Saying Isn't Believing: Conversation, Narrative and the Discourse of Belief in a French Newfoundland Community

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.

“Commonly accepted in contemporary L’Anse-а-Canards tradition is
the belief in the divine healing powers of the ‘septiиme,’ or
seventh son. The seventh consecutive son born to a family is almost
universally recognized as possessing the power to cure a variety of
minor ailments, a power directly connected to the circumstances of his
birth.” This is but one of many folk beliefs transcribed and described
in this excellent book. For almost ten years Butler (a skilled linguist
and folklorist) lived with the residents of L’Anse-а-Canards, a
French community on the west coast of Newfoundland. His sole purpose was
listening to and studying their folk traditions, paying particular
attention to how those traditions were communicated to each other and
from one generation to another. What emerges is a work rich in basic
folklore—many transcriptions (in French and English) of the actual
oral tales—and fascinating in terms of Butler’s analysis of that
material. Much more than being simply a means of “passing the time in
L’Anse-а-Canards,” or even a mode of supernatural experience, these
folktales and proverbs serve as the basis for a study of such things as
“narrative form and performance,” the “variation of tradition,”
and the “communicative competence” of the tellers. These are
eye-opening discussions, no doubt of immense value to the teacher of
folklore, but also accessible (notwithstanding considerable technical
jargon) to the general reader. For even if the latter chooses only to
read the “texts” themselves, a great deal of pleasure may be had
therefrom.