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From: Bobbie Hall <>
Subject: [MABARNST] Cape Cod Pilot, Ch. 9, part 1
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 22:52:44 -0600
References: <200112191104.fBJB48Q10270@lists2.rootsweb.com>


======================================================================
Cape Cod Pilot, by Jeremiah Diggs, American Guide Series, published by
Modern Pilgrim Press, Provincetown, MA, 1937. This was a work
underwritten by the Federal Writers Project, Works Project
Administration (WPA) for the State of Massachusetts.
======================================================================

Chapter IX - WELLFLEET [part 1]


"I've thought, if I ever met a learned man I should like to ask him
this question. Can you tell me how Axy is spelt, and what it means?
Axy," says he; "there's a girl over here is named Axy. Now, what is
it? What does it mean? Is it Scripture? I've read my Bible
twenty-five years, over and over, and, I never come across it." "Did
you read it twenty-five years for this object?" I asked. "Well, how is
it spelt? Wife, how is it spelt?" She said, "It is in the Bible; I've
seen it." "Well, how do you spell it?" "I don't know. A-c-h, ach;
s-e-h, seh - Achseh." "Does that spell Axy? Well, do you know what it
means?" he asked, turning to me. "No," I replied, "I've never heard
the sound before."

This passage occurs in the chapter of Thoreau's "Cape Cod" entitled
"The Wellfleet Oysterman." I have an old second-hand copy of this
work, which I bought of a down-Cape dealer, and in the margin
alongside the passage, I find, in a faint and trembling hand:

"Judges, 1, 13, the old fool."

The lower-Cape gibes at Wellfleet's "Bible- faces," like most
schoolboy apocrypha, stemmed from truth. There were fishing captains
of this town, a century ago, who ordered strict observance of the
Sabbath, and who went wild-eyed in an agony of inner conflict as they
read the Scripture to their crews while some godless Gloucester craft
lay in plain sight off the starboard how, hauling up a full fare of
mackerel or cod. But there may have been some satisfaction for their
regretful ghosts in the case of a man whom we will call Joe CROCKER -
because he is still a neighbor - and who once ran an establishment
with a name something like "The Fisherman's Haven & Handy Outfitter."

One Sunday afternoon Joe was strolling down the beach when he came
across a school of stranded blackfish - "puffin' pigs," as they were
called. The sparm oil man, who "tried out" the heads of these
creatures, would pay as high as four dollars for the "melon" under the
skull. According to the law, the man who first cut his initials in a
"beached pig" was the rightful claimant.

Joe got out his knife and worked like fury, - "wishing his name was
Ira so's he wouldn't have to bother cutting the jibboom on the J." He
was finishing up the last few fish when Pastor WILLIAMS, the little
old white-haired Methody minister, overtook him. "Working on the
Sabbath, eh, Mr. Crocker?" "No such thing, Pastor," said Joe, taking
his knife by the blade and letting fly to flick out a period in the
last fish. "Just playing mumblety- peg."

The Pastor raked him crossways and departed with a last warning:
"Laugh me off today, Joe Crocker, but you'll have the devil to pay
tomorrow!"

Early next morning Joe was down at the try-works to sell his fish. But
the sparm oil man handed Joe a copy of the newspaper. There, on the
front page, was a long piece about new oil discoveries in
Pennsylvania, and about, how they were sure to scuttle the whale-oil
market. The sparm man was buying no more!


Two days later a committee of townsmen called at the Fishermen's
Haven. They came to tell Joe he'd have to clear his blackfish off the
flats. He refused, pointing out that the fish were there of their own
accord; he had not gone to sea and driven them ashore.

Next day Joe's fish turned "real severe." The wind had shifted to the
s'uthard, bringing some relief to the town, but now delegations began
coming in from towns further up-Cape. And they were furious. It looked
like civil war. Then Pastor WILLIAMS stepped in. He declared Joe
Crocker was responsible; the fish were his, they bore his mark.

Finally, Joe had to give in. He hired twenty men and half a dozen
flounder-draggers to tow his fish out to sea. Joe Crocker, for one,
had learned it paid to keep the Sabbath holy.


Anything that "might come in handy some day" found its way into the
Cape Codder's attic; and for most of the gimcracks thus disposed of,
"some day" has not yet arrived. Here is the story of Arthur ROGERS,
and one gimcrack that had to wait forty years to have its day.

The first horseless wagon was yet to chug down the King's Road. Arthur
ROGERS, known for miles both ways as the "buggy-man of Wellfleet," was
behind his orders. Old Cap'n BEARSE was clamoring for his sulky in
time to enter her in the races up to Harwich, and there was Seth
CHIPMAN's "democrat," that wanted a deal of tautening up. Arthur stood
in his carriage yard, wondering where to begin, when a stranger opened
the gate and pushed in a wheel-barrow - an "Irish locomotive," as the
seamen called it. The barrow carried a general cargo of boxes, bags,
and other dunnage, but she was making heavy weather up the shell-path.
"Got to have a new wheel," the stranger said. "Can you fit me out?"
"I can do it in a biding time," Arthur answered. "You can see what
I've got ahead of me here."
"I'm in a hurry, mister. And I'm broke, too. But I tell you what. You
put me on a wheel, and I'll give you this here fiddle in pay. It's the
only thing I got that you'd want just now."
Arthur shook his head. "Don't play," he said.
The stranger kept after him, and gave him a long, sad story. Finally,
to get him out of the way, Arthur fitted him out with a wheel, and the
fiddle was stowed in the attic. The stranger went up the highway and
was seen no more.

Forty years later, Miss Una ROGERS sat in her home on Main Street,
Wellfleet, and read in the paper a fascinating story about old
violins. She remembered something that looked like the case of a
fiddle, stowed away in the attic, and went to dig it out.

Inscribed in the case, but readable only in a good light, was the legend:

Antonius & Hiieronymus Fr Amati
Cremonen Andraea Fil F 1622

And now, a quotation from the encyclopaedia:

"Amati (the brothers) Andrea and Nicolo. They were the first of a
great Italian family of violin makers and the founders of the Cremona
school. Their instruments are now esteemed of priceless value. Andrea
was succeeded by two sons, Antonio and Geronimo, whose services to the
craft were also signal . . . . From Nicolo Amati, son of Geronimo
("Hieronymus") the art of violin making was carried on by an
apprentice in his school, Antonio Stradivari."


[more to come]
transcribed by and all errors attributed to
Bobbie Hall





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