Hiding Shoes to Bring Luck and Avert Evil

I’m always excited when some local folklore appears in the news, as it did this week. Several Boston-area news outlets reported that archaeologists working at the historic Tilden House in Canton, Massachusetts unearthed some shoes buried underneath the kitchen floor. Why all the excitement over some shoes? Because they could possibly be a form of protective magic. 

The Tilden House was built in 1725 by David and Abigail Tilden in what was then part of Dorchester, Massachusetts. That part of Dorchester ultimately became a separate town, Canton, in 1797. A strange and interesting fact: it was named Canton because Elijah Dunbar, one of the town’s leading citizens, thought it was on the exact opposite side of the planet from Canton, China. This is not the case, but the name stuck. 

A photo of hidden shoes from England. 

For those of you not from the Boston area, please note the names of the two cities are not pronounced the same. The town in Massachusetts is said CANT-in, or more often CAN’-in, with some kind of glottal stop instead of the “t”. The city in China is often pronounced can-TAWN, but it’s true Chinese name is Guangzhou. It’s also important to note that Cantonese cuisine originates from Guangzhou, not the Massachusetts town. 

The Tilden House is currently owned by the town of Canton, and leased to the Canton Historical Society, who are restoring and modernizing it so it can be used as a history center. After archaeologists removed the kitchen floor, they found several pairs of shoes, along with bottles, plates, and other items, all of which seemed to date from the mid-19th century. All these items could just be trash that past residents discarded, but it’s also possible the shoes were placed there to protect the house from witches or evil spirits. 

Hidden shoes are often found in the walls, ceilings, or under the floors of old buildings in England and North America, and historians suspect it was a form of protective magic. For example, back in 2013 archeologists found shoes hidden under the floor of the Old Colony House in Newport, Rhode Island. But why did our New England ancestors think hiding shoes would defend against evil magic? Historians  Matthew Cochran and Jeanne Ward explain it this way:

This well-documented practice dates from the l5th to the early 20th century. The underlying premise of using concealed shoes as a means of personal or household protection lies both in the shoe’s shape as well as the personal qualities imbued in a shoe by the wearer. Shoes take on the literal shape of the wearer and therefore can act as a form of proxy for the wearer. If a malicious entity is presumed to be haunting you, the concealment of the shoe in a relatively inaccessible space, such as the cellar or the attic, may draw the malicious entity to the shoe instead of you. And, if luck holds, the malicious entity may become trapped in the shoe (from the Maryland Archeology Newsletter, quoted here.)

This explanation makes sense to me, since it matches another important type of protective magic in New England: the witch bottle. I've written about witch bottles before. When someone thought they were being cursed by a witch, they would fill a bottle with their own urine, and then add nails, broken glass, and other sharp items to it. The urine acted as a substitute or proxy for the victim. The witch's evil magic would be drawn to the urine, which came from their victim, rather than to the actual intended target. To make things worse for the witch, the sharps objects would send pain and physical harm back to the witch. 

I suppose you should always have some old shoes, a bottle and some nails on hand just in case things start getting weird? It's like a supernatural form of recycling. But please, don't go around accusing your neighbors of witchcraft.

Folk Magic for the New Moon

What do you think of when you hear the words "new moon?"

If you are young, you might think of the second installment in Stephanie Meyer's teen vampire romance epic, The Twilight Saga. I believe that in New Moon, heroine Bella Swan breaks up with her sexy vampire boyfriend, but finds rebound love with a sexy werewolf.

If you are not so young, the words "new moon" might remind you of the Duran Duran song "New Moon on Monday" from their 1984 album Seven and the Ragged Tiger. I am not so young, so I had Duran Duran stuck in my head all day! Please note, the new moon this week is actually on Wednesday, not Monday.

However, if you lived in the 19th century you would think of neither teen vampires or British pop stars. Instead, you might think about magic. The new moon was the time to tell the future, start new projects, and make things grow.

I use the word magic with some trepidation. Did people in 19th century New England really think of their folklore practices as magic? Educated people of the time just thought of them as superstitions, and wrote books about the quaint folk beliefs of the common people. I think for example of Fanny Bergen's 1896 book Current Superstitions, which is a great collection of folklore.

