Page 64 - "Oran do Shep" an Englishtown Song

ISSUE : Issue 58

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1991/8/1

shoulder) down to the belt (John laughed) --left three or four marks of his nails on (my father's) back. The old man and woman died and their son (Phillip) was left alone.... And he adver? tised for people to come and live with him. So this family named Sweet came up from Neil's Harbour. Their son was Stewart on the Aspy and he heard about it so he came to see Phillip and arranged for his father and mother, and his brother and a nephew that grew up with them, to come and live with him. So they didn't think much of the dog. And they had a cot in the kitchen and the dog took this over, took the cot over. He wouldn't allow anyone on it, with a growl at them. They were trying to get rid of him. This was the only thing left that Phillip had to remember his father by, was the dog, and they didn't want Phillip to know that they were plotting his destruc? tion. (Laughs.) J' ROSS RUDDERHAM '4 ' 562-3455 PLUMBING • HEATING & ELECTRICAL CONTRACTORS • OIL BURNER SALES • AIR CONDITIONING • VENTILATING SYSTEMS Replacements in Any Make of Furnace Specializing in Pack-0-Matlc Oil Furnace Replacements Sales and Service on Famous Buderus Cast Iron Coal Wood Oil Furnace ' • ?J,H44-tili'ihi3Bi 539*6200 885 VICTORIA ROAD, SYDNEY So, we had a cousin named Norman MacLeod, Norman "King." He used to buy boiled lob? sters from my father and Mr. Sweet and sell them in Baddeck. So--Mr. Sweet was home all alone and Phillip Carmichael was out working on the road out in Kelly's Mountain, so they thought it was a good time to get rid of the dog. They had a son themselves named Ernest. He didn't want to shoot the dog himself, but he borrowed a .22 from a couple of young fellows, the Campbell boys, and he got three or four cartridges for it. It was a little single- shot, bolt-action .22, and the thing was sad being worn. Sometimes it wouldn't set off the cartridge--PWUHMPUH! (Laughs.) So Norman tried. The dog was lying in the back doorstep and Norman tried two or three times to shoot. (Laughing....) The gun wouldn't go off. Neil stuck his head in the door, and he (Norman) said, "This damned gun is no good," he said (...still laughing). "It won't shoot. Look." He pulled the trigger. The gun went off--and the bullet hit the dog in the backside. (Now John gets somber.) Away went the dog. He ran around to the front of the house and he went up on the steps there, and Norman went down and peeped around the corner, and he was there licking the wound. So he fired again and this time he killed him. The dog ran off a little way and died. So Mrs. Sweet got a sack, an empty feed sack, there were lots of them around in those days, and they put the dog in the sack and they buried him in a little swampy patch of ground back of the fence. And when Phillip came home he missed the dog and Mrs. Sweet told him she didn't ''''1% '''M% Maritime Museum of tile Atlantic 1075 Lower Water Street Halifax, N.S. 429-8210 N.S.M. Complex 23 locations throughout the province >C Nova Scotia Museum 1747 Summer Street Halifax, N.S. 429-4610 N.S.M. Complex 23 locations throughout the province >C1 64

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