Rockyfoot: Newfoundland’s Krampus
I remember one childhood Christmas Eve when I couldn’t get to sleep — not because I was excited; I was terrified. Of Santa.
“He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake.”
40 years later, I still sympathize with 6 year-old me.
Santa had been watching me — no, judging me — for weeks, and on that very night he was going to be in my house. I was certain I’d wake to see his silhouette in my bedroom door as he completed his final tally of my naughty-to-nice ratio. It was a scary thought.
I’m fortunate I grew up when I did, really: before anxiety-inducing shelf elves, but after the really terrifying Christmas creatures faded into the shadows.
Krampus
If Santa Claus scared me, I shudder to think the breakdown Krampus would have induced. Krampus is a demon-like figure from central Europe. He is a sort of counterpoint to St. Nicholas; while St. Nick rewards the nice, Krampus punishes naughty.
Krampus Cards, Public Domain, public domain review
To put it mildly, Krampus is a disturbing figure. He is depicted as a hairy humanoid with cloven hooves. He has the horns of a goat and a long, pointed tongue. He carries a branch to swat naughty children and a basket he can use to steal them away.
He was a powerful way to get children to behave.
I don’t know that many early Newfoundlanders had any cultural connections to Krampus but some of them had ties to another anti-Claus.
Rockyfoot
An AI-aided rendering of Rockyfoot, as I imagine him.
Much as Krampus was a counterpoint to St. Nick, for some Newfoundlanders Rockyfoot was an alternative to Santa Claus. Where Santa gave gifts, Rockyfoot filled Christmas stockings with stones.
To be honest, that’s about all I know about Rockyfoot. I’ve come across exactly one mention of him in my reading. He was described in John Widdowson’s 1977 text If You Don’t Be Good. Widdowson collected a reference to the character in Terranceville.
I have no idea how widely held the belief was (I suspect, not very) and Widdowson’s informant didn’t supply any descriprion of Rockyfoot’s appearance.
That leaves lots of scope for the imagination.
I’d like to think Rockyfoot crawled up the cliffs from the cold, North Atlantic every December 24th looking for naughty children. His skin, mottled and pallid, would be covered in barnacles and seaweed. He might have long, boney tuckamore-twisted fingers in which he’d clutch a handful of pebbles… perhaps bits of ballast from sunken ships… He’d slip the stones to naughty children and maybe, if a child collected enough, the weight of the gifted stones would pull them to a watery grave.
I don’t know. I’m new at writing cautionary horror.
Anyway, whatever he was he was hardly alone in terms of supernatural beings keeping naughty children in line.
Boo-Darbies, Boo-Beggars & Boo-Men
Rockyfoot may have delivered a disappointing stocking-filler on Christmas morning but a contingent of ‘boo’ creatures — boo-darbies, boo-beggars and boo-men — lurked in the shadows of Newfoundland, threatening something darker than rocks in socks.
These figures were sinister beings were believed to be interested in abducting children. They are similar, I suppose, to the more widely recognized ‘Boogey Man’.
Often these boo-folk were said to be active at night, or lurking in dangerous places. They were used as threats to keep children safe. Kids were told things like, “If you’re not home by dark the boo-man will take you” or “stay away from the cliffs, the boo-darby lives there.”
Unlike Rockyfoot, whose danger was most acutely felt in the lead-up to Christmas, these boo-folk were dangerous all year round.
The boo-darby might have seemed especially scary in December, though.
While it’s not exactly clear what a boo-darby is (though it’s sometimes described as a horned creature). I think it’s interesting to consider that on some parts of the island, ‘darby’ means ‘mummer.’
Newfoundland Christmas mummers, despite the benign tea-towel depictions we see these days, were scary — they were mysterious strangers who spoke in strange voices and created mischief. It wasn’t all ‘wearin’ mother’s big forty-two bra,” either. Mummer costumes often involved animal skins and horns and, in some cases, were designed to deliberately frighten people. Parents sometimes used the threat of mummers to get children to behave.
I can’t draw a direct line between mummers and boo-darbies. That is, I can’t say one was the inspiration for the other but together mummer sightings and warnings of boo-darbies must have combined to make each experience much scarier than it would have been on its own.
In that, the boo-darby is a bit unique.
Too Real
Krampus and Rockyfoot were supernatural creatures most children would know only know through stories. Mummers and darbies were verifiable, flesh and bone beings that descended on the community every Christmas. Their physical presence must have made the danger seem entirely too real… and therefore a pretty effective deterrent.
It’s all a bit weird to me but it’s like they say, I guess — you get more flies with honey but, when it comes to raising kids, the threat of an omniscient rocky-boo-beastly-mummer-thing really makes them toe the line.
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If You Don’t Be Good, John Widdowson, 1977
A Newfoundland Christmas, 1910, Joseph Dobbin, MUN Gazette, 1978.
