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There's an argument unfinished 'twixt his lordship and the judge,
And the doctor takes a hand in for to settle an old grudge;
It's about this Cabot landfall they are making such a racket,
Some say he came as passenger in Billy Coady's packet.
Some say 'twas Bonavista he discovered after tea,
And more say 'twas Tommy Hawsays, Bonavista's Sigaree.
"Sure I turned a coat for Cabot," says a woman on the settle,
"By the same he drank that evening what cold tea was in the kettle;
And he eat enough pancakes and pigs-heads in the larder,
For to feed the population of Quebec and Moreton's Harbour.
"I remember well John Cabot when he hadn't got a dollar,
And he used a wart was on his neck to button on his collar;
And a shocking hand for smoking, and a devil for tobaccy,
With a scattered foxey whisker like an Upper Island cracky."
"I was to the ice with Cabot," says a man from Tilton Harbour,
"He was two springs in the Walrus and another with Joe Barbour;
And another spring with Foley in a schooner called the Blinker,
That's the spring the crew turned manus, they said Cabot was a jinker."
"Sure I went to school with Cabot," says a man named Billy Brandon,
"It was called the Orphan Asylum where St. Patrick's Hall is standing;
He was duller than molasses, and his tongue was like a clapper,
And his fingers were all broken from the master's hardwood slapper."
"Sure I know John Cabot's mother," says a spinster named Kate Abbott,
"And her name is Patricia Morgan, that's before she married Cabot;
I remember her three sisters: Mary, Joe and Julia Johnson,
And another married Flavin that was living in Wisconsin.
"I remembered well John Cabot, in his younger days was a draper,
And the first that I remember for to start a Sunday paper;
He was doing fine for one week, and his business it was rising,
When the government had set in and it stopped his advertising."
"I remember well John Cabot," says a woman from Seattle,
"Sure he worked two years at Pitt's twisting tails and driving cattle;
And his father, old Sebastian, came to live with Betsy Spooner,
And he'd drink enough of whisky for to float a Yankee schooner."
Note: John Cabot discovered Newfoundland in 1497.
From the Dictionary Of Newfoundland English:
Cracky - a small, noisy mongrel dog; frequently in the phrase 'saucy as a cracky,' applied to a person who usually has a saucy tongue or a person who will answer back.
Foxey - reddish-coloured; sandy-haired; rufous.
Jinker - a person (on a vessel) bringing bad luck; a Jonah.
Manus - any sealer who, by refusing to work, shall wilfully compel any master of a sealing vessel to give up the voyage; of one or more sealers, to refuse to work in order to force the captain to return to port; mutinize.
