Patsie Oddie’s Black Night
“To hell with them that’s saved,” said he—
“Here’s to them that died.”
’Twas Patsie Oddie said that—that is, said it first. Many people have repeated it since, but with Patsie Oddie it was born. He said a whole lot more—enough for somebody to make a song of—but the two lines quoted above serve to sum the matter up.
It was a winter’s morning he said it. Cold? Oh, but it was cold. Wind from the north-west and blowing hard—a sort of dry blizzard. Every vessel coming in had stories to tell of what a time they had to get home and how long it took them.
“It’s been tack, tack, tack from St. Peter’s Bank, till we fair chafed the jaws off the boom of her,” said Crump Taylor.
“Four days and four nights from Le Have,” said Tom O’Donnell. “Four days and four nights for the able Colleen Bawn to come three hundred miles. Four days and four nights to butt her shoulders home—and glad to get home at that.”