There is a great belief in fairies on the coast. A man came to me once
to cure what he was determined to believe was a balsam on his baby's
nose. The birthmark to him resembled that tree. More than one had
given currency if not credence to the belief that the reason why the
bull's-eye was so hard to hit in one of our running deer rifle matches
was that we had previously charmed it. If a woman sees a hare without
cutting out and keeping a portion of the dress she is then wearing,
her child will be born with a hare-lip.
When stripping a patient for examination, I noticed that he removed
from his neck what appeared to be a very large scapular. I asked him
what it could be. It was a haddock's fin-bone--a charm against
rheumatism. The peculiarity of the fin consists in the fact that the
fish must be taken from the water and the fin cut out before the
animal touches anything whatever, especially the boat. Any one who has
seen a trawl hauled knows how difficult a task this would be, with the
jumping, squirming fish to cope with.
Protestant and Catholic alike often sew up bits of paper, with prayers
written on them, in little sacks that are worn around the neck as an
amulet; and green worsted tied around the wrist is reported to be a
never-failing cure for hemorrhage.
Every summer some twenty thousand fishermen travel "down North" in
schooners, as soon as ever the ice breaks sufficiently to allow them
to get along. They are the "Labrador fishermen," and they come from
South Newfoundland, from Nova Scotia, from Gloucester, and even
Boston. Some Newfoundlanders take their families down and leave them
in summer tilts on the land near the fishing grounds during the
season. When fall comes they pick them up again and start for their
winter homes "in the South," leaving only a few hundreds of scattered
"Liveyeres" in possession of the Labrador.
We were much surprised one day to notice a family moving their house
in the middle of the fishing season, especially when we learned that
the reason was that a spirit had appropriated their dwelling.
Stephen Leacock would have obtained much valuable data for his essay
on "How to Become a Doctor" if he had ever chanced to sail along "the
lonely Labrador." In a certain village one is confidently told of a
cure for asthma, as simple as it is infallible. It consists merely of
taking the tips of all one's finger-nails, carefully allowed to grow
long, and cutting them off with sharp scissors. In another section a
powder known as "Dragon's Blood" is very generally used as a plaster.
It appears quite inert and harmless. A little farther south along the
coast is a baby suffering from ophthalmia. The doctor has only been
called in because blowing sugar in its eyes has failed to cure it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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