and tying their legs in that country over yonder,” he said, as the
_Strathcona_ rounded the rugged bread-loaf island of Cape Onion. He
pointed to the settlement of Island Bay behind it. “There we were blown
across the bay on the ice—dogs, komatik and all—roaring with laughter
at our own predicament, helpless before the great gale of wind.” Thus he
recalls without bitterness the costly undertaking whose fruition has
been—and still is—one of his dearest dreams. Conveying the captured
reindeer across the Strait in a schooner to Canada with almost nobody to
help him was a Herculean task. Some day the Legislature at St. John’s
may see fit to divert a little money to establishing the docile and
reliable reindeer in place of treacherous and predatory dogs. It is a
greater loss to the island than to Grenfell that the scheme must wait.
With a mob of dogs in every village, a mob actuated most of the time by
an insatiable hunger driving it forth in quest of any sort of food, it
has been impossible in most places to keep a cow or a goat, and hay is
prohibitively costly to import. Dr. Grenfell has described with pathos
how Labrador mothers, in default even of canned milk for the baby, are
in the habit of chewing hard bread into a pulpy mass to fill the
infant’s mouth and thus produce the illusion of nutriment until it is
able to masticate and assimilate “loaf” for itself. In few countries is
milk so scarce.
The reindeer might be the cow of the Labrador. The reindeer is able to
find a square meal amid the moss and lichens, and it yields milk so rich
as to require dilution to bring it down to the standard of cow’s milk,
while it is free from the peculiar flavour of the milk of the goat. The
Lapps make the milk into a “cream cheese” which Dr. Grenfell has tried
out on his sledge journeys and heartily endorses.
Nearly three hundred reindeer were obtained by Dr. Grenfell in Lapland
in 1907, with three Lapland families to herd them and teach herding.
They were landed at Cremailliere, (locally called “Camelias”), three
miles south of St. Anthony. At the end of four years the herd numbered a
thousand. In 1912, twelve hundred and fifty at once were corraled.
Poaching and want of police protection made it desirable to transfer the
animals across the Straits to Canada. Some of them, by virtue of
strenuous effort, were collected in 1918 and transported to the St.
Augustine River district where now they flourish and increase in number.
Some day, it would seem from the great success of the reindeer-herds of
Alaska—introduced by Dr. Sheldon Jackson and fostered by the United
States Government—these fine animals will surely replace the dogs on
the Labrador, when local prejudice against them has been overcome or has
evaporated. They are useful not merely for the milk but for the meat and
the skins, as well as for transportation. They live at peace instead of
on the precarious verge of battle. The “experiment” has not collapsed in
dismal failure. It is only in abeyance to the ultimate assured success,
and it is not too much to predict that another generation or two will
see the reindeer numerous and useful throughout the Labrador.
XII
A WIDE, WIDE “PARISH”
To take the measure of the man Dr. Grenfell is and the work he does it
is necessary to know something of the land and the waters round about,
where he puts his life in jeopardy year after year, day unto day, to
save the lives of others. There is much more to “Dr. Grenfell’s parish”
than the “rock, fog and bog” of the old saying. Such observations as are
here assembled are the raw material for the Doctor’s inimitable tales of
life on the Labrador.
The great fact of life here is the sea, and much of existence is in
giving battle to it. The little boys practice jumping across
rain-barrels and mud-puddles, because some day they hope to get a
“ticket” (a berth on a sealer) and go to the ice, and when it is “a good
big copy from pan to pan”—that is to say, a considerable distance from
one floating ice-cake to the next—their ability to jump like their own
island sheep may save their lives.
[Illustration: SIGNAL HILL, HARBOUR OF ST. JOHNS.]
The word “copy” comes from the childish game of following the leader and
doing as he does. A little piece of ice is called a knob, and a larger
piece is a pan. A pan is the same thing as a floe, but the latter
expression is not in common usage.
Every youth who aspires to qualify as a skipper must go before an
examining board of old sea-wise and weather-wise pilots, and prove
himself letter-perfect in the text of that big book, “The Newfoundland
and Labrador Pilot and Guide.” His examiners scorn the knowledge of the
book, very often, for they have the facts at the fingers’ ends from long
and harsh experience of the treacherous waters, with the criss-cross
currents, the hidden reefs, the sudden fogs, the contrary winds. So they
delight to make life miserable for the young mariner by heckling him.
