One summer while I was at my aunt’s house in Island Cove – about 5 miles from Heart’s Ease – she sent her son Bill up to Long Beach for the mail, as there was no post office in Island Cove. When he came back, he had a women’s wish book for his mother. This was a catalogue from Eaton’s or Simpson’s in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. He always called the catalogues women’s wish book or the women’s bible. Whenever he’d see his sister Mil and I look through one he’d say were were studying our bible again.
Heard from Bill Smith, my cousin, aged 22, now living in Ontario. He used to say this in Island Cove when he was around 14.
Source: Rosalind Drodge – collected for a Folklore Course at MUN in 1971.