Far From Home (26 page)

Lammy coat – a short, heavy coat.

Lallick – the game of tag.

Lipritty skipping – hopping and skipping about haphazardly.

Lollied – moved slowly up and down like the wings of a bird in flight.

Mainderberries – sweet, minty, white berries growing on glossy leaves overhanging bogs.

Maldow – black, brown and green strands of “beard moss” on tree trunks.

Marming – visiting; going from home to home.

Mazard – head.

Meeami abashish – goodbye for a little while (Canadian Indian).

Merry Dancers – the Northern Lights; the Aurora Borealis.

Mewl – a low cry.

Moidering – muddling, addling.

Mooching – to be absent unlawfully: to go on the pip.

Mot – hole made in the ground to knock marbles into.

Mudsuckers – mythical creatures living in bogs. They will grab anyone who steps in the wet spongy ground.

Ose eggs – sea urchins (corruption of “whore's eggs”).

Painter – the rope used to tie a boat to a wharf or stage etc.

Parlour pudge – in the game of hopscotch, either of the two large adjoining squares.

Pips – dots on dice.

Piss-a-beds – dandelion flowers.

Pitty hole – grave.

Poll – top or back of the head.

Pooked – sticking out.

Pooks – hay piled in high heaps.

Pricklies – tiny, yellow-green fish found in ponds.

Puck – hit, strike.

Puddick – stomach.

Puffin – Atlantic sea parrot.

Rafter, to – sheets of ice buckling against other ice, forcing it to rise like a pinnacle.

Ragmoll – dirty or untidy person.

Randying – playing around. Joyriding.

Scrooched – bent down awkwardly.

Sculpins – large, ugly-looking fish with sharp fins.

Sculp pans – pans to hold seal meat after the skin and blubber have been sculped from it.

Smoky Jacks – soft, brown spongy puffballs found in marshes.

Strouters – vertical rails fixed to the side of a fishing stage or wharf.

Summer sickness – diarrhea.

Tatey – potato.

Tolt – a low rounded hill, sometimes with a steep rise.

Trimming – To move along close to, or on the edge of (as in trimming ice pans).

Walloping – moving quickly and clumsily.

Whelping – said of seals, or other animals giving birth.

Sources:
Dictionary of Newfoundland English
. Story, Kirwin, Widdowson. Breakwater, and from the author's manuscript
The Tongue of a Newfoundlander and Labradorian in Word,
Phrase, Superstition ....

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to those of Clarissa Dicks's family who wanted Clarissa to be the heroine of and the inspiration for a great story.

I would also like to thank The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council for its support.

Finally, thanks go to the staff of Flanker Press, to Dick Buehler, and to Susan Rendell.

Nellie P. Strowbridge, winner of numerous provincial and national awards, has been published nationally and internationally. Her work is capsuled in The National Archives and has been studied in schools and universities as far away as Belarus.

Strowbridge, a former columnist, editorial writer and essayist, has been Writer in the Library, a mentor to young writers and an adjudicator in the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Awards. She has also held school workshops and hosted Gabfest for International Women's Day in Cobh, Ireland where she was Writer-in-Residence. The Canadian Embassy in Dublin also sponsored a reading and a reception.

The author is a member of The Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador, The Writers' Union of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets, Page One, and The Newspaper Institute of America.

Her previous books include
Widdershins
: Stories of a Fisherman's Daughter,
Doors Held Ajar
(tri-author),
Shadows of the Heart
, and
Dancing on Ochre Sands
.