In a few weeks, I plan to start releasing several feature length films that I’ve been
working on for many moons, which I think you’ll really enjoy. The video you’re about to watch is
an excerpt from one of these films, which treats with folktales endemic to Prince Edward Island,
Canada’s smallest province. Prince Edward Island, or PEI, is located in Eastern Canada,
next to the Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Its folklore derives from three main traditions: the oral stories of the native Mi’kmaq Indians,
who have called the Island home for generations; the traditions of the Acadians – French farmers
and fishermen who settled the Island in the 18th Century; and the folktales of Scottish
and Irish settlers who trickled onto the Island in the wake of the British Conquest of Canada.
In this regrettably disjointed piece, we will take a look at two ‘little people’ legends
which straddle the tri-cultural anthology that is the folklore of Prince Edward Island. Enjoy!
Long before canvas sails first appeared off Canadian shores, Prince Edward Island was the
domain of the Mi’kmaq Indians, a semi-nomadic people who lived in seasonal villages,
following the fish and game. The Mi’kmaq are said to have called the isle Abegweit,
a word which means “Cradled Upon the Waves.” Much like Islanders today,
PEI’s native inhabitants also referred to their insular abode simply as Minegoo, or “the Island”.
According to Island folklorist Frank Harold MacArthur in his 1966
book Legends of Prince Edward Island, ancient oral tradition has it that when Mi’kmaq braves
first pulled their birch bark canoes onto PEI’s ruddy shores in mists of prehistory,
having paddled out from their ancestral haunts on the mainland of what is now Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick, they discovered that they were not the first intelligent beings to set foot thereon.
Minegoo, they learned, had long since been settled by a race of
tiny men and women with preternatural abilities, whom posterity remembers as the “Tweedlers”.
Oral history has failed to record the details of the Mi’kmaq’s first encounter with the Tweedlers,
recalling only that the relationship between the two races was violent from the start.
For many months following their relocation, PEI’s first Mi’kmaq settlers battled with the
little people for the right to hunt and fish on Abegweit. The Tweedlers violently resisted the
red men’s occupation at every opportunity, attacking any lone warriors who strayed too
far from the main party, and stealing women and children from their wigwams in the night.
When the little people kidnapped the Mi’kmaq chief’s only son, the Indians held a powwow.
After deliberating long into the night, the tribe’s elders and war chiefs decided that
they must put every last Tweedler to the knife if they hoped to retain their foothold on Minegoo.
Weapons in hand, they left the safety of the campfire and set out into the dawn twilight,
determined to achieve their grim purpose.
The Mi’kmaq came upon the camp of their diminutive enemies at a place they called “Pretty Stream”.
Another version of this tale in MacArthur’s book identifies Pretty Stream as a brook
which runs through Kellow’s Hollow, a wooded area in what is now the town of Cornwall,
located on the shores of the West River west of the capital city of Charlottetown.
This author, with the help of Cornwall natives, has identified Kellow’s Hollow as the vale of
Hyde Creek, a brook sandwiched between the parallel streets of Lacardy and Kellow Drive.
“Night and day the fighting went on for a period of three days,”
MacArthur wrote of the subsequent battle between the Mi’kmaq and the Tweedlers.
“No quarter was asked of either side and none was given. Women and children were slaughtered along
with the warriors of both races, and finally, when the conflict had come to an end only a handful of
redmen remained alive to view the bloody scene. The bodies of the slain lay all about the place.
Even Pretty Stream was full of dead bodies while the water itself was dyed red.”
According to Mi’kmaq chief John Sark, from whom MacArthur heard the tale,
the Battle of Pretty Stream was the bloodiest of its kind ever fought on Abegweit.
“Tradition does not place a date for the fight,” MacArthur wrote,
“nor do we know how many were killed in the engagement. What we do know, however,
is that the Indians completely routed the enemy. Those fortunate enough to escape at the time,
later were rounded up, put aboard tiny boats, and set adrift in the Gulf Stream. Tradition
says they were all lost in a great storm that followed their expulsion.”
