Helen Creighton Libri

Bluenose Magic, first published in 1968, is considered a classic of Maritime literature, and its author, Dr. Helen Creighton, is one of Canada’s best-loved and most respected folklorists. This fascinating and engaging companion to the author’s best-selling Bluenose Ghosts welcomes readers into a world of forerunners, enchantment, dreams, divination, buried treasure, guardian ghosts, home remedies, and mystical occurrences. These unique tales have been passed on from generation to generation of Nova Scotia’s families.

These are the folk tales from Dr. Helen Creighton's life journey through the Maritime provinces, collecting songs and ghost stories and old cures and folk tales, Helen serves as our guide, introducing us to storytellers, setting the scene of the telling--and then she lets the person tell it as they told it to her. Some are long, really miraculous folk tales, others are the brief riddle or the tantalizing quick-telling that a folklorist can expect along the way. Helen kept it all. Read as a whole, the reality and intensity of those smaller pieces reveals their value in among the more finished, well-told tales.