De Grave was the name of the wine used in Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Cask of Amontillado,” and part of the name of the place where I grew up. I was born in Port de Grave, and if place names are any indication, I “belong to” a strange place.
I grew up in the lun of hills away from the cove and other people. I couldn’t run next door without getting out of breath. Next door was around a turn and up a hill one way, and a ways and a turn in the road the other way. In winter I could go sliding up on Caroline’s knob and down on Uncle Esau’s hump.
As Gerald Andrews so aptly put it in Port de Grave Place Names, Port de Grave has nine Heads, an Upper and Lower Backside, and seven Holes. Its body has 12 Points with Darbys Arm and Darbys Leg and it wears an Old Woman’s Apron. If you want bull there’s Bull Cove, Bulls Head, Bulls House Hill. There’s Calf Gulch, Cow Fall, The Old Cow, and The Calf.
To add to Gerald’s observation, you enter Port de Grave over Happy Jack’s Hill, past Fairy Lane, Graveyard Hill, and Mother Shea’s Marsh where a character nicknamed Happy Jack danced his way over steep Bareneed Hills beating the drum (first for the Orangemen and then for the Salvation Army). You continue down in the valley below Jail House Mountain where there was once a jail-house that housed criminals and the insane, as if they were one and the same. You can take a sidestep to Sandy Cove or you can carry on past Chapel Lane, the Roman Catholic Cemetery where Happy Jack claimed to have seen a ghost, past Meetin’ House Lane, Mick’s Hill,to Dawe’s Hill on one side and Taylor’s Hill on the other side where my great-grandfather Taylor lived, past Church Hill and Jordon Town to Ship Cove, then Ship Cove Pond Head to Ship Cove Pond Foot where I was born.
You can walk up to Red Head, go in from Red Head Side to Willie Whites Cow Fall, above The Plain and Jacky Dawe’s Mash upward to Waterford Hill, down to Danels Hole beside Buck’s Hill, and Sam Danes Gulch, looking toward Poxeys, then back to Whale’s Back, Patrick’s Pier, and Fiddler’s Gulch and Windy Hill by Lover’s Leap where Charles Dawe and Brigitte Wareford fell over a 60-foot cliff in 1864 after a rail was sawed by the girl’s brother. Your walk will take you to Grandma’s Cove, Lobster’s Gulch, Chums Hill, Blow Me Down Bight. You pass Sam’s Mash, Spring Drung, The Growl, England, Poxville, and London through Blow Me Down Head above M’Lard Rock and Pancake Rock, to the Devil’s Chair or Golden Cup. You carry on past White Point, Spinning Wheel Gulch down to Crows Gulch out from No Denial beside Jacky Doughboys Hill, out to Pick Eyes Cove, Square Cliff, Pick Eyes Head, Bad Shelter, The Spellin to Swile Rocks, Aunt Lottie’s Gulch, Hibb’s Hole, across Cliff Path, Kennedy’s Hill, Clemisses Head, Pea Island, Rats’ Island, Injun (Engine) Island beside Lears Cove, Dundee Room, Horse Cove Point, up The Highlands to The Shelter, down to Cranberry Mash, Net Point, Air Crawl, Snarter’s Head, Cook Room, Grand Daddy’s Gulch, Chains, Green Point, Lighthouse, Dullyfare (Dullifaire), Seacat Rock, Butter ’n’ Shore Point, Mainsail Cove, Rum Cove, Tunnel.
If that’s not enough places to weary your legs, you can always go berry picking from Partridgeberry Hill to Blueberry Hill and in over Neck Road to take a spell on Mother’s Rock.
You can come back to First and Second Lookouts and stand facing the Atlantic sea path that leads straight to Ireland and the genetic path that connects Ireland and Newfoundland.
American Shore ∼ the stretch of coastline from Ramea Islands on the south coast, westward around Cape Ray, and up the west coast to Quirpon Island on the east tip of the Great Northern Peninsula.
Avalonia ∼ Ferryland.
barrisway (barachois) ∼ a large brackish water pond opening to the sea over a sandbar.
Bay d’Espoir (despair) ∼ Bay of Hope.
blow-me-down ∼ a name given to an isolated headland rising steeply from the water. There are harsh downdrafts of wind.
bread and cheese ∼ name for a rocky treeless hill.
Cambriola, Cambrioll (Little Wales, Little Britain) ∼ a short-lived name for the Avalon Peninsula until 1842.
carey crumble ∼ name of fishing grounds.
chute ∼ a St. John’s name for a steep path by a stream.
Cobbs Camp ∼ fishing grounds.
Colchos ∼ Trepassey.
