Bob: I always got that vague impression from the chorus. I don't have either Fowke's nor Creighton's books on hand, but from what I recall reading in them thirty years ago, there wasn't much of an explanation offered. Although I do seem to recall one of them indicating that the song was post-Confederation ...

"Sandy, I think meself is right - the verses are not nonsense" -

Don't you have that the wrong way around - Sandy said the chorus was "nonsensical"; I said that the verses make fairly clear sense, and there must be a sensible interpretation of the chorus ...

"I do agree that is more likely a mainland song than one native to Cape Breton. If it was as popular as Folke credits, it would still be much better known in the local tradition here."

I have always wondered about that too - but Fowke quite emphatically situates it as a Cape Breton song; I believe she says it was practically a "national anthem" of Cape Breton. And I don't think she would say that without some basis. Creighton too, I believe, says it is a CB song - of course, one of them could be more or less quoting the other. However, it does seem strange that, as you say, it hasn't stayed alive in the oral tradition.

That said, my sense is that it is either a CB creation or was adapted to CB. There are the overt references (East Cape Breton, Bras D'Or); also, the mention of "the Newfoundlander" as a source of annoyance, an annoyance it is implied that listeners or other singers would sympathize with - the immigration of Newfoundlanders as cheap labour was a particular cause for ill-feeling in industrial CB (that's what Dirty Yankee Miners is about - anyone know that one?). Also - and here I'm really going out on a limb - the line 'Whose wife, you cannot stand her, since high-living she began', seems to me to have a distinctly CB feel both in the particular twist of its sardonic humour, and also in its syntax ('Whose wife, you cannot stand her'). And there's more - there's a recording of Helen(?) Oxner singing a Helen Creighton version with an additional last verse:

How well do I remember,
On the fifteenth of September,
We crossed the Little Narrows,
And landed in Boisdale;
We went down to Joe Dowey,
And had a lemon-howdy,
And we all got rowdy-dowdy,
On the road to Margaree.

Obviously what the song is really all about! It does sound like a later tag-on, but it indicates that the song was indeed known and sung by someone in CB.

Incidentally, there is another verse I got from somewhere, an introduction:

One fine evening at my leisure,
I thought it quite a pleasure,
To write a local ditty
On the subject of the day;
So I pinched a three-cent taper,
And a sheet of foolscap paper,
And I sat down quite contentedly,
To pass the time away.

That's all I have to offer for now ...