Barbara Rieti explores the range and depth of Newfoundland witch tradition, looking at why certain people acquired reputations as witches, and why others considered themselves bewitched.

Making Witches: Newfoundland Traditions of Spells and Counterspells

History

Rieti, Barbara

Americas

McGill-Queen's University Press

There is a little-known tradition of witch lore in Newfoundland culture. Those believed to have the power to influence the fortunes of others are not mythological characters but neighbours, relations, or even friends. Drawing from her own interviews and a wealth of material from the Memorial University Folklore and Language Archive, Barbara Rieti explores the range and depth of Newfoundland witch tradition, looking at why certain people acquired reputations as witches, and why others considered themselves bewitched. The tales that emerge - despite their seemingly fantastic elements of spells and black heart books, hags, and healing charms - concern everyday affairs and reveal the intense social interdependence central to outport life. Frequently featuring women, they provide fascinating new perspectives on female coping strategies in a volatile economy. By addressing the perennial human issues at the heart of witchcraft - construction of enmity and intertwined fate - these narrative accounts also illuminate older witch beliefs revealed in witchcraft trial documents. Making Witches shows that in storytelling communities with a rich legacy of witch lore, witch tradition has endured well into the twentieth century.

Strange Terrain: The Fairy World in Newfoundland (Social and Economic Studies, 45)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Inst of Social & Economic

Review\n"Strange Terrain is an excellent book. Rieti has made a major contribution by documenting and analysing fairy lore as living tradition." ― Ranald Thurgood, Culture & Tradition\n"Barbara Rieti's Strange Terrain marks a renaissance in fairylore studies, moving the study of fairylore from a literary study to one informed by ethnographic, psychological, phenomenological, and religious perspectives." ― David E. Gay, Folklore Forum\n"Strange Terrain is an interesting and unusual book: the first extensive study of belief in fairies in Canada .... This is an important book for anyone doing research into popular beliefs and superstition." ― Edith Fowke, Books in Canada\n"One of our best modern fairy books." ― Simon Young, Fairies, Folklore and Forteana\nFairies might be good or bad, and encounters with them funny or fatal. They can take on the form of people or animals, or they may have no form at all, as when a person walking in the woods is “led astray” by some irresistible force. This variability in fairies is matched by the diversity of human attitudes about them. 
Barbara Rieti’s study began in 1983 when she met a young man who told her that he had been followed by the fairies. Subsequent research drew on the hundreds of archival accounts of fairies and on Dr. Rieti’s own fieldwork on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula. Rieti describes the specific contexts in which fairy experiences are recounted and the manner in which they are told, keeping the storytellers at centre stage. She also highlights themes such as connections between fairies and nature, and the relationships between fairies and people. Comparative material sets the subject in historical and international context and demonstrates the remarkable tenacity of these old yet persistent tales. 
The fairies may be going, but they are not gone yet. The stories still to be heard offer a window on everyday folklife, as well as on an extraordinary world.

Strange Terrain: The Fairy World in Newfoundland (Social and Economic Studies)

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Memorial University Press

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