Cold East Point ∼ Coley’s Point.
Coopers (Cuppers) ∼ Cupids (Britaniola). Cupids, named by the French as Nova Francia, was the first English colony of Newfoundland.
Crown of the Valley ∼ Pasadena, a town on Newfoundland’s west coast.
Devil’s Dancing Pool, The ∼ a lake or river where there are rapids (near Shell Bird Island).
Down North ∼ Labrador.
dullifaire ∼ passage thoroughfare.
drung ∼ narrow lane between gardens.
French Shore ∼ valued fishing and curing grounds held by the French until 1904. The west coast was once called the French Shore.
front ∼ the ice-panned seas northeast of Newfoundland where seals are hunted.
Funk Island (on the northeast coast) ∼ a nesting colony for seabirds: an ecological reserve.
funnel ∼ a narrow neck of land or isthmus; a passage between steep hills.
Gaff Topsails ∼ an area of land 333 miles from St. John’s made famous by the Newfoundland Express’s hard climb. The train was often stuck in snow as high as telegraph poles.
Havre de Grace ∼ the French name for Harbour Grace (1600s).
holdin’ ground ∼ a place not too smooth or too sandy to hold an anchor.
key ∼ low island or reef.
l’ance ∼ a small bay or cove.
Lookout, The ∼ an early name for Signal Hill.
Lower Sandy Point ∼ Lawrenceton.
Newfoundland’s Grand Banks ∼ areas of shoal water forming the offshore fishing banks, once the most celebrated fishing grounds in the world.
nuddick (noddick) ∼ a small, bare, rounded hill.
nunatak ∼ a high mountain peak protruding through glacial ice.
“over on the shore” ∼ from Manuels to Kelligrews.
overfall ∼ a place in a pond or river that goes down in an abrupt slope.
paps ∼ the name for a pair of prominently rounded hills. (Paps were once referred to as breast nipples.)
Paradise ∼ a town just outside St. John’s.
pinchgut (famishgut) ∼ a narrow channel of water.
Queer Island ∼ an island at Batteau, Labrador.
rattles ∼ 1. narrow passages through which water runs so fast it makes a noise. 2. an area of water kept open by strong currents.
rough shop ∼ a strait, channel, or harbour that is difficult to navigate and hazardous to fishermen.
Sandy Cove’s heart ∼ Sandy Cove, Conception Bay, hangs out a sweetheart shingle. Below its cliffs, in an outreach of rock, the sea has carved a heart-shaped cut-out.
section ∼ community. The Codroy Valley is divided into fourteen sections.
shag ∼ a nickname for Grand Bank.
shoreline ∼ a fishing room.
skerries ∼ small islets, underwater shoals or rocks on which the sea breaks.
Spanish Room ∼ a tract of land on the front of a cove used as the fishing room of Spanish fishermen.
square ∼ 1. a short residential street sometimes blocked at the end. 2. a lot cluster around an ancestral farmland sometimes with houses making the square.
St. Shotts ∼ the graveyard of the Atlantic. In earlier times, residents, reportedly, practiced an old Irish custom of hanging flashlights on cow horns to disorient ships so they would strike a reef out from the high cliffs and be shipwrecked.
tasialuk ∼ a freshwater lake. The Eskimo feared it, believing it contained a monster that would eat people and their sleds.
tickle ∼ a narrow, difficult strait. tinkershare island ∼ a small, wooded island. tolt ~ a low, rounded hill.
Newfoundlanders are insulted when mainlanders pronounce Newfoundland, as New-fund-lund. Is it any wonder that they do? We sing the Ode to Newfoundland by pronouncing our island as New Found Land.
Baccalieu (Baccalaos) ∼ Portugal’s name for Newfoundland by the 1800s.
Britaniola ∼ the name for Newfoundland in the 1600s. fish and fog land ∼ a jocular term for Newfoundland.
Isla de Bacalaos (Island of Cod) ∼the Portuguese name for Newfoundland in the sixteenth century.
Ktaquamkuk ∼ Newfoundland’s Mi’kmaq name.
La Nova Francia ∼ Newfoundland’s French name in 1556.
TalamhanÉisc (Talonvanish) or Talamh An Éisc: Land of The Fish ∼ theIrish Gaelic name for Newfoundland. (This island is the only place outside of the British Isles that has an Irish Gaelic name.)
Terra Nova ∼ a French name for Newfoundland in 1598.
Transatlantic Ireland ∼ term given to Newfoundland by Irish people making numerous trips between Newfoundland and Ireland.
Wee-soc-kadao ∼ an Indian name for Newfoundland.