Devine's Folk Lore of Newfoundland in Old Words, Phrases, and Expressions, Their Origin and Meaning (review)

A facsimile reprint coming 60 years after Patrick Kevin Devine first published Devine's Folk Lore of Newfoundland raises many questions. Is the reprint simply a nostalgic evocation of life in old Newfoundland—a point underscored by the reproduction of advertisements for soaps and medicines and by the popularity of this book in Newfoundland tourist shops—or is it something more? Is it, as Philip Hiscock says in his preface, "a snapshot of the cultural and intellectual milieu of Newfoundland's capital city in the 1930s" (p. v)? Does it contain material that has been overlooked by later compilers and scholars of Newfoundland lore and language, or has it been made redundant by later scholarship? At the very least, can a case be made that the book brings forward the point of view of one of Newfoundland's native scholars, who had spent a lifetime of involvement in the social life of St. John's before publishing this collection as he approached his 80th year.

This reprinting of Devine's Folk Lore is successful on most of the criteria by which it is possible to judge such a work. Hiscock's preface gives a brief biography of Devine, who was a member of an influential family from King's Cove in Bonavista Bay, north of St. John's. After studying in King's Cove, St. John's, and St. Francis Xavier's College in Nova Scotia, Devine found his niche as a newspaper reporter and, for 12 years, as Clerk of the House of Assembly. Hiscock provides further evidence of the link between community and text by noting the role of Devine's cousin, Gerald S. Doyle, as advertiser in (and hence subsidiary of) the book. For Doyle, the success of Devine's Folk Lore, in addition to selling drugstore items, might have helped in the promotion of his own popular songbooks.

Coming from this background, Devine's approach to his subject is revealing even in this short treatment. Most of the book is laid out like a dictionary (pp. 6-59), followed by brief sections under headings such as "Superstitions, Phrases, and Weather Lore," "Proverbs and Sayings," and "Superstitions and Local Phrases." Sometimes the dictionary goes into relatively long discussions of usage, as in Devine's observation (p. 31) that the word lob, while meaning literally "a small portion," is used ironically "when a greater portion was expected." The additional comment that "Under the same circumstances I have heard, 'Oh, you broke your heart, didn't you!' " is not lexicographically relevant, but it is useful in giving a sense of how such expressions feature in social interaction. Richer descriptions of social life follow from lexically indexed "superstitions and local phrases" such as Solomon Gosse's Birthday and Phil's Fish (p. 73); the former denotes a day when salt pork and pudding would be served to a crew out of the usual, more meager schedule, while the latter refers to a practice of segregating fish for cash sales in a devious manner. Though the glimpses are brief, we thus see the world of Newfoundland lore and language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through Devine's carefully observant, if not academically rigorous, eyes.

What, then, of the comparison with later scholarship? The lack of treatment of traditional narrative or other major genres in the book makes comparison with the later generation of Newfoundland folklore scholarship difficult, though even comments such as Devine's localization of the phrase "either feast or a famine" (p. 61) to refer specifically to the seasonal aspect of the Newfoundland trade has implications for the way in which widespread proverbial expressions may be perceived and used. A more apt comparison is to the monumental Dictionary of Newfoundland English (DNE...