=—lL1l7- 
     
    

    
     Casual conversations had no sharply defined time limits. When people 
     
     met, th:y usually paused for a chat unless, of course,they happened to be : 
     
     onty slightly acquainted. In such an event they would probably exchange a 
     
     "good morning," or "good evening." On a market day in Charlottetown, a a 
     
     farmer standing on the Market Square beside his load of hay, potatoes, or 
     
    

    
     neighbor 
     
     pork, might grvet a newty-arriving/in some thing like this fashion: "Well, 
     
     Angus (or it might be Tim, Dougal, or Pat) so ye came to the city today, 
     
     did ye"? To which Angus would reply: "I did." With this somewhat obvious 
     
     fact thus established, they would presently get down to a discussion of 
     
     ‘crops, prices, politics, or other subject of mutual interest. Though, to an 
     
     outsider, all this might appear like a waste of time and words, it was 
     
     actually an informal way of acknowledging each other's presence and setting 
     
     the scene for serious conversation. It was also, to some extent, a bit of 
     
     casual banter -- a part of the deliberate but highly efficient Style in 
     
     which they went about all their activities. | 
     
    

    
     Few of those old idioms and catch=-phrases seem to have survived; most 
     
     of them appear to have faded completely from present memory. Many commonly 
     
     used words were legacies from our Scottish and.Irish forebears. Once, durin« 
     
     my seafaring days, I developed an infected finger, the result of an 
     
     imbedded splinter. When I remarked to our old Scottish skipper that I had 
     
     a "beeling" finger, he demanded to know where I had picked up the word. 
     
     When I assured him that it was a comnonly used word at home, he declared 
     
     that he had never before heard it outside the Hebrides. Another word that 
     
     described the same sort of lesion, which I have never heard since leaving 
     
     the Island, is "whitlow." A frequently-used word of Scottish origin was 
     
     "hap," meaning to wrap up, as in a coat or quilt. 
     
    

    
     In Irish-oriented communities, such as Kelly's Cross and Emyvale, there 
     
    
   
   
    
     was a vuriety of Gaelic words in daily use. A boring, tiresome, or