The Shipping News
"Omens"
Good Luck:
* Seeing the new moon over the left shoulder
* Picking up a horse shoe on the road
* Picking a four leaf clover
* Seeing two black crows over head
* Putting on a garment inside out by a mistake
* Picking up a coin, white button, or a pin
* To see a baby smiling in its sleep
* A bee coming into a room                     Bad Luck:
                                                     * Coiling a rope against the sun
                                                              * Walking under a ladder
                                                              * Purchasing a broom in May
                                                              * Meeting a red haired woman
                                                              * To spill salt
                                                              * To cross knives
                                                              * To have a lone crow fly overhead
                                                              * To whistle on the water
                                                              * Black cat crossing your path
                                                              * To drop the ring at wedding

Death Tokens :

* A dog moaning near the house
* A bird flying into a room
* A window blind falling for no apparent cause
* A wall picture suddenly falling
* When "rigor mortis" does not appear in a corpse, it means another member of the family will soon die
* To dream of a wedding is a sign of a funeral
* A clock which has been stopped for years, suddenly striking the hours

Tokens, Good and Ill:
Tokens of a visit by a stranger:
* A cat washing her face
* Sparks from a woodstove falling to the floor
* A knife or a fork falling

* The first member of the assembled company at which the cat glared, would be the first to die.

* Considered taboo to step over a child, as this would stop the growing of the youngster.

* It was considered very unlucky to incur the wrath of a widow, as her curse was sure to bring evil.

Beliefs and Practices:

* To wake a person with The Hag (A nightmare which the person who is sleeping is unable to wake up, breathe or is frozen in terror) is to say their name backwards a few times and he/she will wake up,  e.g. Doe, Jane, is repeated.

* Maidens sought the name of their future husbands on the eve of mid summer.  They broke an egg and kept it in a glass overnight.  The next morning, the egg was spilled onto the road and the first man to walk over it had the same Christian name as the husband to be.

* Children lost in the woods were said to be led astray by fairies; as a safe guard against this, every person carried a cake of hard bread in their pockets to keep the fairies away.
 

Newfoundland folklore is very colourful, producing rich ghost stories which has been passed down from generation to generation.  They run from full scale horrors such as the ghost in a dark lane to the headless phantom who guard the pirate's treasures.  There are phantom ships and ghostly funeral processions glowing in the darkest hour of night.  There are shrieking hags and black dogs emitting fire from its eyes and mouth.  Imagination and exaggeration play a great part in these ghostly experiences.  The phantom ship may be a mirage and St. Elmo's fire may be explained by natural causes, but the lure of the supernatural is strangely appealing for many of us.
 

                                                                                                                   By Nancy Parsons