I'm from St. John's and have lived in the states myself for 5 years, so I am used to people not picking up exactly what I say due to our apparent accents (irish/english/scottish, etc), so I had to smile when I saw hoddly stick.

It is actually called an ugly stick, and I can only imagine that hoddly stick came from someone not understanding what was said, due to some dialects in which people in NFLD add and drops H's to words ( ham and eggs becoming 'am and h'eggs, for example) So I figure some one heard ugly as h'ugly through a thick accent. :)

However, Gambo may be unique in what it calls stuff, I have seen it before. But that stick is widely known as a ugly stick, a fun percussion instrument. :)

I heard about this site from my friend who lives in Gambo. his wife is in a picture (far right) called trio on this site. Very lovely site too, I'm glad you people liked it here, especially under such trying circumstances. I hope you all come back again under nicer circumstances. :)

By the way, this link below may be interesting to those who look at this site. We have our own dictionary, which is quite big. Much of the words are not in use anymore, but quite a bit is. :)

http://www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary/

Cheers,

Shawn Fulford

St. John's, Newfoundland

Jane says "Thanks Shawn, Yes we did discover that it was called an ugly stick. The world over there must be misinterpretations of all sorts of words, our apologies!