Beware the Boo-Beggars of Springdale, Hall's Bay.

Image source: https://collections.mun.ca/digital/collection/elrcdne/id/5619/rec/15

You better be good or else the Boo Beggers will get you.

Up to the mid-20th century and possibly later, mothers in Springdale, Newfoundland, would warn their children to keep away from the wharf head with threats of the Boo Beggars.

A Boo Beggar is a said to be a supernatural creature related to the fairies in Newfoundland folklore, but usually only seen as a ghost-like black shadow. It’s often found living in wells or other dangerous places.

Their dark and devilish cousins Boo Darbies and Boo Men haunted other parts of the island, and in modern english, we still use the word “Boogeyman” to mean something regarded as an object of fear.  

NEW! Explore the legend of the Boo Beggars on TikTok!

Southside pig stolen by the fairies! (maybe...)

The award for "Best Excuse for Missing Pig" goes to Farmer John of the Southside of St. John's, whose story was told in the Evening Telegram of 1897-02-08:

THE MISSING PIG. John is a farmer who lives on the Southside, but one of the many pigs which he is owner of suddenly and mysteriously disappeared on Saturday morning. A search party was arranged, but up to sunset that evening not as much as the "oneen's"' footsteps could be traced in the snow. John left to procure the service of Head Dawe, but when about 29 feet from his house the pig loomed up before him. As to where piggy was various opinions have been expressed; but .Jack says either he or the pig must have been with the fairies.

Away: An Afternoon with the Faerie Folk at The Rooms, March 17th

In Newfoundland, the fairies are still here, and everyone from Adam and Eve to Aunt Sadie Currie has a tale to tell... Join storyteller Dale Jarvis for a special St. Patrick's Day exploration of the magical and at times eerie realms of the Good People, with stories of the fairy folk from Newfoundland, Ireland, Scotland and beyond.

The tradition of fairy stories in Newfoundland is most likely as old as European settlement on the island. The hidden people of Norway and Iceland, the gentry of Ireland, the little fellows of West Country England, the lutin of Normandy, and the bogles of Scotland all came together in Newfoundland to create a new fairy race, similar to their European ancestors, but very much their own people, with their own stories and their own way of interacting with us larger, clumsier folk.

Many of the older generation of Newfoundlanders, whose faith in the fairy folk was strong, were (and are) reluctant to talk about them, or even name them directly. This gave rise to a host of local names: the little people, the good people, the little fellers. But the choice to not speak, either out of respect or fear, has always been tempered by a love for stories of the fairy folk and the strength of Newfoundland’s oral tradition.

Put some bread in your pockets (just to be safe) and come join us!

St. Patrick's Day

Thursday, March 17th, 2016
The Rooms, St. John's
2:30pm
Event included with price of admission to The Rooms.

• Facebook event listing

*image credit: Morgan MacDonald

A story of the good fairies. And pancakes!

There is a quote that I have seen attributed to various people and cultures, which states, “When an old man dies, a library burns down."

Storytelling is part of being human. We are all made of stories, and we spend our lifetimes telling and collecting them. And when someone passes away, a lot of those stories are lost forever. For me, as a folklorist and storyteller, it is one of the hardest part of losing a person.

Last Thursday, storyteller and author Alice Lannon passed away at the Palliative Care Unit of the Miller Centre here in St. John's. Her stories will be missed.

In 2010, when Newfoundland hosted the Storytellers of Canada/Conteurs du Canada national conference, Alice was one of the gems of storytelling who was showcased. That session was recorded, and today, those stories are part of the permanent collection on Memorial University's Digital Archives Initiative.

Lannon was one of the last great tellers of traditional Newfoundland fairytales in the province, who learned many of her stories orally from her grandmother.

“My grandmother claimed that the fairies were fallen angels,” she told the hundred-plus storytellers who had gathered in 2010 to hear her speak. “When Lucifer defied God, and when he was cast into Hell as the Devil, the others were cast in with him, who went with him. There was another bunch who stayed with God, so they were the good angels. Another bunch did nothing. They didn’t go with God or with Lucifer, so he couldn’t have them in heaven, so he threw them out into an underground.”

“Now, they all had the power of good and evil; they were powerful angels,” explained Lannon.

As a result, according to Lannon, the fairies could be either good or evil, and in her stories, she demonstrated how they could do both, as their whims suited them.

