everything in my power to put her under, but she’s still on the surface. I will, however, hold her no spite; I forgive her from my heart, and to show you how genuine is my forgiveness, I make you all witnesses of my good in ten tions towards her. One of these days I ’11 have the sad duty to perform of burying her, and I fully intend that her last resting place shall be properly marked. I will place a suitable slab at her head; it will not be costly, for I cannot afford any such thing; but a common spruce slab from Wright’s mill, decorated as to the top with a box of paper collars, and bearing the inscription in humble verse of my own making:

“Here the big woman doth lie, She’s at peace and so am I.”

Nothing could have killed her more effectually. She went home directly after Mass and emptied her remaining bottles, while from that day an eye-full couldn’t be obtained in the settlement. Some short time after an old customer, thinking her conversion partly feigned, called round and solicited an appetizer, but was greeted with an emphatic: ‘Bad cess* to the drop, then, since I got the ‘readin’!”24

(* ‘Bad cess’ is an Irish expression meaning bad luck.. ‘Readin’ is an expression for a scolding.)

Notes and References for Chapter 3:

1.

Archives of Canada).

Topographical Map of Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. D]. Lake, CE. 1863. (Public

For the purposes of this study the boundaries of the five communities are defined as follows: Kinkora- Shamrock includes households along the Anderson

Road in Township 27 between the line separating

30

Prince and Queens Counties, and the south west branch of the Dunk River which crosses this road at the farm of E. Brennan. Maple Plains includes households along the South West Road in Township 27 in the south east corner of this township. Mid- dleton includes households along the Anderson Road, in Township 27, between the south west branch of the Dunk River, the J. Wright farm, to the place where this road intersects the boundary of Township 26; and also includes households adjacent to this sec— tion of the road inside Township 26. Newton includes households in Township 26, along the road which runs parallel to the boundary of Township 27, south of the Dunk River, and east from the Middleton

settlement.

Prince Edward Island Census Returns, 1861, Prince County, Townships 26 and 27. (Public Archives of Canada). The number of households examined in detail, and the population in each settlement are: Kinkora-Shamrock, 56 households and 351 people; Maple Plains, 19 households and 118 people; Mid— dleton, 19 households and 131 people; and Newton, 20 households and 141 people. A total of 741 people in 114 households, giving an average of 6.5 persons per household.

G. Kevin Farmer. Kinkora: The First Seventy Years. 1982: 33. An unpublished manuscript at University of Prince Edward Island library, Charlottetown, P.E.I.

Report of the Land Commission 1860, in the Ex- aminer, December 10, 1860.

Hon. James C. Pope, speaking in the House of Assembly, reported in the Examiner, July 21, 1861.