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Be careful where you tread as you hike along the trails and through the woods in Newfoundland and Labrador. There are more creatures living in them than just birds and moose and fox. They are also home to wily Newfoundland and Labrador fairies who are known for taking unwitting travellers away to the fairy realm. There are stories from all over the province of people who were "taken by the fairies" and never returned—or who were forever changed by their adventure.
Mrs. Frances Richards, born in Carbonear, married into the Richards family of Cupids when she was 22.¹ She doesn't remember hearing about fairies in Carbonear, but once she moved into Cupids, the old folks had many tales to tell her of the Good People. Crossing marshes or collecting your cattle as dusk was coming on was considered very dangerous—a fairy encounter was all but guaranteed.
Mrs. Richards reported that wearing a red hat would attract fairies: they are drawn to anything red. In one of her stories, a man from Brigus was often held by the fairies when he would go to collect wood in the hills. Several times when he got to a particular place, his horse would refuse to budge. He would stay all night in the woods, unable to account for the passing of time or say what had happened to him, until the fairies let him go again in the morning.
There were several ways to prevent being led astray. One of them was to keep hard bread in your pocket. Children were especially prone to being taken—to prevent this, a small New Testament Bible would be placed in carriages or cradles.
Peter Laracy, a resident of Cupids, says that his grandfather would warn him of the dangers of fairies before he'd go picking berries on nearby hills.
My grandfather was ninety when he died. I used to call him Old Daddy. So [when] I was small … if I was going up picking berries, he would generally wave at me like this: "Are you going up picking berries now, my babby?" So “my babby,” it means my baby. That is a term of affection for a grandchild. "Are you going up picking berries now, my babby?" And I’d say, "Yes Old Daddy."
[He’d say,] "Now, you mind me. When you get up there on the hills, if you hear any music, you come down here. You run back home right away, won’t you? Won’t you? Won’t you?" And of course I’d always answer "Yes," because he’d frighten the life out of me. [He would go on,] "Have you got any pockets on you? Have you got any pockets on you? Put your hand out. Put your hand out. Let’s see your hand. Put your hand right down in front of you. I’ve got something for you." And he’d put his hand in his pocket and take hard bread out.
[He’d tell me,] "Now you put that in your pocket. Put that down in your pocket. Put it right down. Right down at the bottom of your pocket. And I don’t want you to lose that. You won’t lose it, will you? If you hear any music when you’re upon the hills, you reach in your pocket. You take that bread out and you take that and you toss that and then you run home to me as fast as you can, won’t you? Will, ya? Yes, you better I’m telling you right now, you better run home if you hear that music."
So what he would be passing me is a cake of hard bread. So the reason he would be giving me the hard bread is because he was afraid that if I was up the hill and I was hearing music, it would be music that would be played by the fairies [and he believed the hard bread would protect me from the fairies].²
¹ Frances Richards, interview with with Victor DuPree, August 27, 1967, Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive.
² Peter Laracy, quoted in Mahdi Khaksar, "Berries and Fairies," in Work in Cupids. Edited by Jillian Gould and Diane Tye, 27–28. St. John's, NL: Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Folklore, 2017.