The fairy folk at the Arts and Culture Centre, March 28

This Thursday, Kittiwake Dance Theatre is inviting audiences to explore the world of traditional Newfoundland fairylore with their production "Reflections: Fairie Fey." The show how starts at 8pm and runs 70 mins, with no intermission, on the Arts and Culture Centre mainstage. It is inspired by local fairy folklore and features narration by the late, great Margaret Hitchens.

Here is what the company promises for the night:

Kittiwake Dance Theatre’s "Reflections: Fairie Fey" continues the exploration of the folklore surrounding fairies in nature, song and dance. The magic of the forest comes alive with the haunting voices of the trees, the movement of the fairies and the unexpected human element creating the mystery and the folktales. The lure of Fairie Fey is so enticing that the audience will be totally captivated as the story unfolds. Your presence is necessary to ensure that the magic manifests at its greatest. This show fuses dance of various forms (contemporary/modern, ballet, hip-hop, and aerial circus work), with storytelling and song. 

Featuring the talents of: choreographers Martin Vallee and Erika Wilansky; storyteller Margaret Hitchens; musical director Justin Goulding; and, the Kittiwake dancers.

I'll see you there! Put some bread in your pockets, just in case.

Thursday March 28th
8pm
Arts and Culture Centre
St. John's

Strange holes, UFOs, and water-sucking aliens

(photo: Windsor Lake, August 1949.)

A while back, a number of reports circulated of strange holes which had appeared in the ice in a pair of Central Newfoundland ponds.

The first was the hole in Dawe's Pond, located off a woods road just off the Trans-Canada Highway 15 minutes west of Badger. Locals had reported hearing a loud noise, and a cabin owner found a large, partially iced-over hole. It was surmised the hole had been created sometime around March 7th or 8th. Jim Gillard of the Twillingate Observatory investigated the mysterious crater, and suggested a meteor or piece of space junk had fallen through the ice.

Amateur astronomer Gary Dymond studied photographs of the Dawe's Lake site and spoke to nearby residents. Rather than blaming the crater on something crashing into it, he suggested that the hole could have been created by a buildup of methane gas which exploded, rupturing the ice from below.

"It would be interesting to solve the mystery," Dymond told local media. "But I think it will stay as a mystery."

A few days later a cabin owner on Powderhorn Lake, about six kilometers away, noticed a strange hole in centre of the icy pond. That circular crater measured about 30 metres across, with ripples in the ice along the edge of the hole.

The whole business reminded me of another strange story involving a well-known Newfoundland body of water, Windsor Lake, just outside of St. John’s.

About ten years ago, I got a note from a Mr. J.D. Terry, of Fort Mojave, Arizona. In his initial email, Terry hinted of an untold story about an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) dating back to the 1950s, a sighting of a strange craft which had never been reported to the media.

Terry's sighting took place one morning in the spring of 1955 when he was with the United States Air Force. Terry spent four years serving as an NCOIC (Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge) at a communications outpost codenamed "Snelgrove" near Twenty Mile Pond, the historical name for Windsor Lake.

On the morning in question, Terry noticed a strange craft hovering over one end of the pond in the early dawn light. As he watched, it seemed as if the UFO was absorbing water or moisture from the body of water. The craft stayed airborne without moving for two to three minutes, poised between 10 and 15 feet above the water. Suddenly, it rose several hundred feet and shot off in a south-southwest direction. Within seconds, it had vanished.

Terry had received training as a control tower operator and radio operator, and was therefore familiar with all types of aircraft. What he saw that day was unlike any aircraft he had ever seen.

He was the only one awake when this occurred, and therefore the only eyewitness. Without any corroborating evidence, he could not make an official report of the sighting.

What is intriguing about the Twenty Mile Pond sighting is Terry's claim that the UFO seemed to be drawing up water from the pond. While this may be unusual, it is not unheard of in the weird world of ufology, and the Newfoundland example is but one of several on the Atlantic coast.

Between 1955 and 1999, Mosquito Lagoon, Florida, was host to 42 known sightings of aerial phenomena. The lagoon is a large body of saline water, part of the Kennedy Space Centre. In two cases, witnesses reported he UFOs with hoses lowered into the water, as if they were sucking up water.

Maybe something like this happened in Central Newfoundland this month. Perhaps those little green men, not satisfied with stealing water this time around, came back for some ice for their drinks.