The disasters that now and then overtake the sealing-fleet are ever
present in the minds of those who do business in these waters. They know
what it means for a ship’s company to be caught out on the ice in a
snow-storm, far from the vessel. In early March the wooden ships race
for the Straits of Belle Isle, and three days later the faster iron
ships follow. When they get to where the seals are sunning themselves
around the blow-holes in the ice, the crew go out with their gaffs
(staves) and kill the usually unresisting animals by hitting them over
the back of the head. It sounds like simple and easy hunting, and in
good weather it is. But a long-continued storm changes the complexion of
the adventure to that of the gravest peril.
One captain saved his men by making them dance like mad the long night
through, while he crooned the music to them. At the end of each five
minutes he let them rest on their piles of gaffs, and then they were
made to spring to their feet again and resume the frantic gyrations that
kept them from freezing to death. In the same storm, the _Greenland_ of
Harbour Grace lost 52 of her 100 men.
They still talk of the fate of the _Queen_ on Gull Island off Cape St.
John, though the wreck took place nigh unto forty years ago. There was
no lighthouse then. The island lifts its head hundreds of feet above the
mean of the tides, and only the long rank grass and the buttercups live
there in summer. But this was in a December night, and the wind blew a
gale. There were six passengers—a woman among them. When the passengers
had battled their way ashore through the leaping surf, the crew went
back on the doomed ship to salvage some of the provisions. For they knew
that at this forsaken angle of the island no help from any passing ship
was likely till the spring.
The passengers toiled to the top of the bleak islet, lugging with them a
fragment of a sail. The crew, aboard the vessel, were carried by the
furious winds and waters out to the Old Harry Shoals, where they lost
their lives when the sea beat the vessel to pieces.
The sequel is known by a little diary in which a doctor—one of the
hapless half-dozen—made notes with his own blood till his stiffening
fingers refused to scrawl another entry.
It seems from this pathetic note-book that the six at the end of a few
days, tortured with thirst and starvation, drew lots to see who should
die.
The lot fell to the woman. Her brother offered himself in her place.
Then the entries in the book cease; and the curtain that fell was not
lifted till spring brought a solitary hunter to the island. He shot a
duck from his boat, and it fell in the breakers. Afterwards he said it
was a phantom fowl, sent from heaven to guide him. For he did not see it
again, though he landed and searched the beach.
But he saw splinters flung high by the surf that seemed to him a clear
indication of a wreck.
He clambered to the top of the islet. There he found, under the rotted
sail, the six bodies, and in the hand of one, was a piece of flesh torn
from one of the bodies.
Even when their lives are endangered the fishermen preserve their keen
mindfulness of the religious proprieties. Caught on an ice-pan together,
Protestants and Catholics prayed, their backs to one another, on
opposite sides of the pan—and the same thing has happened in ships’
cabins. The sailors are not above a round oath now and then, but there
are many God-fearing, prayerful men among them. “These are my sailing
orders, sir,” said an old retired sea-dog to me as he patted the cheek
of his Bible.
Phrases of the sea enter into every phase of daily human intercourse.
“You should have given yourself more room to veer and haul,” said the
same old sailor to me when I was in a hurry. Fish when half-cured are
said to be “half-saved,” and a man who is “not all there” is likely to
be styled “half-saved.”
“Down killik” is used impartially on arrival at the fishing grounds or
at home after a voyage—the “killik” being a stone anchor for small
craft or for nets. (A “killy-claw” is of wood with the stone in the
middle.) You may hear an old fisherman say of his retirement from the
long warfare with the sea for a living: “My killiks are down; my boat is
moored.” One of them who was blind in his left eye, said as he lay
dying, referring to his own soul: “She’s on her last tack, heading for I
don’t know where: the port light is out, and the starboard is getting
very dim.” A few minutes later he passed away.
The ordinary talk is full of poetry. “If I could only rig up a derrick,
now, to hoist me over the fore part of the winter,” an old salt will
say, “wi’ the help o’ God and a sou’westerly wind and a few swyles I
could last till the spring.” By “swyles,” of course, he means “seals.” A
man’s a man when he has killed his seal. Seal-meat is an anti-scorbutic,
and the sealers present the “paws,” or flippers, as great delicacies to
their friends. A “big feed” is a “scoff.” Sealing brings men together in
conviviality and comaraderie, and it is the great ambition of most of
the youth of Newfoundland to “go to the ice.” Many are the stowaways
aboard the sealing craft. If a man goes “half his hand” it means he gets
half his catch for his labour.
