarcasm/humour.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 06:00 AM

Fogie: I understand sarcasm, but this song does nothing to imply it. Perhaps the 'herring boxes' referred to are not as we suppose. Maybe it's just that 'Sardine tins' wouldn't scan or rhyme

Nigel

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 11:15 AM

Size 9 feet would have big in a young woman back when Clementine lived. When I was her age, I wore a six, and that was decades later.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 11:45 AM

My daughter, here in the U.S., wears size 10 shoes, as did her grandmother. I ended up with smaller feet (I wear size 8 1/2) but none of us has particularly small feet. In the US, small sizes for women's shoes are in the 4 and 5 range. 9 would be considered large.

SRS

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Richie
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 12:02 PM

Nine rhymes better with "Clementine" than any other number.

-Richie

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 12:38 PM

I do not consider my feet to be small but I do take size 6 therefore I would regard 7.5 to be quite large and certainly VERY big by older day standards when people were generally smaller and average foot size in UK for women was around 4.5

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 01:00 PM

In women's sizes, US size 9 = UK 7 =Europe 27 = Mexico 6.5 =Spain-Italy 39.
As noted above size 9 would have been large for a 19th century woman.
The real reason for that size in the song, as pointed out by Masato, is that few would know what Digby pine is, and nine is a good substitute because the rhyme remains.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 01:09 PM

Whatever is meant by 'Europe' in Q's post (with which I agree in all other points) it does not include Germany. My five years old daughter has feet far larger than 27.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 01:14 PM

Very confusing! Mens sizes:
US mens 9 = UK 8.5 = Euro 42.5 = Japan 27.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 01:20 PM

That sounds much better. 42.5 is either a very small man's foot or a very large woman's foot in Germany.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 01:21 PM

Germany, Denmark and Greece: US size 9 = 40. Wolfgang, I believe the old "Europe" scale has been abandoned for common market purposes.

Another point- how did 19th century scales compare with those used now? Many shoes were custom-lasted back then for those who could afford them. The common people may have had to make do with "herring boxes."

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 01:32 PM

Yes, it has been abandoned on the official level. So if a shoe shop orders shoes they do it by 'nines' or whatever. But with us customers they use the old scale for a very simple reason: most of us don't even know our shoe sizes in the new scale.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 02:16 PM

Aside from the fact that I think it's Clementine, 9 is big.
About my second job in my wasted youth was stock-boy in a shoe dept.
Ten was the largest size normally stocked, so given rhyme constraints, nine is pretty hefty.

Since no one asked, and it's totally irrelevant, but this is Mudcat, there is also the issue of width, the narrowest being AAA ['trip Annie'] and getting wider thru 'doub Annie,' 'Annie,' 'Bennie' and Charlie. No self-respecting salesman ever asked me to get up on the top shelf and bring down a "nine-and-a-half double-narrow." It was always nine-half-doub-Annie. No occupation so humble as it lacks its own jargon to separate insiders from mere laypeople, who would include, from the perspective of shoe clerks, nuclear physicists, brain surgeons, classical guitarists and computer programmers. Such is life, as the bloke Down Under said just before they hanged him.

CC

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Gurney
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 02:35 PM

So, consensus is that sizes have not changed, and US9 is largeish, eh. My wife will be delighted when I tell her. She takes UK6.5. And I MUST tell her.....

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 02:50 PM

well, by doing a little research, I discovered that Canadian smoked herring is traditionally packed in 18 pound boxes, 61-81 fish per 18 pounds, depending on small medium or large fish sizes, roughly 8 - 10 inches long each fish, small to large, so, number nine sounds about medium for fish, and pretty large for a girl, maybe not so large for a woman, but she is a girl. Though I don't think it's expressed in the song I've always imagined she and her father to be Swedes, maybe the herring boxes gave me that impression. As a miner it was probably smoked herring, not herring packed in ice, in order to keep for a while between trips to a general store somewhere, don't you think?