For the people who believed in them, though, these quaint practices were ways to get things done. They didn't think of them as magic. But these practices aren't justified by contemporary scientific theories, so in a modern scientific view they might be classified as magic.

What exactly did people believe about the new moon? Well, the new moon is when the moon is at its darkest, and it was generally believed to be the time to start a project. The principle behind this is that since the new moon only gets bigger and brighter every night, any project you start will thrive and grow like the moon. You better like whatever you're working on when the new moon appears, though, because you will keep working on it until the next moon.

Ideally, you should time your haircut with the new moon. A haircut or beard-trim done in the new moon will come out better than one done in another moon phase. There is a catch, though. Hair cut during the new moon grows back faster than hair cut at other times. Sometimes this works to your advantage. For example, a girl who wants her hair to grow long should cut a little bit during each new moon so it will grow back nice and full.

If you're concerned about more serious things than hair, you should jingle the change in your pocket when you see the new moon. You will come into money as the moon grows fuller.

Gertrude Decrow includes some new moon lore in her article "Folk-Lore from Maine" in the October 1892 issue of The Journal of American Folklore. Decrow was told that if you see the new moon over your right shoulder, it brings good luck; over your left, bad luck. Seeing it over your right shoulder with something in your hand means you will receive a present.

The same lore about seeing the moon over your shoulder appears in Clifton Johnson's What They Say in New England (1896). (He dedicates one brief chapter just to moon lore.) Johnson goes on to add that if you see the new moon full on, rather than over your shoulder, you'll have a fall. He includes a short poem to remember this: "Moon in the face, open disgrace."

The new moon also rules over rain. Some New Englanders believed the moon was like a giant dish in the sky that held water. It will be a wet month if the new moon appears in the sky and the points are pointing horizontally. People often said, "If you can hang a powder horn on the moon's curve, it will be dry. If you can't, it will be wet." You can't hang a powder horn on the moon if it is tilted up too much, which means the dish of the moon will pour out water during the month. See below for clarification!

You can hang something off this moon, so it will be dry. (Photo from this great site.)

You can't hang anything off this moon, so it will be wet. All the water is pouring out! (From this astrology site.)

Be careful when the new moon first appears. How you first view it can be a matter of life or death. It's best to go outside when you know the moon is new, because if you see it for the first time through the window, you will hear of the death of someone before the week is over. If you see it through an upper pane, an older person will die. If you see if through a lower pane, it will be someone young.

Sorry to end this post on a grim note, but there are a lot of death omens in New England folklore. I'm not sure if that has something to do with New England being gloomy and grim, or because much of this lore was collected in the 19th century, when medicine was less effective and life expectancies were shorter. Either way: be careful when you look out the window!

Doppelgangers and Ghostly Doubles in New England Folklore

Many years ago, Sam Cavendish was walking through a swamp outside Cavendish, Vermont. As he trudged through the mucky terrain he noticed another man walking slowly towards him.

As the man drew closer Sam realized that they looked very similar. In fact, the man was an exact double of Sam.

When his double came within walking distance of Sam he spoke, telling Sam that he would die in one year's time. After delivering this dire warning the double vanished.

A year passed. Sam had been invited to a barn-raising, and although it was the day of his alleged doom he went anyway. Barn-raisings were important social events for rural communities, and Sam didn't want to miss the chance to visit with his neighbors. Besides, he didn't really believe his double's warning anyway.

Sam had told everyone in Cavendish about his double's warning shortly after it had been delivered, so all his neighbors knew this was the day that Sam might die. When he arrived at the work site they refused to let him participate. "Too dangerous," they said, "but you can sit and watch."

Sam sat and watched, but when his neighbors went into the house to eat he decided to climbed up on the scaffolding to adjust the work someone else had done. As he stepped back to admire his adjustment he fell off the platform onto the hard ground below. He died instantly. The double's warning had come true.

This story first appeared in 1901 magazine called Scribbler, and the author starts it by writing "But never since the world began has it been told that a man met his own ghost." That's some nice hyperbole, but it's simply not true. In fact a similar story was told in Massachusetts just a few years earlier.

