84 THEISLAND ACADIANS

number of Acadians on the Island and the fact that they were concen- trated in a few small communities, one could hardly be surprised by the blood ties. Missionaries were often faced with this problem. Father de Calonne described the special circumstances of his congregation to Bishop Plessis in 1800, asking him for leniency with regard to dispensations:

| have already had the honour, | believe, to remark to your Lordship that there are three Acadian settlements, one in Malpeque, another in Rasticot and the third in Bay Fortune. In each case the settlements were formed by two or three families who produced many offspring, but without ever marrying anyone else, so that in each of the localities you will find that everyone is more or less related. Since they have not been established for more than forty years, the degree of cousinship is still very close. | cannot disapprove of the aversion they have for marrying their neighbours (the English, the Scots or the Irish) because it has meant that they have kept their faith, their customs and their piety intact. They can scarcely intermarry between the three settlements because they are too far apart to know each other. The result is that all the marriages are between relatives, and until | arrived third cousins were being married without any difficulty. Either the early missionaries had the power to do it, or thought they did. In any case I caused a great stir last year when I refused. (TR) '?*

The problem was further complicated by the fact that people did not always have the means to pay the fees established by the bishopric. In response to the difficulties Father de Calonne described, Monseigneur Plessis recommended flexibility under the circumstances in order to eliminate the risk of union between Acadians and people of some other religion. Monseigneur Plessis also suggested that he not be too demanding with regard to the dispensation fees in cases of extreme poverty. He also informed him that it was customary in the diocese to demand a few prayers or charity work from people who were incapable of paying’’®.

Missionaries often had a hard time getting their parishioners, who had been deprived of priests for a long time, to change some of their deeply rooted customs. Monseigneur Plessis did not approve of the habit of giving all newborn a private baptism without determining whether the state of their health warranted it. Nor did he approve of the function being performed by laymen. However, his missionary Father Beaubien did not find it easy to make people give up this practice so firmly entrenched in tradition. He wrote the following in