“Seal” is pronounced “swyle,” “syle,” or “swoyle” and Swale Island also
takes its name from this most important mammal. Seals wandering in
search of their blow-holes have been found as far as six or seven miles
inland.
As might be expected, there survives in the vernacular—especially of
the older people—many words and phrases that smack of their English
dialect origin, and words that were the English undefiled of Chaucer’s
or Shakespeare’s day. Certain proper names represent a curious
conversion of a French name no longer understood.
In Dorsetshire dialect v is used for f, and in Newfoundland one hears
“fir” pronounced “vir” or “var.” Firewood is “vir-wood.” Women who are
“vuzzing up their vires” are fussing (making ready) their fires. We have
“it wouldn’t be vitty” in place of “it wouldn’t be fitting.” A pig
“veers”; it does not farrow. The use of “thiccy” for “this” is familiar
to readers of “Lorna Doone.” “The big spuds are not very jonnick yet”
means that the potatoes are not well done. If something “hatches” in
your “glutch,” it catches in your throat. Blizzard is a word not used,
and a lass at school, confusing it with gizzard, said it meant the
insides of a hen. The remains of birds or of animals are the “rames.” “O
yes you, I ’low” is a common form of agreement. To be photographed is to
be “skitched off,” and of snapshots it is sometimes said by an old
fisherman to a “kodak fiend”: “I heard ye firin’ of ’em.”
“Cass ’n goo,” for “can’t you go” may be heard at Notre Dame Bay, as
well as “biss ’n gwine” for “aren’t you going?” and “thees cass’n do it”
for “thee can’t do it.” The berries called “harts” (whorts) are, I
presume, the “hurts” of Surrey.
A vivid toast for a sealer going to the icefields was “Bloody decks to
’im!”
When bad weather is brewing, “We’re going to have dirt” is a common
expression.
A fisherman who had hooked a queer creature that must have been first
cousin to the sea-serpent said, “It had a head like a hulf, a neck like
a harse; I cut the line and let it go to hell.”
Here is a puzzler: “Did ye come on skits or on cart and dogs?” That
means, “Did you come on skates or on a dog-sledge?” Dog-cat is a
dog-sledge. Cat is short for catamaran, which is not a sea-boat but a
land-sledge, so that when you hear it said: “He’s taken his dog and his
cat and gone to the woods” you may know that it means “He’s taken his
dog and his sledge.”
Just as we change the position of the _r_ in going from _three_ to
_third_, we find the letters transposed in “aps” for aspen, “haps” for
hasp, “waps” for “wasp” and “wordle” for world. Labrador is Larbador,
and “down to the Larbador” or “down on the Larbador” are common
expressions.
Instead of “the hatch” the telescoped form “th’ ’atch” is used. We have
“turr” for “tern” and “loo” for “loon,” and “yammit” (emmet) for “ant.”
The tendency to combine syllables is illustrated in the pronunciation of
Twillingate as Twulngate.
A scaffolding for fish is known as a “flake.” Here the split cod are
outspread to dry and, by the way, a decision of the Newfoundland Supreme
Court declares “cod” and “fish” synonymous. The scaffolding is made of
poles called longers, and it is suggested that these “longers” are the
“longiores” which Caesar used to build bridges, according to his
Commentaries. A silk hat is known as a beaver, or behaviour, and so when
you hear it said, “I saw Tom Murphy; he must have been at a funeral; he
had his behaviour on,” it means not that he was circumspect in his
conduct, but that he wore the formal headgear. “Sammy must ’a’ been
writin’ some poetry. I saw him just now a-humourin’ of it with his
foot.” Cannot you see the bard beating out the rhythm with his foot, as
a musician sometimes does when he is sure that he is in time and the
rest are mistaken?
“South’ard,” “north’ard,” “east’ard,” “west’ard” are current maritime
usage, and the adjective “wester” is heard.
Legal Latin is drawn upon for “tal qual”—_talis qualis_—applied in a
bargain for fish “just as they come.”
Here is a quaint one. The end of a pile, above the surface of a wharf,
is a gump-head. Gump and block are one and the same thing. We of the
United States use the word “gump” or “chump” figuratively for a
“blockhead.”
“The curse o’ Crummle on ye” is a rural expression still heard, and
refers to Cromwell’s bloody descent on Ireland.
“I find my kinkhorn and I can’t glutch” means “I have a pain in my
throat and I can’t swallow.” The kinkhorn is the Adam’s apple. A man at
Chimney Cove remarked: “I have a pain in my kinkhorn and it has gone to
my wizen (chest).”