Clifton Johnson includes the following in his book What They Say in New England (1896). A wealthy man come home one winter day to find his wife in tears. When he asked why she said that she had looked out the window and seen herself walking in the snow. She knew this meant she would die soon. Within a year she passed away. As Clifton Johnson ends the story he notes that Abraham Lincoln saw his double shortly before he was assassinated. The idea that seeing your double means death was apparently well known.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, How They Met Themselves, 1864

The concept can actually be traced back to old European folk beliefs and can be found in stories from the Middle Ages and in Viking sagas. The Germans have a specific word for this phenomenon, doppelganger, which literally means "double goer." I've also seen the word double goer used in English accounts of doubles.

One of the core beliefs in old European folklore is that everyone has a soul that looks identical to your physical body. This belief explains a lot of other odd things: that witches can send out their souls to torment people, that vampires have no reflection (because they have no soul), that breaking a mirror is bad luck (because you're damaging your double), and that babies shouldn't look at mirror before baptism (because their souls are not fully attached and will be stuck in the mirror).

Occasionally a person's soul appears to deliver a warning, usually of impending doom. It's the soul's way of saying, "Hey, it's been nice, but we aren't going to be together very much longer." That's what's happening in the stories about Sam Connor and the others.

If you encounter your double you could try running the other way, but it probably wouldn't help. The doppelganger isn't really the problem, it's just telling you what's going to happen. Maybe you should just say thank you and put your affairs in order?

The best book on this topic is Claude Lecouteux's Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages (2003). It focuses mostly on European material but is fascinating nonetheless.

Don't Be A Jonah: Bad Luck On Ships and Boats

I am not a sailor.

My brother loves to sail. My father loves to sail. I come from a long line of Nova Scotia fishermen, but somehow I didn't get the sailing gene. Instead I got the "I get seasick even riding a bus" gene. Maybe I inherited that one from my mother's side.

I'm still interested in nautical lore, even if I'm not a sailor. There is quite a bit of it in New England, naturally, and much of it concerns what might bring bad luck to a ship.

A person or thing that brings bad luck to a ship is called a "Jonah." The term of course comes from the Biblical prophet of the same name. Jonah is best remembered for being swallowed by a whale, but that's only part of his story, which goes something like this: Jonah was commanded by God to go preach in the Assyrian city of Nineveh, but refused to go. Instead he boarded a ship sailing in the opposite direction. He wanted to put as much mileage between himself and Nineveh as possible. God wasn't buying it, though, and sent a terrible storm which threatened to sink the ship. The sailors on board determined that Jonah was to blame for the bad weather and tossed him overboard. The storm abated and the ship reached its destination safely. (Jonah meanwhile was swallowed by a whale and eventually went to Nineveh).

"Sorry Jonah, but you gotta go!"

Similar stories appear throughout European literature and folklore. For example, in Shakespeare's play Pericles, the hero's wife dies in childbirth while at sea. A huge storm threatens to sink the ship, but the sailors calm it by throwing her body into the ocean. Don't be sad - since Pericles is one of Shakespeare's late romances there's still a happy ending. In folklore, mermaids often cause storms to delay or sink ships carrying handsome sailors they want to marry. The storm can only be stopped if the sailor throws himself overboard into the mermaid's waiting arms.

So apparently if you're on a ship carrying a reluctant prophet, the corpse of someone who died in childbirth, or a handsome sailor you will experience bad weather. If it's carrying all three just swim back to shore right away!

Here in New England, the following were considered bad luck:

• A man carrying a black valise on board will bring bad luck and should be shunned.
• Anyone carrying an umbrella on board brings bad luck.
• It is unlucky to pound nails on a ship on Sunday.
• Hawks, owls and crows will bring bad luck it they land on a ship.
• Dropping the hatch into the hold is bad luck.
• Never watch a ship sail out of sight, because it's the last time you'll see it.

Some men were also just considered naturally unlucky. A new crew member on a fishing boat will be blamed and labeled a Jonah if the boat brings in a small catch on his first trip. Stories are told of men who hexed three ships in a row with their bad luck. Time to pursue a new profession!

All is not grim, though, and there is light at the end of the voyage. Here are some things that bring good luck:

• Dropping a cake of ice overboard before leaving port
• Bees or small birds bring good luck if they land on the ship.
• A horseshoe nailed into the mast will protect the ship from witches.

Now I just need something to prevent motion sickness on the MBTA bus!

