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    Thanks to the fieldwork and research of the great Breton folklorist Paul Sébillot (1846-1918), we possess precise data which would have otherwise been most difficult to obtain: Almost all the Bretons fishing in Newfoundland are from the bays of St. Malo and St. Brieuc. They spend half the year on board ships taking them to the fishing grounds; the other half of the year, more or less at the end of autumn, during the winter and at the beginning of spring, they remain in their native villages where they practice an inshore fishery from small boats and also small-scale farming. There are even some Newfoundlanders [i.e. Bretons who fish in Newfoundland] who live quite from the sea, only becoming sailors during the Banks season, when they work from St. Pierre schooners. They are in fact peasant-sailors….

    Sébillot seems to disregard the shore fishery and the importance of these "peasant sailors" in his research, but in acknowledging that they passed through St. Pierre in search of work, he does confirm my point.

    Sébillot gives details, too, on the provenance of the Bretons:

    It is they [the peasant-sailors] who, in order to be taken on by the captains, make their way to the Newfoundlanders' Fair, also called the Sailors' Fair, held on the first Monday of December in the Old Town [of St. Malo]. It rarely begins before 10 a.m. and does not go on after 4 p.m. All the lads, some 2,000 in all, come in carriages with their families. They come from Cancale and St. Coulomb; but most of all from the towns and villages of the cantons of Châteauneuf, Pleudihen, Pleugueneuc and Dol. As all these lads are destined for the St. Pierre schooners, it is naturally the skippers of these vessels who come to the fair to sign them on. As for the crews headed for the Banks fishery, they are made up of professional fishermen, and it is not rare for whole crews to come from the same village.