I, for one, will have to agree with Dymond. I think it will all stay as a mystery.

World Storytelling Day in St. John's, Newfoundland #WSD2013

World Storytelling Day is a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling. It is celebrated every year on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, the first day of autumn equinox in the southern. On World Storytelling Day, as many people as possible tell and listen to stories in as many languages and at as many places as possible, during the same day and night. Participants tell each other about their events in order to share stories and inspiration, to learn from each other and create international contacts.

World Storytelling Day has its roots in a national day for storytelling in Sweden, circa 1991-2. It first came to Newfoundland with an event in 2007 at The Rooms, featuring yours truly and Elinor Benjamin, and sponsored by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and the St. John's Storytelling Circle. You can listen to an audio recording of that event online at archive.org.

For the past several years, I've been the volunteer webmaster for the World Storytelling Day website. It's been great fun, as I get emails from all over the world from people looking to celebrate the tradition and art of storytelling in their own communities. This year, I was interviewed by Alba Conesa of the Spanish organization "Contes pel món" about World Storytelling Day and the growing interest in oral storytelling globally. You can read it here in English, or here in Spanish.

Each year, many of the individual storytelling events that take place around the globe are linked by a common theme. Each year, the theme is identified by and agreed upon by storytellers from around the world on the worldstorytellingday listserv. This year the theme is "Fortune and Fate" and we are fortunate enough to be back at The Rooms again this year to share stories.

You can join us Wednesday, March 20 7:00 pm at The Rooms Theatre, where I've shamelessly twisted the arm of fellow folklorist Dr. Mariya Lesiv to curate an evening of stories exploring the fortunes, fates and experiences of new Canadians as they make the shift from their old homes in Eastern Europe to life in Newfoundland and Labrador.  The evening is presented in collaboration with Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, and is funded in part by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It is the first event of the Foundation's "Newfiki: A celebration of East-European cultures in Newfoundland," running March 20-23.

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!”

A witch, a warning, and a brush with death on the Southern Cross

Last week I found an intriguing message on my answering machine from Shirley Ryan, of Birchy Cove, Bonavista Bay. In it, she hinted at a mysterious story involving one of Newfoundland’s famous lost ships, the Southern Cross.

I called Ryan back, and she was eager to share her story of two men, Edmund Ryan and Leonard Skiffington.

“Now, Edmund Ryan was my girlfriend’s grandfather who lived just down across the garden, so to us, he was Uncle Ned,” she explains. “Uncle Ned always told the story about how he and Leonard left Birchy Cove, where he lived, to go across to Catalina. They were really lucky, they had gotten a berth on the Southern Cross.”

“They left Birchy Cove and they made their way to Catalina,” she describes. “I think they went over on a dogsled maybe, because there were no cars to bring them at that time, and the road across the country was little better than a path.”

The two men arrived in Catalina and were about to sign on.

“They had their berth already promised,” says Ryan. “They went into what he used to call a tavern. I’ve never known a tavern to be there, but maybe in them days there were. They went into this tavern to get a drink. Water was all they could afford. They had no money. So they asked the woman there for a glass of water each, and she gave them the water.”

When Uncle Ned turned, his arm knocked the glass onto the floor, breaking the woman’s glass.

“You have to pay for that glass,” she said to him.

He said, “Madam, I can’t pay, I have no money.”

“Where are you going?” the woman asked.

“We are going on the Southern Cross, we have a berth on the Southern Cross.”

“If you’re wise, you won’t go on that journey,” the woman said, “because you won’t return.”

“Now he was a man of great superstitions, and he took what she said to heart, and he came home,” describes Ryan. “But his friend Leonard wouldn’t listen to him and he went on that ship.”

The Southern Cross was built in Norway in 1886, and was originally named the Pollux. She was sold to the Newfoundland firm of Baine Johnson and renamed the SS Southern Cross around 1901, and she took part in the seal hunt every year from 1901 to 1914. Returning from the seal hunt in the final days of March, 1914, the Southern Cross fell out of normal communication. She was last heard of off Cape Pine, and then, nothing.

The Southern Cross vanished at sea, along with the 174 sailors and sealers on board her. Eventually, a marine court of enquiry determined that the ship sank in a blizzard on March 31, but the details remain, for the most part, unexplained. No crewmen nor record of the ill-fated voyage survived. Among the list of the dead was one Leonard Skiffington, originally of Newman's Cove, Bonavista Bay.

