PATTERSON ON NEWFOUNDLAND DIALECT. xlv 
with some intermixture of North American Indians and Africans, and 
other elements in less proportion. These all brought with them various 
folk-tales, legends and superstitions, and as these different races remain 
in a large measure distinct, they retain them to a good degree still. As 
they mix with other races and become more educated, they may lose 
them, but often the intermixture tends to their wider extension. In the 
same way there arises an interchange of words and phrases, which form 
dialectic peculiarities more or less widely spread according to circum- 
stances. 
Recently my attention was directed to the folk-lore and folk-speech 
of Newfoundland. I had not more than begun to mingle with her 
people till I observed them using words in a sense different from what 
I had ever heard elsewhere. This was the case to some extent in the 
speech of the educated, in their law proceedings and in the public press, 
but was of course more marked among the uneducated. Among the 
latter particularly I found, in addition, words in use which were entirely 
new tome. Further intercourse convinced me that these peculiarities 
presented an interesting subject of study, and after some enquiry I pre- 
pared two papers, the first of which was read before the Montreal branch 
of the American Folk-lore Society, and published in the American 
Folk-lore Journal for January-March, 1895, and the other was read 
before that society at their late meeting and published in the same 
journal. It has been thought desirable that the results of my enquiries 
should be brought under the notice of Nova Scotian students, and I 
have therefore consented to condense my two papers into one adding 
such additional information as I have since received and to present it 
before the Institute of Science. 
It may seem strange that I should have directed such particular 
attention to the dialectic forms of Newfoundland, where I was quite a 
stranger, while there remains a similar field in Nova Scotia quite unculti- 
vated. But it was just because I was a stranger that my ear at once 
caught the sound of unusual words, or of words used in unusual senses, 
and I was led to these investigations. Equally interesting forms of 
speech are perhaps to be found in Nova Scotia, but they await the 
investigations perhaps of some stranger who may come to sojourn 
among us. 
In explanation of the origin of these peculiarities it is to be kept in 
view that the most of the original settlers of Newfoundland came either 