In one story of the good fairies, Lannon related how a five-year-old girl named Anne-Marie went berry picking with her family near Placentia on September. The girl went around a hill, and vanished from her parents’ sight.

“As it was getting dark, they had searched and called, with no answer,” described Lannon. “So they went back to Placentia and got their friends to come in with lights and hunted all night, with no sign of Anne-Marie.”

Five or six days later, a local man who had been living in the United States returned to the community. As he drove past the spot where the girl had vanished, his driver told him how the townspeople had been looking for her body, since she had not been seen for days.

“The man was watching,” explained Lannon, “and as they passed the gravel pit, he said, ‘There’s a little girl in there sitting on a stump!’ and so the man went back and sure enough, she said she was Anne-Marie, and she was waiting for her parents. They took her, and they said they would bring her to her parents. So she went with them.”

“When they brought her down to her parents’ home, they were so overjoyed,” said Lannon. “They couldn’t believe they would ever see their little girl again. Her hair was no tangles in it, her socks were as white as snow, her dress was clean.

The girl attributed her good condition to the fact she had been taken care of by the fairies.

“She told them that just before dark, when she was looking for them (her parents), three little strange-looking people came towards her, took her by the hand, and they took her to a big tree, where there was bushes,” said Lannon. “They parted the bushes, where there was a ladder, and they went down in the underground. A cosy spot down there! The older one, she figured she was the grandmother fairy, she rocked her and sang to her, and she cried because she was missing her parents. They were all nice to her, and sang songs, and made pancakes for her, out of special flour for her, and they fed her.”

“That day, the fifth day, the grandmother said to her, you go out to the gravel pit and sit near the road, on the tree stump, and you’ll be found,” said Lannon. “So that’s what she did!”

The Lady in Blue - A Fairy Story from Spaniard's Bay

Near Seymours Road, in Spaniard’s Bay, off in a field, away from the road, there was once an old stone walkway. Part of the path was lost when new houses were constructed along the road, but the sections further out still exist, known to those who grew up in the area.

One of those locals is Sheena Butler, who has an interest in local stories of the unexplained. According to Butler, that track up behind Seymours Road goes by the name of “The Fairy Path.”

Around 2000, Butler and some friends went out picking berries.

“We were picking partridge berries just in the field across from my house,” says Butler. “It was just a stone path that was called the fairy path. I don’t know why it was called the fairy path, it is just what it has always been called.”

The berry-pickers looked up, and there, a fair distance off, they saw a woman.

“She was dressed all in blue,” remembers Butler. “She was an older woman; she had on a blue dress. She was also picking berries.”

The woman was far away, but they could tell she was an older woman with greying hair. She had on something that resembled an old sundress.

“Are there any good berries up there?” they yelled out to the woman.

“She never answered, she never looked, she just went on doing her own thing,” says Butler.

A moment later, the woman straightened up somewhat, and struggled up over the hill.

“It honestly looked like she had a bad back,” recalls Butler. “She was hunched over, and when she stood up, she didn’t stand up straight, she had that hunch.”

“We said, ‘let’s go see what she was looking at’ and we went up over the hill,” says Butler.

When they got up over the hill, there was not a soul to be seen.

“It was as if we had been talking to nobody,” says Butler. “She went up over the hill, and we never saw her after.”

Locals called her “The Lady in Blue” and the berry-pickers that day were not the first to see her.

“She has always been around the fairy path,” explains Butler. “We don’t know her name, we don’t know where she came from, but she is there.”

Other people have had strange experiences along the fairy path. One dark night, around the time the berry-pickers met the Lady in Blue, another group went out along the path. They took a candle, and were sitting around, telling stories.

The candle started to flicker, and then went out. Thinking it was just a breeze, the friends lit the candle once more, only to have it go out a second time. Then, they heard movement in the bushes behind them, off to one side.

The movement stopped. Then, on the opposite of the storytellers, there was a movement in those bushes. Listening, the group then heard what sounded like creepy, eerie laughter off in the bushes.

The friends took off back to the safety of their houses, leaving the darkened path to its fairy owners.

If you have heard a similar story from Spaniard’s Bay, or know of another Newfoundland and Labrador location that is fairy-haunted, email me at info@hauntedhike.com

(photo courtesy Frank Kovalchek / CC BY)

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.