A dog is often called a “crackie.” Caribou is shortened to “boo.” A door
that has stuck is said to be “plimmed up.” A man who ate hard bread and
drank water said “It plimmed up inside and nearly killed me.”
To say of a girl that she “blushed up like a bluerag” refers to the
custom of enclosing a lump of blueing in a cloth when laundering
clothes. “The wind baffles round the house” is a beautiful way of saying
that it was blustering.
“Bruise” is a very popular dish of hard bread boiled with fish, and with
“scrunchins” (pork) fried and put over it. It is the equivalent of
Philadelphia’s famous “scrapple.” A guide, admitting that bread and tea
are the staple articles of diet in many an outpost, said reflectively:
“Yes, that’s all those people live on. Now there’s other things. There’s
beans.”
When a man says that his hands are “hard afrore” (hard frozen) we
remember Milton in “Paradise Lost,” “the air burns frore.” Frozen
potatoes are “frosty tiddies.” Head is often called “heed.” “Tigyer,”
said by an old man to a mischievous lad, means “Take yerself off.” “Is
en?” is a way of saying “Is he?” An old man cut his finger and said that
he had a “risen” on it, which is certainly more of a finality than a
“rising.” “I’m going chock to Gargamelle” means “I’m going all the way
to Gargamelle,” the latter name from “garçon gamelle,” said to signify
“the boy who looks after the soup.”
Instead of “squashed,” “squatted” is a common word, as in the expression
“I squatted my finger.” And there are many other provincialisms not in
the dictionaries.
The fathom is a land-measure of length, as well as a sea-measure of
depth. The leading dog of a team is six or seven “fathoms” ahead of the
komatik.
“Start calm” means perfectly calm, and then they may say expressively
“The wind’s up and down the mast.”
“Puddick” is a common name for the stomach.
“Take it abroad” is “take it apart”; “do you relish enough,” is “have
you eaten plenty?” “Poor sign fish” means that fish are scarce. Woods
that are tall are said to be “taunt.”
These few examples of distinctive phraseology might be multiplied a
thousand-fold.
As for the proper names, a fascinating field of research lies before a
patient investigator who commands the leisure. Here are but a few of
countless examples that might be cited.
French names have been Anglicized in strange ways. Isle aux Bois thus
becomes Isle of Boys—or, as pronounced on the south coast, Oil of Boys
or Oil o’ Boy. Baie de Boules has lost the significance of boulders that
bestud its shores in the name Bay Bulls. The famous and dreaded Cape
Race, near the spot where the beautiful _Forizel_ was lost, gets its
name from the French “razé,” signifying “sheer.” Reucontre is Round
Counter; Cinq Isles has become St. Keels, and Peignoir is altered to
Pinware or Pinyare. Grand Bruit is Grand Brute; the rocky headland of
Blomidon that nobly commands the mouth of the Humber is commonly called
Blow-me-down; Roche Blanche is Rose Blanche.
One would scarcely recognize Lance-au-Diable in Nancy Jobble. Bay
d’Espoir has been turned into its exact antithesis, in the shape of Bay
Despair. L’Argent Bay is now Bay Le John. Out of Point Enrage is evolved
Point Rosy, and St. Croix is modified to Sancroze (Sankrose).
Children’s names are likely to be Biblical. They are often called by the
middle name as well—William James, Henry George, Albert Edward.
Merchants’ ledgers must take account of a vast number of nicknames that
are often slight variants on the same name—Yankee Peter, Foxy Peter,
Togo Ben, Sailor Ben, Bucky Ben, Big Tom, Deaf Tom, Young Tom, Big Jan,
Little Jan, Susy’s Jan, Ripple Jan, Happy Jack. Thomas Cluett comes to
be called Tommy Fiddler, whereupon all the children become Fiddlers, and
the wife is Mrs. Fiddler. The family of Maynards is known as the Miners.
The little boys have a mischievous way of teasing one another as “bay
noddies.” The noddy is a stupid fish that is very good at catching the
smaller fry and then easily allows itself to be robbed of its prey. The
children cry:
“Bay boy, bay boy, come to your supper,
Two cods’ heads and a lump o’ butter.”
We find the children using instead of “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo” this
formula:
“Hiram, Jiram, bumbo lock
Six knives in a clock;
Six pins turning wins.
Dibby, dabby, o-u-t spells out.”
Or:
“Little man driving cattle
Don’t you hear his money rattle?
One, two, sky blue,
Out goes y-o-u.”
