DCHP-2

bawn DCHP-2 (October 2016)

• 1 n. — obsolete; Newfoundland

  a grassy area near a house or settlement.

  Type: 2. Preservation — Bawn is one of the many preservations from Irish Gaelic that have undergone semantic change in NLE due to the traditional influence of the fishing industry on all aspects of life in the province (Clarke 2010b: 107). The original meaning of 'an enclosure in which cattle could be kept' shifted to 'the meadow or grassy area' as well as to a sense relating to the fishing industry, shown in meaning 2.
  See also COD-2, s.v. "bawn" (1), which is marked "Cdn (Nfld)", DNE, s.v. "bawn" (1).

  • 1897  (1990)  J A Folklore x, 203 Bawn ... particularly where the Irish have prevailed, is the common name for the land about the house.
  • 1968  Words connected with work that is no longer carried on have dropped out of use or are obsolescent. Few Southern Shore men now "break up bawn" in the spring or make moryeen during the fishing season, and nobody in the area cards wool or makes it into slawms, or loose carded rolls. 
  • 1971  (1990)  C 71-24 [In Calvert] a baun was an enclosed pasture which was used for the grazing of sheep. In Carbonear [it] meant ground that hadn't been ploughed before.

• 2 n. — Newfoundland, Fishing

  an expanse of rock on which salted cod are spread for drying.

  Type: 3. Semantic Change — See meaning 1.
  See also COD-2, s.v. "bawn" (2), which is marked "Cdn (Nfld)", DNE, s.v. "bawn" (2).

  See also: cod-flake  flake  

  • 1869  (2013)  But of course, these words mean nothing to you! Let this intrepid sailor kitted out in his oilskins accompany you to the beach. He will tell you that its immense rocky surface over which countless fish are laid out like scales on a large fish, is called a bawn. 
  • 1905  The fight related in the following verses occurred on the Labrador Shore probably about forty years or more. The "Bawn" is a place used by fishermen for spreading fish on. The girl whom the love sick swains fought over was a handsome damsel of her day. The composer of the song is a native of Bonavista Bay, where he still lives hale and hearty at an advanced age. 
  • 1916  The only terms that I now recall used by the fishermen of the older days and dropped by literature are 'dwigh' for a sudden shower of snow or rain that passes off quickly. [...] 'Bawn,' a beach or island where fish is spread to dry. 
  • 1936  We would wash our fish from the knife before salting; when washing out we would use a swab and a cloth, using two puncheon tubs filled with sea water. In horsing the fish up, any fish not perfectly clean would be washed over again, then put in the waterhorse, back up, with a slight sprinkling of salt; it would then lie in the waterhorse for twenty-four hours. It was then brought out on the bawn and spread "heads and tails". 
  • 1948  ON THE BAWN -- Here is a view of activity on the "bawn", at Grand Bank. The partly dried codfish which has been sheltered all night in tarpaulin-covered piles is now being taken away in "yaffels", or armfuls, and spread upon the beach for its final day's sun. 
  • 1955  Everyone then lived directly or indirectly on the fisheries and, of course, fish meant one thing -- cod. Even the clergyman received the equivalent of a quintal of fish in the fall for his necessary part in the ceremony which spliced the knot of a romance which undoubtedly had its origin on the "bawn." 
  • 1967  Thus, to illustrate again from vocabulary, we have still in common use such Anglo-Irish terms as: angishore (a weak, miserable person), bawn (foreshore), [...] tilly (a small amount over and above what is purchased). 
  • 1971  The trapskiff and the rodney are missing from the brine / While weeds and grasses mat each vacant bawn / What's left of traps and castnets are heaps of mouldy twine / And the tattoo of exhausts don't greet the dawn. 
  • 2005  The fish were headed, split ** and salted, and left to dry on the bawn (beach rocks). The fish was then shipped to France, having been not only salted but also dried and divested of three fourths its weight.