Ever since the Battle of Pretty Stream, Kellow’s Hollow is said to have possessed an enchanted
atmosphere, almost as if the blood of little warriors who fell there imbued the wooded
vale with the same mystical quality for which the Tweedlers were noted. Indeed, the ancient
battlefield serves as the setting of many more mysterious tales in MacArthur’s book and other
collections of Island folklore, such as the story of a haunted hollow tree which once stood at the
edge of the old bridge over Hyde Creek, and tales of mysterious blood curdling shrieks which emanate
from the Hollow at night, startling pedestrians who dare to pass over the bridge in the dark.
If other Island legends are to be believed, the echo of preternatural power at the site
of their last stand may not be the only legacy the Tweedlers bequeathed PEI.
Despite the assurances of native tradition, generations of settlers have told stories
about little fairy-like people spotted fleetingly from time to time in lonely
groves and secluded coves throughout the Island, hinting at the possibility that the Mi’kmaq of
antiquity may not have exterminated their little neighbours as thoroughly as tradition contends.
In the autumn of 1759, one year after Lord Rollo’s infamous Ile Saint-Jean Campaign, Major
General James Wolfe, the second highest-ranking commander of British forces in North America,
prepared to launch an assault on Quebec City, the capital of French Canada,
by way of the St. Lawrence River. On his way from Louisbourg to this so-called Battle of the Plains
of Abraham- the defining struggle for Quebec City in which Wolfe would gain a decisive British
victory but lose his life in the process- the general is said to have stopped at a point of land
near Ile Saint-Jean’s westernmost end. This beach would later be named Cape Wolfe in his honour.
According to a story in MacArthur’s book, at the time of the general’s visit,
Cape Wolfe was home to a man named John French and his mistress, Janet Daisy- apparently, among the
first Anglo-Saxon settlers to take up residence on the Island in the wake of its British conquest.
The lonely couple had no close neighbours save for the strange and elusive occupants of a tumbledown
shack about a half mile up the coast. This cabin, incidentally, was once the home of
an Acadian family whose members all perished from some mysterious and terrible disease.
When the last member of that family died, the shack was left to rot where it stood, locals
pronouncing it haunted and unlucky. For most of the year, the cabin stood desolate and abandoned,
the wind whistling through gaps between the cracked and graying logs that comprised its walls.
On two particular evenings every year, however, the haunted house was invaded by
mysterious revelers who played strange music and danced late into the night.
John French and Janet Daisy never actually saw the shack’s transient residents,
but observed that on the May’s Eve (the last night of April), and on Halloween, the windows
of the old cabin would glow merrily, and strange but cheerful music would issue from within. Those
two dates being the supposed holidays of fairies, according to Celtic and Anglo-Saxon tradition,
John and Janet could only assume that the shack was the occasional abode of little people- perhaps
the descendants of the legendary Tweedlers whom the Mi’kmaq battled on the Island long ago.
John was discontented with his lot in life, and often expressed a desire to
leave the world of men behind for the merry and carefree life of the fairies.
One Halloween, after a particularly heated argument with Janet,
he stormed out of his house and took a walk down the beach, in the direction of the haunted shack.
As he neared the gloomy structure, he saw its windows aglow with lantern light,
and heard the sound of tiny feet pattering on the wooden floorboards to the rhythm of an
enchanting tune, punctuated by silvery laughter and joyful chatter. Without a second thought,
John made up his mind to join the party, and boldly strode through the cabin door.
“About a score of little people were dancing to the music of flutes and fiddles,” MacArthur wrote,
“while others stood about talking and drinking nectar from tiny silver mugs,
no larger than thimbles.” The little people welcomed John into their midst
and invited him to join in the merriment.
Meanwhile, back in her own cabin a half mile down the beach, Janet was beginning to get worried. She
recalled John’s wistful talk about the fairies and, recognizing that it was presently one of
the few nights of the year on which the fairies were said to be especially active, feared that her
master might make good on his threat to join the little people and leave mankind behind.
When John returned home that night, Janet was dismayed to find that he had shrunk to the size
of a small child- a consequence of his night of revelry with the fairies, and a change which John
heartily welcomed. “Tradition tells us that after these startling events,” MacArthur concluded,
“Janet returned to her own folk, while John went to live with the fairies…”
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