The White Horse - A Newfoundland tale of superstition and loss

A fisherman named Albert has a strange encounter with a phantom white horse. Only too late does he realize what terrible tragedy the ghost horse presaged. This traditional tale of superstition and folk belief from Proctor’s Cove, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, originally recorded in the 1920s, is here retold by folklorist and storyteller Dale Jarvis, and is taken from his book “Haunted Waters: More True Ghost Stories of Newfoundland and Labrador.”

Download the mp3.

The music track for the tale is “Salted Caramel” by Black Twig Pickers and Steve Gunn, and is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License. Additional sound effects by swiftoid and geoneo0 of freesound.org. Photo "White Horse" by Richard PJ Lambert/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

The Family of Love, and Mary on a Stick - Welcome to Antwerp

I'm in Belgium, a country I've grown to love. This is my fourth visit in the past three years, and every time I come, I learn more, and find more very cool places to explore.

I'm staying with my friend Veva Gerard, a Flemish storyteller, and her family, and yesterday Veva, her husband, and their son Jasper, and I, went off to Antwerp for a tour. Our tour guide for the day was the fantastically-knowledgeable Key Minnebo, who has been leading what she calls "esoteric tours" of the ancient city of Antwerp for 30 years.

We started in the courtyard garden of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, and Key asked me what I was interested in.  I suggested local legends, stories of the supernatural, hidden and secret places.

"We will start inside," she suggested.

Inside she introduced us to Christophe Plantin, and a series of 400 year old printing presses. I could sense my father drooling, all the way from Canada.

Then things got interesting. Key gave a running commentary as we moved through the museum, giving us details on a mystic religious sect known as the Family of Love, or Familists, then drawing in secret societies, the Rosicrucians, Cathars, Freemasons, secret printings of heretical books, and (no-one was expecting them) The Spanish Inquisition.

It was just the start of our tour. From there, we left the museum to explore more of Antwerp, where Key guided us through hidden alleyways, fertility cults, sacred geometry, miracles, and a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary rumoured to get up and walk around Antwerp on Her own:

The, after that, debates over which of two holy relics of the foreskins of Christ were authentic (surprise! both of them!), paintings by Rubens, the entrance to heaven, the reason why Japanese tourists have been flocking to Antwerp Cathedral for years to find a dog that never existed, a breast-milk-stealing shapeshifter, more fertility cults, a possible statue of the ancient god Priapus (who had his legendary phallus removed twice from the image, ouch) , ancient wells, Roman heroes, dragons with the skulls of horses, giants getting their hands cut off, more Freemasons, and a possible job opportunity should the whole folklore/storytelling thing not work out for me, the delightfully named Keutelraper (Keutelraapster for ladies so inclined) - the person who went around and scooped up after the animals who once roamed the Cathedral.

The Cathedral boasts some fabulous legends of its own, including many stories (some contradictory) about the founding of the church. The one I liked concerned a statue of Mary which floated away from its original location, and was later found in a low piece of swamp. Locals were convinced she wanted to be there, and placed her on a stump in that location.  Eventually the cathedral grew up on the spot Mary on a Stick had claimed for her own. If you look closely at the stained glass window in the top picture here, you'll see Mary, and her Stick.

"Legends turn events into part of our collective memory," Key told us. For me, my introduction to Antwerp was certainly legendary, and I will always remember it as a place with a truly esoteric history.

All that, and we finished off in a fabulous local restaurant, where I had amazing Flemish rabbit, and tomato soup with lots of meatballs, which Veva tells me is something you would always get if you visited your Flemish grandmother.

So, to end, in honour of my trip to Antwerp, and that meatball soup, a little Flemish riddle from Veva:

Ork, Ork Ork, you eat soup with a...?

Newfoundland folklore of May snow: a cure for sore eyes and freckles

This year, at least in the St. John’s area, the month of May started with snow. Not overly welcome this time of year, it did get people talking, and one topic of conversation was the use of May snow as a sort of charm or cure.

“May snow is good for sore eyes,” one old saying goes. The idea is that if you collect some snow that falls in May and keep it in a glass jar, the water can later be swabbed on a sore eye to make if feel better. 

It was a tradition found in many corners of the province, from Joe Batt’s Arm, to Branch. “May snow was gathered and bottled for a remedy,” states a 1955 brochure printed by the government of Newfoundland and Labrador, which has been reprinted on the “Newfoundland’s Grand Banks” website. “Many old people testify to the efficiency of this strange cure.” 

John Drover’s grandmother Baker was raised in both Terra Nova village and Windsor, Newfoundland. Drover remembers hearing about the May snow eye cure from her. 

“I don't recall that there was any specific way to collect it,” says Drover, “just that it was supposed to relieve sore eyes. A co-worker from Mortier told me her grandmother collected May snow and always kept pill bottles of it for sore eyes.” 