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: JennyO
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 09:58 PM

In Australia, size 9 could be quite large. There are two systems of sizing for adults. Size 9 in the one that is used for mens' shoes and sports shoes would be sort of average for a man but quite large for a woman, but in fractional fittings, which have half sizes and different widths, size 9 would still be slightly larger than average for a woman, but not much. I am size 8 in that system, and 5-6 in sneakers, and I am about average.

Of course, this wasn't an Australian song, but maybe some other countries have the same system?

Jenny

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 11:04 PM

Women's shoe sizes- I forgot to put the source: Women's shoes

Subject: RE: Clementine's shoe size?
From: Genie
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 12:29 AM

Interesting question. Women's dress sizes and bra sizes are not the same as they were in the 1950s in the US. (I'm pretty sure a B-cup used to be bigger and a size 6 smaller than today's sizes, for instance.) I don't think women's shoe sizes have changed much since I was a kid, but they may have since the 19th C.

Anyone got any historical accounts to go by?

Genie

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 03:46 AM

No, no, no, you're all missing it, the problem is in the implied punctuation, because of the meter, don't you see. It's supposed to be:

And her shoes were
Number 9 herring boxes...

And we all know how big those #9 herring boxes are.

Aloha,
Mark

P.S., And don't go telling me that "Without topses sandals were for Clementine" doesn't make any sense. That's clearly beyond the scope of this discussion.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Mr Red
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 08:00 AM

How big are 9 herrings side by side? or in a 3X3 matrix? Now then we have the box sized and it would be feet accompli........

If they were Clementines would they not be orange boses?

Or is there a referrence to Old German (Anglo Saxon) and the "nine" is telling us that she had "no" shoes therefore she had to resort to herring boxes. Topses that!

Or am I just throwing in a red herring........ I'll get my coat .......

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: JedMarum
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 08:34 AM

I always thought Clementine was s'posed to have big feet, hence she stumbled ...

and what the heck is Digby pine anyway?

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Strupag
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 01:49 PM

Trouble with "herring boxes" that they were plastic and only a fairly recent introduction to the fishing industry.
Prior to that, the crans were loades into and measured as baskets.
These were made out of a reed type material so I really thing that the composer was referring to a type of sandal.
Certainly these baskets were used during "69" and plastic was not used then.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 01:54 PM

herring boxes were made from wood throughout this 19th c. period and well into the twentieth

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Strupag
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 01:54 PM

Oh shite, I've just looked up the DT and I've got the date wrong - another sign of my rough upbringing!

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Long Firm Freddie
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 02:15 PM

The link Masato posted prompted me to Google on "Digby Pine".

It turns out that there is a "Site of Significance" called Big Pine Lake in Digby County, Canada, designated a Provincial Park Reserve and described as a Representative Old Pine Forest.

So was Clementine's footwear environmentally unfriendly or what?

LFF

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Strupag
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 04:28 PM

Now are you sure about that Bill K.
As far as I can remember they Herring Board adopted the metric plastic boxes straight after the baskets.
Now the white fish industry; They had wooden boxes untill very recently.
I may be wrong but I'm sure Clementine could have have fitted her tiny feet into either the metric plastic herring box or the bigger white fish wooden box.
Mind you, the way things are going in the North Sea these days, you've more chance in catching Clementme's feet than you have of getting a good catch of herring - or white fish!

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 06:13 PM

In the 19th century and before, Canadian white pine was a very important source of income. Nearly all of the good white pine has been logged out. In addition, there has been a climate shift, and the belt of pine reproduction moved. Reserves are needed to preserve the old pine forest remnants.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 06:29 PM

Norway shipped iced herring in 100 kg boxes (about 222 pounds) in the 1920s (and, I believe, back to the 1880s). The boxes replaced the casks. See picture at: Herring boxes

See record (scroll down to) of a Canadian herring box machine and herring boxes (date 1871) at: Box records
Don't argue with Bill Kennedy. He is a knowledgeable man!