“Uncle Ned told us that story over and over and over,” says Ryan. “It’s a true story, he told it over and over, about how he took what she said as serious and accused her of being a witch. Well, lots of people were accused of being witches them days! But he said the woman that owned that tavern was a witch, and when she said that, that was enough for him. He didn’t go.”

“But Leonard did go, and well, Leonard never returned,” Ryan states. “Nobody ever returned, eh? That’s my little story.”

A ghost story from Topsham, Devon

Topsham, The River Exe and Exeter Canal, photo by Steve Knight

I started January of 2013 off by giving a talk on the folklore and legends of Wessex to the Wessex Society at the Marine Institute here in St. John’s.

The Society, which was founded by Dr. Otto Tucker, is a cultural organization formed to promote knowledge of and an appreciation for Newfoundland’s English-Wessex ancestry. Wessex (West Saxony) was the name of an old Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in southwestern England, and today it includes the counties of Devon, Dorset, Hampshire and Somerset.

According to the Society’s website, immigrants from Wessex began to settle in Newfoundland in the early 17th century. By the early 1800s they had founded numerous fishing villages and towns and comprised approximately 60 percent of the resident population.

When they arrived, the Wessex settlers in Newfoundland brought with them their folklore, their ways of speech, and their stories. It was these stories that intrigued me, as they are similar in many ways to our own legends of ghosts and fairies.

A colleague of mine, Colette, heard that I was giving the talk to the Wessex Society, and was instantly intrigued. She herself had experienced something ghostly in the village of Topsham, near Exeter in Devon.

“I have a very good friend who lives near Exeter in Devon,” she explains. “We were student midwives at the same teaching hospital and were even flat-mates. When we used to work night duty, the rotation (schedule) consisted of 8 nights on, 6 nights off.”

One time her friend invited Colette to her parents’ home in Devon. She had been there before and knew her parents well. Her mother had once been a nurse also and understood how exhausted the girls always were after a week block of night duty.

“She used to spoil us by bringing us tea and toast in bed in the morning, and cooking delicious lunches and suppers,” Colette remembers. “She used to get up early, before the entire household, to bake pies made from fruit that she had picked that morning from her own garden”

Colette was sleeping in a small rectangular bedroom, and had spread her suitcase out on what little floor space there was between the bed and the door.

“Before we went to sleep, my friend's mum said she would get us up in the morning, so we wouldn't sleep the day away,” Colette says. “Early on the first morning I heard my friend's mum enter the bedroom. She started approaching the bed where I was lying, in an unusual side-step fashion, as if she was stepping over obstacles in her way.”

The woman was bent forward, leaning over as if she was hunchbacked.

“As I knew I had spread my things over the floor, I did not want her to trip on anything, so to avoid her having to come into the room further to wake me up, I called out to her that I was already awake,” describes Colette. What happened next made Colette realize immediately that the figure was definitely not the mother of her friend.

“She was not carrying any tea or toast, and as soon as I spoke those words, she receded backwards and faded into the wall, the same wall that had the door on it, only to the other side of that wall, as she disappeared,” says Colette.

“That is my story!” she adds. “I was completely awake when I said out loud that I was awake. I was very scared, but my friend and her parents laughed it off. I have no idea if I was dreaming or in a light dream-state which made me think I was awake, but this is exactly what I experienced.”

Zondag: List, Lier en Mechelen - met wafels!

Well, my Belgian adventures continued today, starting with breakfast with Veva, Dieter, Lander and Jasper, and Veva serenading me on the harp. Then, a leisurely walk along the old city walls of Lier, which turned into a stroll through the Lier Begijnhof, a UNESCO world heritage site.

Near the centre of Lier is the Zimmer Tower, an amazing central clock tower, with an elaborate working clock, and adjacent museum with an even more fantastical clock, which keeps track of just about everything celestial you could possibly conceive - 92 clocks in one timepiece! A bit big for my mantel piece, perhaps?

