Mussels in the Corner

DESCRIPTION: "Indeed I's in love with you, Up all night in the foggy dew, 'Deed I's in love with you, Mussels in the corner." "Ask a bayman for a smoke, He will say his pipe is broke, Ask a bayman for a chew, He will bite it off of you." Other verses are similar
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1997 (Eric West, _Sing Around This One: Songs of Newfoundland & Labrador Vol. 2_)
KEYWORDS: love clothes drugs hardtimes dancing sailor
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
DT, MUSSLCRN*
ADDITIONAL: Ron Young, _Dictionary of Newfoundland and Labrador_, Downhome Publishing Inc., 2006, p. 261, "(Mussels in the Corner)" (1 excerpt)
Roud #26307
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Dirty Newfoundlanders
NOTES [117 words]: "Baymen" were people of Newfoundland who did not come from St. John's -- meaning that they probably lived on the coast of one of Newfoundland's many bays. The word seems to have been in use by 1792 (StoryKirwinWiddowson, pp. 32-33). The relatively sophisticated people of St. John's ("Townies") often had a low opinion of other Newfoundlanders -- and vice versa. Wright, p. 35, for instance, writes that "the common antagonism between 'baymen' (rural people) and 'townies' (St. John's people)... finds great expression on lavatory walls at the [Memorial] university."
This conflict between the people of Newfoundland may well be the subject of "Saint John's Girl," and possibly "Irishmen All" as well. - RBW
Bibliography

StoryKirwinWiddowson: G. M. Story, W. J. Kirwin, and J. D. A. Widdowson, editors, Dictionary of Newfoundland English, second edition with supplement, Breakwater Press, 1990
Wright: Guy Wright, Sons & Seals: A Voyage to the Ice, ISER (Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland), 1984

Last updated in version 5.2
File: YDN261

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