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 06:31 PM

Beg to differ twice in one post with Mark Cohen. (My insolence knows no bounds.) If the shoes are #9, then there are complete sentences.

"Light she was and like a fairy, and her shoes were #9 STOP. Herring boxes etc." Gives you subject, predicate, period; subject, predicate, period.

Your way requires: "Light she was and like a fairy and her shoes were number nine herring boxes without topses STOP." which is OK in itself, but then you're left with "Sandals were for Clementine STOP." which is nonsensical.

And of course the boxes had to be without top(se)s because sandals are relatively topless in contrast to shoes.

CC

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Just Amy
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 07:20 PM

The US version is "wearing boxes without topses." I'm guessing we didn't have herring boxes especially in the mountains near me.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 08:10 PM

Amy, where are your mountains? If you were running a dining hall for loggers or miners, you may well have ordered herring by the box. All legitimate versions are US or Canadian. In the first (1863) version the herring boxes just fit. The size of these wooden sandals is unspecified, but we know the boxes held about 200 pounds, so Clementine would have been a suitable bride for Paul Bunyan or his Blue Ox. According to this first version her ghost still walks, so if one sees her, the magnitude of these sandals may be estimated from observation....

"Sandals were for Clementine." Only lacks an article. Perfectly comprehensible. Perhaps better as "Sandalae per Clementina si, ...." in the Lehrer version at: In a cavern

Subject: RE: Clementine's shoe size?
From: Genie
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 08:48 PM

You took da woids right outa my mout', CC!

Another way of looking at Mark's take is that the whole 'sentence' becomes:

"Light she was and like a fairy and her shoes were number nine herring boxes without topses andals were for Clementine." STOP.
--which is also nonsensical.

And the herring boxes had to be without topses so it would kinda rhyme!

In fact, that's probably where the "number 9" came from -- it rhymes with "Clementine."

G

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 10:28 PM

Jeez, can't a guy just be absurd once in a while without everybody and his Auntie taking him seriously and trying to correct his grammar? Must be the cold...you folks need a hit of tropical sunshine! [insert silly smiley face thing here] STOP.

Aloha,
Mark

And hats off to Guest Q. Imagine...an actual photograph of Clementine's shoes! Now that's the miracle of Mudcat. (And this time I'm being completely sincere!) I vote we give Guest Q a free membership.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: mousethief
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 11:28 PM

Would they have used Canadian herring in a California mining camp in 1849? THAT's what I'm wondering.

Alex

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 12:15 AM

Mousethief- Not to the point, but ever heard of the Hudsons Bay Company? They serviced the western Pacific for many years. They shipped salmon from the Vancouver area to Hawaii along with lumber and and other products needed by an isolated port city. They had a post and store in Honolulu for many years (a wooden beaver presiding over the entrance, of course). Even today. soul food in Hawaii includes lomi lomi salmon, introduced during the whaling days. There were even Hudsons Bay employees at the Siberian ports. Hudson Bay farms in the British Columbia area provided produce and meats. All this went up river to Sacramento as well. Herring arrived salted as well, around the Horn, but not in the boxes with ice and boric acid.

Remember that Clementine was not a 49ers song. It came along in 1863. She lived on an eastern river. Her shoes were of Canadian (Digby) pine from eastern Canada. The song went west by the overland route with the pioneers. She didn't get into a miner's family until the 1880s.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Gurney
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 12:18 AM

Since I started this...Could anyone imagine how the sandalae would smell, considering past contents. Could Clemmie be remembered for pollution, as well as Guest Q's conservation thoughts? Joking, honest.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Blind DRunk in Blind River
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 01:15 AM

Geez man! Who cares about her shoe size? What I wanna know is what was her BRA size, eh? There are only a cupla things that really matter with babes, eh, and the bra size is one of them. Or...two...come to think of it. You knowe hwat I mean? Eh? Clemantine is a weerd name but I would not mind it if she was at least a C cup. Thats "C" for Clemantine, eh? I nver met on one with that name yet. Most of the girls around here are named Jennifer, Britney, and stuff like that. MOst are stuck up too and wont talk to me no more.   I could care less. I will just go to Sudsie on the weekend instead, eh?

