When I was fast asleep

And he wrote it in a letter

She is all my own to keep.

Some of the older people also sang at the concerts. I remember Louise and Muriel Allen singing Silent Night. Louise was a real good singer and played the organ. I will not mention everyone’s part, but my brother Lionel was always left to the last. His recitation was:

Take the tinsel from the tree

And shake the great balls down Strip off the red, the gold, the blue But leave behind the brown

All the songs have how been sung The speeches have been said

So wind the clock, put out the cat It’s time to go to bed.

RELIGION ON THE ISLAND

The MacCormack and Gotell families were Roman Catholic; everyone else on the Island was Protestant. Sometimes the Gotells would go over to Launching on Sundays, and travel with someone to church at St. Georges. When Dan MacCormack was our teacher, they would stay after school to be taught their catechism. Our formal religion consisted of one or two trips a year by a Minister from Georgetown. The sermon would be held in the school and we kids would be sent to Uncle Nathan’s for extra hymn books for the service. Our real clergyman was our Grandmother, Fanny. She was Presbyterian and a very religious woman. Sunday was a special day. She would read to us from the Bible and have us recite passages, many of which I remember to this day. She and her brother Nathan were real good singers, and would sing us all the old hymns. We were not allowed to sing any songs other than hymns on Sunday. You could not play cards, and you did not work on Sundays except to feed the animals. Sometimes on Sundays a group of kids would walk the shore around the whole Island. If we were gone too long, someone would come on horseback looking for us.

The older people lived up to what they believed in. They also believed in a lot of superstition. It was bad luck to walk under a ladder.

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