Nick E., you've missed my point. Yes, "chinked" is the word in the song, but it's not the word that would have been used by a boatbuilder in Newfoundland. My source for this, as I said, is David Taylor, author of Boatbuilding in Winterton, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, whose book and photos became the basis of the Winterton Boat Building Museum. If you think you know better, that's fine. I'm not the expert on that.

Of course, I also missed your point. I see now you were joking about Alan Doyle...sorry!

Peter makes good points--using the wrong words COULD be a way of making fun of the boat builder, or it COULD be because Aunt Virtue ran a boarding house, but it can't be both!

Greg B., it's funny you should mention Bill Doerflinger. I am one of the people to whom Doerflinger's collection of recordings is entrusted, at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. I am working with his collection right now, in fact, and was just quoted at length on it in the magazine English Dance and Song. Many people on this list know my real name...if you don't you can find out pretty easily.

I did make one mistake above, which I myself corrected later. So, shame on me, I suppose, for daring to admit it.

Since Greg B. casts aspersions on my credentials as a folklorist with his obnoxious quotation marks, I might as well say that my PhD in folklore is from the University of Pennsylvania, and my advisor and beloved mentor was Kenneth S. Goldstein, whose importance to the field of Newfoundland folklore is widely recognized. I've been to Newfoundland myself seven times (once with Kenny), and am well known to most of the folklorists in the department at Memorial. I even took the trouble to consult with folklorists trained at Memorial before weighing in on this thread.

As I said above, I have no particular dog in the fight as to where "Lukey's Boat" originated. I merely point out that it was first collected in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the same year; that when someone tried to legally "prove" that the song came from Newfoundland, by suing Helen Creighton, he failed; and that, as Joe Offer pointed out above, the Nova Scotians also have a story connecting it to local characters. Both stories can't be true.   All the bluster of the Greg Bs of the world won't make either story any truer, so bluster away, Greg!

GUEST provides an intriguing reference to England's logbook--I'll have to check it out. It would lend credence to a Newfoundland origin. Have you got an edition/page number, GUEST?

GUEST's point on pronunciation is also well taken; in fact, as Joe pointed out back up top, Creighton called her Nova Scotia version "Loakie's Boat."