- BDiBR

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 01:50 AM

So that's where the lomi lomi salmon came from! I always wondered how it got to be sitting there on the table along with the poi and lau lau and haupia. Q, you are fast becoming a Mudcat treasure. So join already! Just click on the "Membership has its privileges" link at the top of the page.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 04:07 AM

Picking up on BDiBR's point, maybe some of you wordsmiths could add a couple of verses outlining the sizes and origins of the rest of Clemmie's apparel? Or maybe she just went around in shoes and nothin else...?

Steve

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 02:29 PM

I remember our first encounter with poi. Tasted like the school paste we used to make with flour (depression days). A lady at the table next to us grinned and said "I always add sugar." That helped.
Occasionally make haupia for snacking. A good, not-too-sweet dessert- and filling.
And the Hawaiian classic- two hamburger, two egg, two scoop gravy, two scoop rice. No wonder so many Hawaiians order their clothes from a tent factory and shoes from a luggage shop (upscale for herring boxes). Clementine would have been right at home.

Said this in another thread- Ticked off someone, and for days running I received a virused Email a day. No more memberships!

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 02:53 PM

Is this a cue for a song?? "the Souls of Herring"

I'll get my coat..........

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 03:08 PM

Too late, Mr. Red. Ewan McColl already has written the "Souls of Herring." (In the DT, mis-spelled as shoals)

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Strupag
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 08:49 PM

As any songwriter will tell you, the best lines come to you in the middle of the night.
I can just immagine the author waking up about 2AM and saying "Yes I've got it! And Her Slippers Smelled of Kippers"
When he woke up in the morning and went off to the writting pad and wracked his brain. " yes, Herring Boxes Without topses - hmmm doesn't quite sound the same as the dream!"

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 31 Jan 03 - 01:53 AM

Don't you mean "Soles of Herring"?

Q, for what it's worth, I've been a Mudcat member since 1998 or 99, and I've never been bothered by spam, or viruses in personal messages. If anybody here ever started getting such attacks, we'd all know about it. There are some genuinely nice places. The Big Island is one, Mudcat is another. (Not that the 'Cat is perfect, of course...)

And Hawaiians lead the country in per capita consumption of Spam, so if anyone was going to get it, it would have been the only Hawaiian member, right?

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 31 Jan 03 - 07:40 AM

In the past, wooden boxes were definitely used for herrings in the UK. When they were unloaded from the fishing boats, they probably would have been in "cran" baskets. The greater part of the herrings caught in the "Singing the Fishing" days, were then gutted, salted, packed in wooden boxes and exported to central and northern Europe.

Perhaps the Herring Boxes in the song referred to the salted variety.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Oct 19 - 01:50 AM

Mr. Red, Soles of Herring? Double pun.

Her feet were huge. That's why it's funny.

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 08:30 AM

I still believe that here feet would have been small, so a 'child's nine' (as earlier). This is not only in line with the description:
Light she was and like a fairy
But if she had great big clod-hoppers, she would be unlikely to be tripped up by just a splinter:
Hit her foot against a splinter
Fell into the foaming brine.

UK women's size 9 = EU size 42-43
UK Child's size 9 = EU size 27

Subject: RE: Clemantine's shoe size?
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 11 Oct 19 - 09:33 AM

Nigel, I agree that Clementine is described as light, and the shoe size mentioned, if original, seems to be meant to illustrate that fact.

However, at the particular incident, she was not wearing any shoes of any regular size specification, either because she no longer had any (- worn them through back in '49 -), or because the weather was too warm and sticky after all that rain. Rather, she wore makeshift sandals, good enough for shuffling around the tent, but not to walk near that crumbly canyon edge.

Women never have enough shoes ...