This belief in snow as a cure for sore eyes is not limited to Newfoundland. “Bottled snow water is good for sore eyes,” wrote Dr. Daniel Lindsey Thomas and Lucy Blayney Thomas in their 1920 folklore book “Kentucky Superstitions,” published by Princeton University Press. Daniel Thomas was the founder and president of the Kentucky branch of the American Folk-Lore Society, while Lucy Thomas was a teacher of English at the Ward-Belmont School in Nashville, Tennessee. 

I suspect snow in any quantity in Kentucky is decidedly more rare than Newfoundland snow, especially in May. Perhaps it is unsurprising then that Kentucky folklore opts for slightly earlier precipitation; the Thomases noted that in Kentucky, March snow is said to do the trick instead. 

May snow had other semi-medicinal uses. Janet Butt’s grandmother (from Carbonear, by way of the North Shore) told her that while May snow was good to take away a stye on the eye, it was also good for your complexion. “I seem to recall having it applied to freckles,” Butt says. 

This was a folk belief found in other Conception Bay communities. In a recent article in a local newspaper, Elizabeth Jerrett of Bay Roberts writes, “a snowfall in May, which was not unusual, we believed to take freckles away.”

My favourite description of this May snow freckle cure tradition is from J. K. Crellin, in his fabulous book “Home Medicine: The Newfoundland Experience.” “Few specific suggestions concerning external applications for the ‘complexion’ have been found in the Newfoundland oral record,” writes Crellin, “apart from soaking in the first snow in May (or ‘May snow’) or wiping the face with a urine-soaked diaper.” 

If you are having a problem with freckles, I would stick with the May snow water, if I were you, given the other option.

A story of witch bottles from Colliers, Newfoundland.

Molly (née Murphy) Quinn was raised in Philadelphia, but her family comes from Colliers and Conception Harbour, and she has spent her summers in Newfoundland since she was a girl. Quinn’s grandmother, Alice McGrath Murphy, died in 2007 at the age of 92. During those Newfoundland summers, Grandmother Murphy told Quinn more than a few tales.

“My childhood was filled with stories of fairies, ‘Bloody Bones,’ and more stories than I can remember,” says Quinn.

I had posted a query online asking if anyone had any stories about “witch bottles” and it made Quinn remember one of her grandmother’s stories. It was the only story she remembered hearing about a witch bottle.

“My grandmother's mother was the midwife of the community,” she says. “Many tragedies occurred in childbirth and most were attributed to bad luck, the wrath of God, and some to a witch or bad person.”

If you thought your bad luck was due to a witch’s influence, you could make a witch bottle to break the curse.

“I know you were supposed to put things in them to remove curses,” she says.

Folklorist Barbara Rieti wrote about the tradition in her 2008 book “Making Witches: Newfoundland Traditions of Spells and Counterspells.”

“He did his pee in a bottle, corked it and stuck a big stocking darning needle down into and left it in the store,” is how one of Rieti’s informants described such a bottle. Generally, a witch bottle is made by filling it with symbolic items like pins or fabric hearts, and in some cases, with urine. By trapping these things in a bottle, the victim is meant to redirect suffering back on the witch responsible.

Quinn’s story involves a woman who had experimented with witch bottles, but who was unable to rid herself of whatever curse had attached itself to her and her family.

“Years ago, a young woman lost her husband rather tragically,” Quinn relates. “She was always dressed in black and, having lost all faith in God, was said to have dabbled with witch bottles, believing her husband was taken from her wrongly.”

Afterwards, the woman was never the same.

“She could always be seen near the large boulder in front of the cemetery, dressed in black and forever weeping for her lost love,” describes Quinn. “One evening a young married couple was driving across cemetery hill in their sleigh. The woman was at the rock weeping.”

“As the sleigh passed she leapt in, touching the young groom with her hand,” Quinn says. “Her icy touch immediately killed the young man. Because of her actions she was cursed to mourn forever at the cemetery, always seeking her husband's return."

“I get shivers just thinking of it now,” says Quinn, “especially because I visit that cemetery each summer to visit relatives’ graves.”

Witch bottles in that part of Conception Bay may have a long history. Archaeological work in the nearby community of Cupids has uncovered remnants of Bellarmine bottles - a type of pottery jug with a distinctive human face design on the neck of the bottle. In the 17th century they were sometimes employed as witch bottles.

While we may never know if the Cupids Bellarmine bottles were used as witch bottles, a similar bottle from the same time period was recovered from an archaeological site in Greenwich, England. Upon opening up the bottle, it was found to contain urine, 12 iron nails, eight brass pins, quantities of hair, a piece of leather pierced by a bent nail, fingernail clippings, and what could be navel fluff.

If you have heard of a witch bottle story from your community, send me an email at dale@dalejarvis.ca.

Do you know any Newfoundland superstitions about bread? #amwriting #culture

Many people have heard of the traditional Newfoundland belief about having bread in your pockets as a charm against the fairies. But what kind of bread? And what other folk beliefs are out there about bread or baking? I'd love to hear your stories and memories. If you have heard of an old superstition about bread or bread making, send me an email at info@hauntedhike.com or leave me a comment below.