PATTERSON OX NEWFOUNDLAND DIALECT. Ixxiii 



value, and (2), it is applied 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 bedlamers 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 pan 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 sivish or sish ice, but broken into larger 

 pieces is called slob ice, to either of which also might be applied the term 

 lolly, 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 groicl.ers. 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 swatcliing, 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 cruising, and girls coming to the mainland to hire as 

 servants will talk of shaping 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 in common use. I notice the following 



