ABSTRACT
The technique of speaking rather than singing all or part of a song's final line is quite common among folksingers in Newfoundland. In this performance, the last minute switch to speech causes the song's meter to become truncated and the final cadence to remain unresolved so that the listener is denied the rhythmic symmetry and tonal finality which the pattern of the music has led him to expect. Thus, the humor of the narrative is complemented by a twist in die musical structure which, coupled with the singer's own increasingly obvious merriment, helps to precipitate the appropriate audience response to the story-that of laughter.