Turn Your Cloak for the Fairy Folk

There's an old saying from England that goes something like this:

Turn your cloak

For fairy folks

Live in old oaks

It's an instruction and a warning. Fairies are mischievous, if not sometimes maevolent, and often inhabit large, old oak trees. Turning your cloak inside out will prevent them from enchanting you as you pass by their home. I'm not 100%  sure why wearing something inside out will protect you, but I think the belief is that the fairies are just so puzzled by this weird behavior that they don't know what to do.

Not a lot of European fairy lore made it to New England, so I was surprised to read the following in Caroline Howard King's When I Lived in Salem 1822 - 1866:

Judge Story used to tell with great delight, that when he was a boy living in Marblehead, his mother always warned him, when he went to the pasture, to drive home the cows, to turn his jacket inside out for fear of the pixies.

It seems likely that King is talking about Joseph Story, a famous North Shore lawyer who became a Supreme Court Justice. Justice Story was a child in Marblehead during the Revolutionary War and left in 1795 to attend Harvard. The warning against pixies would have been delivered to him by his mother Mehitable Story (maiden name Pedrick).

Joseph Story, 1779 - 1845

Why don't we have more European fairy beliefs in New England? In his new book America Bewitched: Witchcraft After Salem, historian Owen Davies proposes at least one answer. In Great Britain fairies are often associated with certain features of the landscape like ancient burial mounds, streams, or large trees. When the English settlers left their old homes for New England they left behind not only these locations but also their magical inhabitants.

The New World landscape certainly had an abundance of interesting features, but without the weight of oral tradition the fairies didn't become associated with them. Fairies didn't just live in any old tree, but specific trees back in England that had been left behind. In New England, mothers didn't tell their children about fairies living in the oak behind their house here and so the traditions mostly faded away.

New England does have a lot of natural features associated with the Devil, and I wonder if the Devil took the place of the fairies in local folklore. After all, he's not limited to one particular hill or tree, so it was easier for beliefs about the Devil to travel to North America. The various rocks, ponds, etc. named after the Devil aren't so much his home, but have instead been altered by him as he traveled across the region.

The belief about wearing things inside out did persist into the nineteenth century in New England, but without any fairies being associated with it. You were supposed to wear a dress or shirt inside out simply to bring good luck, not to avoid being enchanted by pixies. The practice survived but the fairy association disappeared.

Folklore in the Media: Magic Shoes, Sea Monsters, and New England Vikings

There were three stories related to New England folklore in the media this week. Very often there are none, so it's a bonanza!

Newport's Old Colony House once served as Rhode Island's State House.

First, my good friend Ed directed me to this article in The Providence Journal about some very old shoes found underneath the floorboards at the Old Colony House in Newport. The brown leather shoes date from the 1830s, and were probably left there when the Old Colony House was being renovated in the 1840s. Shoes are often found in the walls and chimneys of old buildings, and it's believed they were placed there while the buildings were under construction to bring luck. The Old Colony House is still standing so I guess the shoes worked their magic.

Second, Atlas Obscura recently published this fun map showing various water monsters across the United States.

 

New England is represented by four aquatic oddities. In Vermont's Lake Champlain  you can find Champ, a cousin of the Loch Ness Monster who has been seen swimming in the lake since the 1600s. In Maine, the White Monkey (a small pale-skinned man with webbed hands) haunts the Saco River and was last seen in the 1970s. Also in Maine, Lake Pocomoonshine is inhabited by a serpentine monster who leaves enormous snake trails through the woods surrounding the lake. And last but not least, a sea monster has been seen of the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts for hundreds of years. 

Many other New England lake monsters and sea serpents are not shown on this map, but I still learned a lot from it. I never knew there was an aquatic goatman in Texas or a lake monster called Slimy Slim in Idaho!

Boston's Leif Erikson statue outside Kenmore Square.

Finally, the Boston Globe's travel section has an article about places the Vikings visited in New England. Or, more accurately, places people have at one time or another said the Vikings visited. There is no firm proof Leif Erikson amd his crew made it this far down the coast when they visited North America, but the article lists some fun places to visit including stone towers in Weston, Mass. and Newport, Rhode Island.

That's all for this week. Next week, a haunted hotel in the White Mountains!