All that walking and horological learning had us hungry, so off we went for waffles. Amazing waffles. Waffles with icing sugar, black cherries, cream, ice-cream, and bananas. Then, Veva took me to Mechelen, where I have intangible cultural heritage meetings tomorrow, and where I had a fabulous Moroccan tajine at RONDA, and where I also later had a good chat with the wonderful Joanne Orr from Museums Galleries Scotland (whom I once made polka with me in Quebec City - a story for another time). And now, I shall tumble into bed, and dream of waffles. I love Belgium.

Bells announce my arrival in Belgium (and a side trip to Holland)

After an very long bit of travel (including 15 hours in the lovely but not exactly exciting Halifax airport) I finally arrived in Brussels, and was met at the airport by storyteller Veva Gerard, who said she had something special arranged for me.

We drove to the town of Lier, parked the car, and went for a little walk. We got to a courtyard by the fabulous 14th century St. Gummarus Church, and Veva said that she had arranged for a musician to play for me to welcome me to Belgium. She made a quick call on her cellphone, and high above us, the carillon in the bell tower above us began to ring out.

Her son (12 years old, below) is learning to play the carillon, and after he had played a few tunes, his teacher met us at the base of the tower, and up we went the 300 or so steps up to the top, past the giant human-powered winch the workers would have used to raise the heavy materials used in the construction of the tower, one of the few remaining such mediaeval instruments in Europe.

Along the way, and continuing at the top of the tower, I got a history lesson in the carillon and got to try my hand at ringing the bells myself.

It was a fabulous welcome, and completely unexpected.

Today, it was on to Veva's plan B, and after a breakfast with her family, we drove to Efteling in the Netherlands, one of the largest and oldest theme parks in Europe, based mainly on folktales and legends!

We spent the day wandering through the park, visiting Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, the Goat Grandmother and the 7 Kids, the Little Match Girl. We even visited the grave of Cinderella's mother:

Then, as if that wasn't enough, we ate sausage, visited two haunted houses, and saw a live equestrian show which featured damsels in distress, falconry, and (steampunks eat your heart out) a giant multi-headed, fire-breathing clockwork dragon.

Then, to finish off the visit to the park, an incredible water ballet with lights, music and underwater fire cannons.

Then, cold and with tired feet, a drive back to Lier, dinner of guinea fowl at a fabulous restaurant, much discussion of storytelling, and a walk through the cobblestone streets of Lier.

Now, back with Veva's family in Lint, and a well-deserved rest! Goodnight!

Gogmagog and Francis Drake: Folktales and Legends of Wessex

Storyteller and folklorist Dale Jarvis will share some of the folktales and local legends of Dorset and Devon, with tales of giants, pixies, witches, and ghosts. Introduction by Dr. Martin Lovelace, of Memorial University's Department of Folklore.

January 9th, 2013, Hampton Hall, Marine Institute, Ridge Road at 8 PM

Audience comments on the opening night of Brothers Grimm

Well, it has all been a bit of a whirlwind, but we opened "Brothers Grimm: 200 Years and Counting" tonight at Petro Canada Hall.  We got some great comments in person after the show, and some people left comment cards at the ticket desk.  A selection of those comments follows:

I liked it very much indeed. Well done! I have my childhood copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Great! I really enjoyed the weave of music and storytelling and history.

Greatly enjoyed myself. Only wish there was more of the same, looking forward to more.

Really love it! the songs were great, the musical sound effects and the sound of the birds just added to an overall atmosphere of magic and AWESOMENESS.

Fabulous - learned a few things about the Brothers Grimm that I didn’t know. Very well put together! Bravo

Excellent show! Really enjoyed how the songs were planned into the format, along with the stories.

Very entertaining and informative. Thank you for a wonderful evening out.

Great show! I appreciate the cultural background!

Awesome performance! Love the music with the tales.

Excellent, I really enjoyed everything about it. I love Folklore and German. It combined my two favourite things!

Loved the show, will spread the word for the show tomorrow.

Thoroughly enjoyable evening. Great stories and music.

Wonderful! Completely unexpected and absolutely enjoyable. Thank you!

and

Loved the show, will spread the word for the show tomorrow.

(please do!)

On that note, we have one night left, Thursday, Dec 6, 2012. The show is at 8pm, at Petro Canada Hall, at Memorial University's School of Music. Tickets are $20 and available at the door. See you there!

I'll be picking a winner from each night, from those people who filled out a comment form. They will each receive two tickets to my next show, "Thor vs. Loki" - coming to a stage near you in Spring 2013.