Getting up close and personal with the fairies
Newfoundland cultural landscape full of the ethereal
SPIRITED AWAY: FAIRY STORIES OF OLD NEWFOUNDLAND WRITTEN BY TOM DAWE ILLUSTRATED BY VESELINA TOMOVA RUNNING THE GOAT BOOKS AND BROADSIDES 60 PAGES $22.99
Google “Newfoundland folklore” and stories about fairies may well be your first hit. Tales about the little people, or the good people, are widespread. They usually involve an ordinary person, a grandmother or a neighbour, who underwent a strange, even inexplicable, experience. This often happened when they were isolated, in the woods or on a beach or the barrens. They are often relayed as having happened to a person the storyteller knew well, but sometimes they are told in the first person.
They may have been meant as entertainment on winter evenings, or as a warning to the youngsters — don’t be going up there!
There’s also lots of advice on how to avoid fairies: trace a cross into your bread loaves before you put them in the oven, turn your jacket inside out, and carry a spare piece of hard tack in your pocket.
Newfoundland fairies are not evil, exactly, but they can be great nuisances and really frighten people. Like the ritual of mummering, fairy stories are about the unknown, of someone or something being alien.
“Spirited Away” includes nine such tales, among them “The Marsh,” “Bones,” and “Where Water Ran the Other Way,” with a glossary and notes. Like “An Old Man Winter’s Night” (Running the Goat, 2015) it is a collaboration between writer Tom Dawe and visual artist Veselina Tomova.
It’s interesting that there is still such an audience for these stories, considering how cinemas and TV stations are currently screening and streaming a variety of complex and graphic horror. But their relatively lowkey and authentic tone is part of their appeal. These are more personable, and personal, simply setting the stage with lines like “It was coming on duckish when we passed the marsh.”
And while lots of things (in the best uncanny style) are left unexplained, much is also given frankly:
“Why do you call him ‘Jacky’?” I asked.
He looked at me and smiled. “We have to give him a name, the same as we do when we call the devil ‘Old Nick.’ Because when we give him a familiar name like that, it takes away some of our fear. He’s an awfully dark spirit, my son.”
Each page spread holds one of Tomova’s textured, expressionistic images. The Notes are essential coda to the stories, adding to their location and provenance. “The Changeling,” for example, is about a wellknown phenomenon, of a baby being taken and a fairy left in its place. (Modern diagnosis could explain many of these heartbreaking cases, where what
seems like a normal baby becomes unresponsive or develops exaggerated features or appears to have fantastically aged.)
Such accounts come from many cultures and date back centuries. Fairies are reckoned to have a lot of trouble having their own children. Their life force in that direction is not strong (though their lifespan can be). They are also jealous of some aspects of humanity, reproduction most definitely, and they don’t have many ethical qualms about taking what they perceive they need. Babies are a real temptation.
“They like infants who are far-haired, healthy, and rosy-cheeked. In place of the human child, they leave a fairy one, or often, a small, wrinkled old man or woman in the cradle. Sometimes they leave just a rough piece of wood, carved out to look like a child ... From time to time, a male fairy child will be reared into adulthood by a human couple. This person, usually troubled, never fits into the community, though he is often musically gifted, especially on the tin-whistle.”
Fairies are also called “Fallen Angels,” said to have sided with Lucifer in his challenge to God, and turned out of Heaven for their disloyalty and celestial misbehaviour. One character in the book, “Uncle Andrew,” is based on one of Dawe’s great-uncles, who regaled an often unresponsive teenage audience with strange stories, much of which they ridiculed, though a few of which struck with enough eerie force to make them uneasy when they ventured into the woods. But Uncle Andrew’s “fallen angels” turned out to be supported by such religious intellectual figures as St. Augustine, as well as “an old Irish belief, more harmless, that the fallen angels, though fooled by Satan, were not wholly on his side. Kicked out of heaven, they were not wicked enough for the pit of hell.” Betwixt and between, they dance and circle the Newfoundland cultural landscape, perhaps not looking for spooky shenanigans, but knowing how to make the most of any they do find.