Horseshoe Magic: Secretly Pleasing to the Devil?

A few years ago I purchased an iron horseshoe in a neighborhood botanica. There is a decent-sized Santeria community in Boston, and the horseshoe is an attribute of Ogun, the orisha (spirit or deity) who governs iron, the military, and physical strength. Don't mess with Ogun!

I don't practice Santeria, though; I just bought the horseshoe because I've always heard they're lucky. I'm not sure where this idea originated, but it's been found in New England for a long time. For example, in the late 19th century farmers in western Massachusetts told folklorist Clifton Johnson the following:

1. Nailing a horseshoe above the door of your house brings luck.

2. Nail it so the opening points upwards. Otherwise, all the luck will run out!

3. In the old days, horseshoes were used to repel witches from the house.

The first two are still commonly held beliefs, but I don't think many people in the 21st century use horseshoes to protect themselves from witches. If I am wrong please let me know.

Those 19th century farmers were quite correct that their ancestors thought a horseshoe would keep witches out of the house. Richard Godbeer provides a great example in his book The Devil's Dominion, which examines witchcraft and magic in early New England.

The story goes something like this. Goody Chandler of Newbury Massachusetts became quite ill in 1666, and thought her sickness was caused by her neighbor Elizabeth Morse, who was unpopular and therefore considered a witch. Goody Chandler was determined to keep Morse out of her house, and nailed a horseshoe over the door. Apparently it worked because Elizabeth Morse refused to enter once the horseshoe was put up.

This probably would be the end of the story if an uptight neighbor named William Moody hadn't gotten involved. William Moody was opposed to any kind of magic, and he thought putting up a horseshoe was just as bad as witchcraft. He knocked down the horseshoe, and once again Elizabeth Morse began to come into Goody Chandler's house under the pretense of being neighborly.

William Moody was not alone in condemning all forms of magic as witchery - it was the official platform of the Puritan church in New England. Cotton Mather himself, the leading minister in Massachusetts, wrote in Wonders of the Invisible World that,

"The Children of New-England have Secretly done many things that have been pleasing to the Devil. They say, That in some Towns, it ha's been an usual Thing for People to Cure Hurts with Spells, or to use Detestable Conjurations, with Sieves, & Keyes, and Pease, and Nails, and Horse-Shooes... 'Tis in the Devils Name that such Things are done."

I suppose William Moody thought he was being helpful, but he comes across as a pious busybody. And his actions certainly didn't help Goody Chandler, who just got sicker and weaker. She finally convinced another neighbor to nail up the horseshoe again (she was now too weak to do it herself) but William Moody took it down and this time carried it away. Elizabeth Morse was able to enter the house, and Goody Chandler died soon after.

It's an interesting story. Who was to blame for Goody Chandler's death? Elizabeth Morse, William Moody, or natural causes? I say natural causes (and I hope you do too), but her contemporaries had other ideas. Elizabeth Morse was brought to trial and eventually convicted of witchcraft, but even the judges must have had some doubts since she only served one year in jail.

A horseshoe could also be used to keep a dead witch in his or her grave. As I've noted in an earlier post, the people of Hampton, New Hampshire staked the heart of suspected witch Goody Cole after she died. To make double sure she stayed in her grave they tied a horseshoe to the stake.

Although the horseshoe is considered lucky and magical across Europe and North America, it's not quite clear why. The writer Robert Means Lawrence devoted an entire book to this topic (The Magic of the Horsehoe, published in 1898). Is it because its shape is reminiscent of the horns of a ferocious animal? Is it because it resembles a crescent moon? Or perhaps it's because it's made of iron, and supernatural creatures (such as fairies) fear iron.

I'm actually a fan of the iron theory, since other metals have the power to repel magical monsters (like silver against vampires and werewolves), and the defining lines between supernatural creatures are blurry. Witches can transform into animals, including wolves, and sometimes they return from the dead to cause trouble, like vampires. In the British Isles, witches often were accused of cavorting with fairies, and peasants nailed horseshoes over their doors to keep fairies out of the house. So I think it all boils down to this - if you have trouble with a supernatural creature, use some metal.

The next question is "Why does metal repel monsters at all?" but my blog is limited, and a question like that would probably lead me on an infinite regression into mankind's distant and murky past!