"An' even if ye falls troo," added Uncle Tucker, the carpenter, "dat don't matter. Ye can go on workin' ahl day, an' no harm. Y'r clothes soon freezes, an' kipps ye wahym on de inside of 'em. An' at night ye thaw out by de bogey, till de steam comes out, an' ye're ahl rate. I know lots o' fellers fall in on purpose, to get a glutch o' rum."
"An' de laysses' [least] little piece o' sish [thin ice] is enough to copy [jump] on," Stirge assured me. "Dat is, sir, if you'm annyways spry!"
an excerpt from Vikings of the Ice, being the log of a Tenderfoot on the Great Newfoundland Seal Hunt, by George Allan England, originally published in 1924.
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photo: 25.01.017 S.S. Adventure with sealers on ice, post-1905from The Geography Collection
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Arranged and Described by Linda White and Claire Jamieson
Archives and Manuscripts Division, Memorial University of Newfoundland
September 1999
Each week Rattling Books explores a "word of the week" from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English here at the REDEFiNE iT Blog and also on the original facebook group .
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