Once upon a time, witchcraft was everywhere in Newfoundland. Previous generations of islanders relied on charms and magic to make their day-to-day lives easier; many believed that the right spell from the right person could change lives. Magic could cure sickness, improve fishing and fix almost anything in between.

There was another side to the coin, of course.

If magic could be used to make life better, it could also be wielded to make life worse. From time to time people thought spells were being used against them to settle scores. They believed, in essence, that some of their neighbours were wicked witches.

People looked for ways to release themselves from these punishing spell — and they came up with some practical, awful and downright disturbing solutions.

The following are some Newfoundlanders tried to ward off wicked witches.

We’ll start with the practical.

Apologize

The easiest way to lift a curse, was to apologize to the witch. People believed they could be subject to a curse for any number of reasons but top of the list was because they somehow wronged the witch. From a practical stand point, the quickest route to ending the curse was to apologize for the wrongdoing and, then setting the wrong right.

It might be the quickest route but sometimes ‘sorry’ can be a really difficult word to utter — especially if you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.

There’s also the chance the witch won’t accept the apology

Shoot the Witch’s Heart

When saying sorry didn’t cut it, there were other options. Sometimes people resorted to shooting the witch’s heart.

Shooting the witches heart is neither as outright murderous or confrontational as it sounds. It is, in essence, a counter-curse.

Shooting the witch’s heart was metaphorical.

An image of a witch was drawn and posted on a wall. The cursed person would get a gun, take aim and fire at the drawing.

Sometimes shooting toward the image might be enough frighten the witch into lifting the curse. Sometimes not.

If the cursed person actually hit the image, the living witch would suffer injury or disease. The affliction would target the part of the drawing that had been damaged by the shot.

This method was occasionally employed to identify a witch. It wasn’t necessary that the drawing be of the exact person, a general image of a witch would do. If the person shot at the picture and struck the leg portion of the drawing, then a neighbour suddenly developed a limp, it was thought that neighbour could have been the source of the curse.

It was hardly a foolproof method.

Frighten the Witch

Shooting the witch’s heart was fairly non-confrontational — it could be done without ever meeting the witch face-to-face.

A bolder method for dealing with witches was to frighten them.

This strategy has some obvious downsides. First, the witch must be clearly known. Second, there’s the chance the fright will fail, and you’ll just further raise the witch’s ire.

A tale of witch-scaring comes from Ship Cove, in modern day Port de Grave. In a 1986 issues of Decks Awash magazine, Roy L. Dawe tells the story of Aunt Stacie, a woman reputed to be a witch.

Aunt Stacie lived in the Ship Cove in the early 1800s. She was believed to have put a hex on the local cows to prevent them from giving milk. Townsfolk decided, the best way to put an end to her witchy powers was to frighten her at dawn.

At sunrise, four local men took hold of her tiny hut and ripped off its roof. Legend has it, the shock worked; Aunt Stacie supposedly lost her powers.

I don’t know if people ever really behaved this way, but if they did it sounds cruel. Though, admittedly, it is hardly the worst thing done in the name of ‘witch control.’

Now, on to one of the more disgusting things…

Boil Urine

Another method of stopping a curse was to boil the witch’s urine.

Collecting the witch’s urine and setting it on the stove to boil was supposed to counter-curse the witch. As the urine boiled away, the witch’s ability to urinate disappeared.

If the witch didn’t break the curse, they had to suffer the consequences of not being able to pee.

I have questions about the practicalities of this one. Even in the days of chamber pots wasn’t collecting a bottle of a witch’s urine a bit challenging?

And, if I were a witch, I’m pretty sure I could make certain it didn’t happen.

Barbara Rieti in her 2008 book Making Witches: Newfoundland Traditions of Spells and Counterspells, shares a story of a bottle urine being hung in a chimney flue. In her case, it held the urine of the victim.

Much more practical.

Put A Cork In It

Bottles may have been used for boiling more than urine.

There is some evidence that witch bottles were used in Newfoundland. Witch bottles are containers that hold objects thought to confer protection from witches — things like hair, nails, pins etc.

They are, in essence, a bottled spell.

Fragments of a German-made Bellarmine jar were found during the archaeological dig a Cupids (see an image here). The outer part of the jar was modelled into the image of a stern-looking face. Such jars were sometimes used as witch bottles. Whether the one in Cupids was, we may never know.

If it was, it certainly suggest protection from witchcraft was on the minds of European settlers from their earliest days in Newfoundland.

The Tip of the Iceberg

There’s a lot of counterspell folkore in Newfoundland — far more than I’ve described here. If you have a story, or ‘counter-curse’ you’d like to share, I’d love to hear it.

The comments are always open.