Edwardian and Georgian Canadian Poets
1900-1930

 

 


Canadian Houses
of Romance

by

Katherine Hale




XVIII

A WITCH-HOUSE


STEP softly over the grass, this is a Witch House, a little tumble-down shed behind a hidden road, weed-choked, and desolate. There is nothing to see, unless a trace of folk-lore is a sight, or an old legend.
     Dr. James H. Coyne, of St. Thomas, had told us how to find it, and he warned us of the road. We remembered his words as we slid down a kind of sand pit, and then, through a tangle of bush, approached our ruin on foot.
     “Cursed be all witches for bringing us to see a log hut,” swore my chauffeur.
     “‘Cursed’ is the word,” we reflected.
     It is a forlorn spot. Thrice cursed I should say—the shell of a wild, forgotten phantasy holding nothing but an old superstition. For the tale of Dr. Troyer, once owner of this shack, belongs a century and more ago, when doubts may have been fashionable—but not in a rustic community like this.
     Long Point, about a mile and a half east of Port Rowan, was originally settled by German, Dutch, French and British immigrants. Dr. Troyer was a German and his specialty was witches. Yet he was a liberal person and believed in all kinds of magic, [page 131] with a natural leaning, perhaps, toward black. And he did a little mineral-rodding, by which he divined where gold was hidden. But nothing took the place of witches with him.
     He came to this part in 1790 and built a log house, and planted apple trees, and was Norfolk’s first medical practitioner. Tradition says that he was a kindly man, and much regarded for his vast potential dealings with the Unseen. His divining rod was held in great esteem. In 1893 Dr. Coyne had from the lips of one of the oldest inhabitants, [page 132] Mr. Simpson McCall, then eighty-five years old, an extraordinary tale connected with Troyer and an ill-famed Indian trader named Ramsay, who arrived at Long Point with stolen goods. In the old man’s own words:

     One, Ramsay, before and after the Revolution, traded with the Indians of this region up to Detroit, etc. About 1790, when Ramsay was coming from Detroit with two men, and his boat loaded with furs and gold, he had a dispute with Indians living at Port Stanley where they had large corn fields, over his refusal to furnish them with liquor. They followed him from the land down to Port Burwell and the carrying place, and from Long Point to the end of the peninsula, and prevented him doing any further trade. At the portage he buried his money in an iron chest, and killed a black dog and buried it over the chest as a protection. This was Ramsay’s last trip. About 1817 Dr. Troyer and his son, Michael, having found out by his divining rod where the treasure was, went out towards evening to dig it up. I saw them going out in the boat. My father was the only one I know about that they had consulted, but he was an unbeliever, and would not go. The Doctor afterwards told me that they dug down to the box. He held a Bible open and a lighted candle to keep away the Evil One. Michael dug and tried to pry the chest out of the ground, when a big black dog rose up beside the chest—grew right up bigger and bigger, until the light went out, and then they took to their boat and went home.
     It is obvious that the fame of Dr. Troyer extended well along the lake shore, and as far as the Detroit River. It reached Lord Selkirk’s ill-fated [page 133] Belledoon Settlement where strange things were happening. In 1829 witchcraft was at work among the Highlanders. John McDonald’s house on the banks of the Chenail Ecarté was plainly victimized. It was riddled with strange sounds and magic bullets and was finally burned. Every effort was made to exorcise the spirits, but even the priest, with bell, book and candle, failed to check the evil manifestations.
     Luckily, the Methodist minister, the Rev. Mr. McDorman, thought of Dr. Troyer, a hundred miles away, and he and John McDonald set out to find him. Sorcery attended the journey of three long days. At Longwoods, a thirty mile stretch of forest, came the crisis when the Highlander was terrified by the hoot of owls, the cry of wolves, and then the heavy tramp of a vast multitude, voices of men, crashing of boughs, and the rush of some great unseen host, followed by groans of the wounded in the midst of combat and shrieks of the dying.
     Arrived at Dr. Troyer’s house, it was his daughter, “a sallow, fragile girl of fifteen,” possessed of a miraculous moonstone, who undertook the case. She went into a proper trance but not before “divining” that John had had trouble with a neighbour’s family.
     “I see,” she said, “a long, low, log house.”
     The Highlander listened to this alliterative statement, and other correct personal details with regard [page 134] to the family of his enemy, with religious awe. Dr. Troyer’s daughter then retired to her chamber and after three hours returned with news. She informed McDonald that his outbuildings had been burned to the ground two hours ago, which afterwards turned out to be exactly true.
     “Have you ever seen a gray goose in your flock?” she asked.
     He had, he had shot at it with a leaden ball, and the fowl had escaped. She assured him that no bullet of lead would ever harm a feather of that bird. It was merely a shape assumed by his enemy. He must use a silver bullet, and if he hit the mark his enemy would be wounded. He and McDormand returned to Belledoon. The next morning the goose reappeared with the flock in the river. He fired, and it fluttered into the reeds with a broken wing. “Rushing to the long low log house he found the woman who had injured him with her broken arm resting on a chair, and her withered lips uttering half-ejaculatory curses. From the moment the witchcraft ceased, but the witch suffered always from racking pains throughout her body.”
     All this is from an ancient pamphlet, “The Belledoon Mysteries, An O’er True Story,” written many generations ago. Echoes still float about, coupled with names that were once well-known in the neighbourhood.
     Dr. Troyer looked upon certain of his neighbbours [page 135] as witches, one of the most dreaded being the widow of a well-known captain in the local militia. She was a very clever woman who used her wit and beauty to torment him. If he chanced to meet her when starting on a hunting expedition he would at once turn about and go home. Here, at the foot of his bed, a huge trap was bolted to the floor, where it was set every night to catch witches. The jaws were about three feet long and when shut were two and a half feet high. But in spite of this defensive means the witches would occasionally take Dr. Troyer out into the night and transform him into various kinds of animals, compelling him to act the part. “One night the witches took him out of a peaceful slumber, transformed him into a horse and rode him across the lake to Dunkirk where they attended a witch dance. They tied him to a post where he could witness the dance through the windows, and fed him rye-straw. The change of diet and the hard treatment to which he was subjected laid him up for some time. It required several doses of powerful medicine to counteract the injurious effects of the rye-straw and restore his digestive organs to normal condition.”
     Nevertheless, Dr. Troyer was considered a sane man. He is described as wearing a long white flowing beard. It is said he lived to be ninety years old and that just before his death he shot, off-hand, a hawk, perched on the peak of the barn roof. [page 136]

2


     Do you wonder that we felt a little nervous as we glanced, from time to time, at the decaying structure before us? The lonely door is unbarred now against magic, black or white. We shivered as the gloaming came and the coarse field grasses creaked in a sudden wind. “Emptiness personified,” we said. But who can tell? It may not be so completely abandoned after all…Certainly it gave us a peculiar stare as we turned to leave it, for (so far as we were concerned) as long as it has strength to hold up its head, there in the weedy field. [page 137]



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