Or:
“Silver lock, silver key,
Touch, go run away!”
Or:
“Eetle, ottle, blue bottle,
Eetle, ottle, out!”
Still another is:
“Onery, ury, ickery, Ann,
Fillissy, follissy, Nicholas John,
Kubee, Kowbee, Irish Mary
They throw marbles against a wall for a sort of carom-shot, and call it
“bazzin’ marbles.” “The real precursor of the spring, like the sure
mating of the birds,” said an old man of the game.
In some places there is a local celebrity with a real talent for the
composition of what are known as “come-all-ye’s,” from the fact that the
minstrel is supposed to invite all who will to come and hear him chant
his lay. Every big storm or shipwreck is supposed to be commemorated in
appropriate verse by the laureate. For instance, one of these ballads
begins:
“The Lily Joyce stuck in the ice,
So did the Husky too;
Captain Bill Ryan left Terry behin’
To paddle his own canoe.”
Another runs thus:
“’Twas on the 29th of June,
As all may know the same;
The wind did blow most wonderful,
All in a flurry came.”
This was written and sung to a hymn tune.
Song is a common accompaniment of a shipboard task:
“Haul on the bow-line,
Kitty is me darlin’;
Haul on the bow-line,
Haul, boys, haul.”
If a boy doesn’t go across the Straits before he is sixteen, he must be
“shaved by Neptune.” It is almost a disgrace not to have gone to the
Labrador. Neptune is called “Nipkin.” “Nipkin’ll be aboard to shave you
tonight.”
When they are cleaning fish, the last man to wash a fish for the season
gets ducked in the tub.
Some of the older residents are walking epitomes of the island lore.
They know a great deal that never found lodgment in books. Matty
Mitchell, the 63-year old Micmac guide, now a prospector for the
Reid-Newfoundland Company, was a fellow-passenger on the mail-boat. He
was full of tales of the days when the wolf still roamed the island’s
inner fastnesses. I asked him when the last of which he knew were at
large. He said: “About thirty years ago I saw three on Doctor’s Hill. I
have seen none since. There are still lots of bears and many lynxes.
Once I was attacked by six wolves. I waited till the nearest was close
to me—then I shoved my muzzle-loader into his mouth and shot him and
the other five fell away. Another time I was attacked by three bears who
drove me into a lake where I had to stay till some men who had been with
me came to the rescue.
“My grandfather was with Peyton when Mary March and another Indian woman
were captured at Indian Lake. Mary March died at St. John’s, and was
buried there; the other one was brought back to the shore of the lake.”
“How do you know what minerals you are finding when you are
prospecting?” I asked.
“I was three times in the Museum at St. John’s,” he answered. “I see
everything in the place. That way I know everything that I look at when
I go to hunt for minerals and metals. I hear a thing once—I got it. I
see a thing once—I got it. I never found gold—but I got pearls from
clams, weighing as much as forty grains. I can’t stay in the house. I
must be out in the open. If I stay inside I get sick. I take colds. I’ve
been twice to the Grand Falls in Labrador. At the upper falls the river
rises seven times so”—he arched the back of his hand—“before the water
goes over. The biggest flies I ever saw are there. They bite right
through the clothes. You close the tent—sew up the opening. You burn up
all the flies inside. Next morning there are just as many.”
Another passenger was the Rev. Thomas Greavett, Church of England
“parson,” with a parish 100 miles long on the West Coast between Cow
Head and Flower’s Cove. He had to be medicine-man and lawyer too, and in
his black satchel he carried a stomach-pump, a syringe, eight
match-boxes of medicine and Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall.” He told me how
he hated to use the mail-boat for his parish visiting, for it generally
meant sleepless nights of pacing the deck or sitting in the lifeboat in
default of a berth. He carried a petition, to go before the Legislature,
reciting the many reasons why the poor little boat on which we were
travelling is inadequate to the heavy freight and passenger traffic in
which she is engaged. With accommodations for hardly more than 50
passengers, she has carried 210, 235 and even 300, which meant acute
discomfort for everybody and the open deck, night and day, for many
passengers. What is wanted is a big, heavy ice-breaker. The _Ethie_
never was meant by her Glasgow builders to fight the Humboldt Glacier
bit by bit as it falls into the sea. In December she was wrecked off Cow
Head in a gale, fortunately with no loss of life.
I don’t know of a harder-working lot than the crew and captain of a boat
that undertakes to carry freight and passengers between southern ports
of Newfoundland and the Labrador.