PATTERSON ON NEWFOUNDLAND DIALECT. Ixxili 
value, and (2), it is apphed rather contemptuously to young fellows 
between 16 and 20. Where we would apply to them such a term as 
hobbledehoys, a Newfoundlander would always call them bedlamers. 
Judge Bennett says, “ I have often had them so described in court. A 
policeman will say there were a lot of bed/amers standing at the corner, 
and accused was one of them,” etc. There is sufficient resemblance 
between the two classes to account for the use of the same name, but 
how this came first to be applied to either does not appear. 
Again for their work on the ice they have their own terms. ‘Thus 
a cake of ice is uniformly known as a pam of ice, and to pan is to gather 
to one place a quantity say of seals. This last, however, seems a 
survival of an obsolete English word meaning to join or close together. 
Ice ground fine is known as swish or sish ice, but broken into larger 
pieces is called slob ice, to either of which also might be applied the term 
Jolly, in common use on the North American coasts. When by the 
pressure of sea and storm the ice is piled in layers one upon the other, it 
is said to be rafted. Large cakes of ice floating about like small ice_ 
bergs are called growlers. Through the melting of the part under water 
they lose their equilibrium, so that sometime even a little noise will 
cause them to turn over with a sound like a growl. Hence their name. 
Driven by high winds they acquire such momentum that they carry 
destruction to any vessel crossing their course. One year so many 
accidents occurred from them, that it was known as the year of the 
growlers. The process of separating the skin of the young seal with the 
fat attached is called sculping, and the part thus separated is known by 
the sculp. This is also known as the pelt, in seal hunting that term 
always including the fat attached, though in hunting on land it is used 
to denote the skin alone. To these we may add swatching, watching 
open holes in the ice for seals to come up to shoot them, simply a 
corruption of seal watching. 
Being so much engaged with the sea, all their expressions are apt to 
be colored by life on that element. Thus a person going visiting will 
speak of going crudsing, and girls coming to the mainland to hire as 
servants will talk of shipping for three months, or whatever time they 
propose to engage. 
Independent of the sea, however, they have a number of words which 
seem to have been formed among themselves, some of which may be 
regarded as slang, but which are incommon use. I notice the following 
