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Remember friends as you pass by
As you are now so once I was
As I am now SO you shall be
Prepare for death and follow me.'
195
Strict compliance with the church's commandments ensured that death, even tragic,
would not be unprepared for. The following prayer, Frank Galgay told me, is recited
still in his family:
Goodnight God, I'm going to bed
Wake us over. prayers are said,
And if I die before I wake
I commend my soul to God to take. 2
It may be no coincidence that the Blessed Virgin, 51. Joseph and St. Anne. who, in
Catholic tradition, are panicularly invoked for "a gocxl death,"] are especially popular in
Newfoundland.
7.4. "Happy dealh"
While death was to be prepared for throughout life, disposition at the moment ofdeath
detennined one's 10(.4 Fifteenth-century iconography abounds with representations of the
dying person's bed surrounded by devils and angels ready to dispute his soul. The batlle
was thought as good as won if one was properly prepared by the prieSt, God's intercessor
on earth, which essentially meant receiving absolution in due time.5 In Newfoundland,
however, Catholics had been used not to leave it all to the last moment: an elderly person,
who suddenly started to go to church more than usual, was "making his/her soul" or
"making hislher bed softer:"6
FG: People usually over the age of 60 usually use the expression "I'm going
to make my soul," and that, ''I'm going to make my soul," that's a very
common expression with older people, nOt this generation. For
example, if my mother heard of a fiftyish or seventy, who is carousing,
either drinking or womanizing or acting up, whatever it was, you'd
ICase}' 308; James Deetz, "Remember Me as You Pass By," In Small ThIngs Forgollen: the
Archeology of Early American Life (New York: Doubleday, 1977) 64-90.
2MUNFLA 87·159/CI2034; see also Poole 6.
3Aries I: 175; Lc Goff 243.
"Aries 1: 109.
5 Aries I: 84; 10 the terms "last rites," "viaticum" and "Extreme Unction," tne Catholic
Church in recent years has preferred that of "sacrament of the sick," in Ihe hope of
restoring its proper sense as sustaining those in need in full consciousness of their
situation rather than in their last agony; see also MUNFLA 87·159/CI2030.
6MUNFLA ms 70-27, p. 2.