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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.