creelful

plural creelfuls · plural creelsful

1. The amount that fills a creel.

   Then creelfuls of darker peat, broken smaller, were just piled inside.

   2014, Ian Stephen, “Torcuil’s Olman”, in A Book of Death and Fish, Glasgow: Saraband, →ISBN, book 1 (Migrations), page 55

   5 more examples

   Of courſe, a Scots acre ſhould produce about 1653 creelfuls, weighing about 44 tons 12 cwt., which, according to the above opinion of kelpers, would produce about 1 ton and 14 cwt. of kelp of 21 cwt. per ton, which is about 13 cwt. more p. acre than the reſult of the above manufacture.

   1807 February, D., “On the Cultivation of Kelp”, in The Farmer’s Magazine: A Periodical Work, Exclusively Devoted to Agriculture and Rural Affairs, volume VIII, number XXIX, Edinburgh: […] D[avid] Willison, […] for Arch[ibald] Constable & Co. […], branch I (Original Communications), page 45

   The wives of the Newhaven fishermen carry the fish caught by their husbands to Edinburgh, a distance of about two miles, in wicker baskets, or creels, on their shoulders and hawk them about the streets to the musical refrain of “Caller Haddies;” at night the fisher girls go about with creelsful of oysters in the same way, their cry being “Caller Ou.”

   1862 October 1, “Art[icle] II.—The British Sea-Fisheries.”, in The Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, volume XXII, number II, London: Trübner & Co., […], footnote, page 325

   He’s luring the salmon to rise at the fly, / He’s catching the trout by the creelful; / He’s shooting the pheasant to put in the pie, / And of wild-duck he’s getting a mealful.

   1884 August 9, “The Member’s Nightmare”, in Vanity Fair: A Weekly Show of Political, Social, & Literary Wares, volume XXXII, London, page 95, column 1

   Sometimes these little ponds were generous, and I remember the time that Frank Klune and I caught such creelsful of big brook trout from the beaver ponds on Empire Creek that we were arrested and accused of poaching a lake belonging to the mayor of Leadville.

   1978, Ernest Schwiebert, “Field Problems in Fishing Lakes, Ponds, and Reservoirs”, in Trout, volume II, New York, N.Y.: E.P. Dutton, →ISBN, page 1487

   Between them they had carried the packages of paintings and drawings the three miles to Ardessie, two creelsful, burdens that made them breathe heavily.

   2005, David Craig, chapter 52, in The Unbroken Harp, Dunbeath, Caithness: Whittles Publishing, →ISBN, page 300