Back in the 1980's I was sailing in the Norwegian square rigged ship SORLANDET, from Gosport, England, bound for Bermuda. One day, somehere off the coast of France, I was engaged in repairing and overhauling some sails. I sat on a bench with a Swedish fellow, the ship's sail maker. As he proceeded to instruct me in the ancient trade, I discerned a bit of a 'Down- East ' twang in his voice. Stunned, I listened even closer and was astonished to hear that he was mimicking Marshall Dodge, the late, great humorist known for the old Bert and I records. Knowing a bit of the old routines, myself, and being a bit of a mimic, I quickly engaged myself in the venerable Down East dialect. For a good half hour we went back and forth with routines we knew and some we borrowed from other tales we knew, back and forth. It was just a hoot for us both. I called him ' Bert ', he called me ' Ephriam '. While we were engaged in this delightful banter, the captain, a Norwegian, happened to wander behind the sail makers bench and listened intently to a language that must have sounded like nothing ( nawthin' ) he had ever heard on God's blue ocean. He listened for about ten minutes, turned away and left shaking his head, not understanding a thing we were saying. He prided himself on the fact that he spoke reasonably decent english, but this just baffled him altogether, as he later confessed to the sailmaker, aka, ' Bert '. Joe