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86
heaven."llaughs].... When we came from England, cause I belong
here but I was over there a long time but we came in 1957. I came over
to go in charge of Queen's College. so we'd get our meat and we liked
the meat from Lawlor's and so we used to have orders of it and the
Church of England butcher was quite annoyed about this, and he said,
"I thought you'd get your meat from us, you see, and my wife said,
"Well, I just only wanted good meat. I didn't know there was Church
of England meat and Roman Catholic meat," she wasn't used to this
stuff; but, {'was the same: you were supposed to get the Anglican
plumber (0 do your plumbing because you knew. We used to know
thai everything Roman Catholics wanted done, they would only lise
their own, always would.
IP: How would you know that this plumber was Anglican or Roman
C1tholic?
CE: Oh well, you just know that [laugh], we used to say. I C.tn tell one by
looking at them [laugh1. You'd be surprised how much yOll can tell by
looking.
IP: Like what, for instance?
CE: I don't know, he looked Irish. We could smell them out, b'y (laugh)I
Ilomogeneity of thought and practice had for effect a high degree of cohesiveness.
This congruence of kinship, religion, economics and residence over a long period of time
resuhed in expected behaviour within the community members. By contrast, the "stranger"
in these closed societies represented the outside world, unknown and unpredictable; Ihe
outsider was regarded as potentially dangerous, maybe malevolent, and in such a close-knit
society, might even function as scapegoat. "You can't trust strangers," was a community
idiom. 2 Typical aliens to that community were "catholics" and "mounties;" their evocation
for the purpose of threatening children to obedience is another illustration of the local
residents' strong sense of "belonging" to a place, as they say.3 While relationships among
one's peers were personal, infonnal and friendly, a rigid etiquette prevailed in relationships
between persons of all ages. Residents were tacitly bound by solidarity and reciprocity;
though individual pride was put in relying as far as possible on oneself, help could not be
refused but had 10 be reciprocated: 4
Reciprocity was the community nonn. People helped each other build
houses, care for the sick, shear sheep, and raise children, ant;! fed and
fuelled those who had a bad season. People with disfiguring birthmarks,
operable cripples and others, were helped by the pooling of community
IMUNFLA 87·159/CI2033.
2pcggy Marlin, "Drop Dead: Witchcraft Images and Ambiguities in Newfoundland Socicty,"
Culture &: Trodilion 2 (1977): 39.
3raris. Cat 135-36.
4S zwcd, Private 106-08.