5 minute read
the house as a conduit for superstitious beliefs
Angela Silver
A table holding construction tools quickly became an ad hoc exhibition space of the numerous superstitious artifacts we found while renovating our 1880s Seaview farmhouse. The items laid out on the table included a woman’s brown leather shoe next to a child’s shoe, a white corset rusted at its ribbing, a piece of cloth with rudimentary stitching, twine, a seashell, a toddler’s jumper with its pocket detached. An envelope with the house’s address, a series of broken glass dishes and a glass bottle marked Ozone is Life and, on the other side, The Ozone Co. of Toronto. Research online revealed the 1800-century Ozone Company produced a sulfuric drink claiming to cure ailments ranging from eczema to inflamed ovaries.
We were euphoric the day we discovered the house’s structural mortise and tenon connections joined as in a ship, without nails. Pencilled numbers marking its assembly on the ceiling joists offered a poetic connection to its builders. Before finding the protective items, I lamented the gutting of the ground floor. Any personal portrait of its previous inhabitants seemed elusive despite removing layers of wallpaper, lath and horsehair plaster, walls, seven stacked layers of flooring, and three strata of ceilings. A sense of the former occupants could not be gleaned from a few white glass buttons, pennies, a Queen Victoria coin and a handwritten list of phone numbers on a layer of wallpaper.
This changed when we discovered four distinct caches of protective items concealed within the home’s architectural cavities. I found the woman’s collection under the sill on the south-facing wall while my partner found a three-foot-long barn augur stamped Thompson Glasgow with a large wooden plank in the same area. It is expected that superstitious caches will be found during renovations to houses in Nova Scotia. Concealing objects in the structural cavities of houses is formally known as immurement In many cultures, the house was frequently used as a conduit for superstitious prevention practices to ward off evil spirits and to bring good luck. Following traditional belief, items were best placed at entryways, near doorways, or windows within the walls and below the sills. Pieces of textiles cut from clothing and shoes, especially favoured for their increased protective powers, were placed inside the walls to bring its inhabitants good luck and to prevent malicious spirits entering the house.
I discovered the cache of a man’s items in the cavity to the right of the woman’s objects. The immured talismans were individual acts performed in unison, offering us an intimate portrait of a couple bound by superstition, a promissory note against wraiths in the form of their earthly possessions: the man chose a steel butter knife, the handle half wood on one side, bone on the other embossed Sylvester & Co Sheffield; a worn, black wool-lined leather boot, the cut collar of a white dress shirt stamped 15½, a child’s brown leather boot, a seashell and a net mending tool.
Our most recent finding, consisting of a child’s boot with a separated sole and a piece of rope, was found between posts on the staircase to the second floor.
I am familiar with the practice of immurement through my own family’s history. My paternal ancestors were part of a wave of Protestants of German origin, with twenty-seven families sent to settle the Lunenburg area for Britain circa 1753. Numerous renovations to houses in the Lunenburg area have illustrated how frequently original settlers practiced immurement, with their houses a conduit for these protective beliefs. A beloved heirloom I now possess, a tintype of my paternal great, great grandmother Ella Maria Fraser, her likeness preserved in silver halide crystals, was most likely concealed in her ancestral house due to superstitious beliefs. How this photograph came to light is astonishing.
My grandmother Evelyn and her cousin used to spend each summer at their family’s house and farm on the LaHave River in Lunenburg County. When they revisited it and while reminiscing about the times they had spent there as children, a woman emerged from the house asking if everything was all right as their prolonged discussion had attracted her attention. Once they explained their ancestral ties to the property, the woman disappeared into the house. She returned with a tintype and handed it to my grandmother. The image showed a young woman holding a book, seated in a plush chair, her hair a river cascading to her waist. A wave of petticoats flares out where her long hair ends, surrounding her legs in a current of ruffles. The woman explained that the tintype had been discovered during a renovation to the kitchen under nine layers of wallpaper, held by its original pin to the wall. My grandmother saw her long-deceased grandmother as an eighteen-year-old girl. To wallpaper over Ella’s tintype was most likely rooted in the superstitious belief that doing so would bring good luck and not tempt fate.
ANGELA SILVER, PhD, is a visual artist whose most recent work is being realised at Place des Montréalaises, a public commemorative space honouring the women of Montreal. Her work can be found at angelasilver.com
