PATTERSON ON NEWFOUNDLAND DIALECT. Ixvil 
the words jine and finely to mean very much or very good. ‘* We 
enjoyed ourselves fine.” ‘‘ How are you to-day? O I’m fine.” “ He 
is doing finely.” This usage could not have been acquired by intercourse 
with Scotch, as there are very few such on the island out of St. Johns. 
The last two words are from the Latin and come into Old English 
through the French, from which the use must have been separately 
derived. 
III. I would now notice a number of words and phrases of a mis- 
cellaneous character, that have been introduced in various ways, or have 
arisen among the people through the circumstances of their lives. 
I have already mentioned that though a large proportion of the 
population are of Irish descent, so as to affect the accent of the present 
generation, yet their dialect draws few words from this source. There 
are, however, some such. Thus we can scarcely mistake the origin of 
the use of the term entirely at the end of a sentence to give force to it. 
Then path, pronounced with the hard Irish th, was applied to a road or 
even the streets of a town. Not long ago one might hear in St. Johns 
of the “lower pat-h” or the “upper put-h.” So the use of the term 
gafier, a contraction of granfer, itself a corruption of grandfather, as 
applied to children only, must have been derived from Ireland, in some 
parts of which it is common. From that quarter also came, if I mistake 
not, the use of the term boys in addressing men. It is used indeed to 
some extent elsewhere. English commanders, either of vessels or 
soldiers, use it when addressing their men in affectionate familiarity. 
Shakespeare also has it: ‘“‘ Then to sea, boys,” “ Tempest,” II. 2. But 
the usage is specially characteristic of the Irish, and in Newfoundland 
it is universal, in whatever men are employed, whether on board a vessel 
or working on land. I believe that the use of the word rock, to denote a 
stone of any size, even a pebble thrown by a boy, which is universal in 
this island, is from the same quarter. 
From the long time that the French have been fishing on this coast, 
we might have expected that the language of the residents would have 
received accessions from them. We find, however, only one or two 
words that we can trace to this source. Thus the word pew, an instru- 
ment consisting of a shaft with a sharp piece of iron like one prong of a 
fork at the end of it, used for throwing fish from the boats on to the 
stages, whence the verb to pew, to cast them up in this manner, seems to 
be the French word pzew, which is defined as meaning a stake or pale, 
