Penton Forge, Joe Batt's Arm

Penton Forge, October 2021.

During the first week of October, Andrea and I were on the road. We visited Change Islands to do a People, Places and Culture workshop and Fogo Island to do some fieldwork. During our visit we stopped in to the Penton Forge in Joe Batt's Arm.

Penton Forge, circa 1970s.

This forge was built in the 1930s, and used until the 1970s. We met with Madonna Penton who had reached out about the forge. Her late husband Leo, and his younger brother Tim worked on getting the forge back up and running.

Leo with some of his grandchildren digging up horseshoes from the ash bed.

Tim is continuing the work on the forge including installing clapboard on the outside. Leo and Tim's grandfather Peter Penton who was trained by another local blacksmith, Jimmy Besso.

Peter Pentons certificate dated in 1940.

This short video shows some older photos of Penton Forge, and shares some of the memories of the blacksmith shop.

#CollectiveMemories Monday - Boat Building in Joe Batt's Arm with Aiden Penton

Fishing stage in Joe Batt's Arm. 1997. Photo by Gerald Pocius.
Memorial University of Newfoundland. Folklore and Language Archive.
Fogo Island Collection 2017-225.
Photo courtesy of MUN's DAI. 

As part of the Collective Memories project the ICH office is showcasing community material which has been placed on Memorial University's Digital Archives Initiative. This interview with Aiden Penton of Joe Batt's Arm was recorded on May 16, 2009 by Dale Jarvis at the Marine Institute of Memorial University as part of a boatbuilding fieldwork documentation course. In the interview Aiden discusses his life as a boat builder, his family history, and boat building in Joe Batt's Arm.

The ICH office is helping communities place previously recorded materials online. If your community has material you would like to make publicly accessible reach out to the Heritage Foundation at 1-888-739-1892 ex.2 or ich@heritagefoundation.ca

Counting crows, and poem from Tilting, Fogo Island. #FolkloreThursday

On Monday last, I gave a guest lecture on intangible cultural heritage for Scott Neilsen's Cultural Resource Management (CRM) course at Memorial University. I talked to the class about the five domains of ICH as defined by UNESCO, and gave examples from a Newfoundland and Labrador perspective.

While talking about oral traditions and expressions, I challenged them with a couple traditional riddles, and then two students spoke up with rhymes that they had learned when younger.

First up was Rebekah Nolan, who had a fantastic version of a counting crows rhyme which I'd not heard before. I've written about crow counting rhymes before, but Rebecca's version was new to me. She learned it in San Luis Obispo ("America's happiest city" apparently) circa 2003:

One for sadness

Two for mirth

Three for marriage

Four for birth

Five for laughing

Six for crying

Seven for sickness

Eight for dying

Nine for silver

Ten for gold

Eleven for a secret that will never be told

Twelve for darkness

Thirteen for light

Fifteen for morning

Sixteen for night.

The second was from Jackie Tizzard, who had a rhyme she learned from her mother, who was a Burke from Tilting, Fogo Island.  "She could never tell me where it came from," Jackie told me. This was her rhyme:

"Long has been my cherished hope,

Upon my dying day,

To lie upon some sunny slope

And dream my life away."

Jackie thought it might be a riddle, but didn't know the answer. 

The rhyme is not a riddle at all, and neither does it originate on Fogo Island. It is, rather, a quote from a book, The red cow and her friends, by Peter McArthur, published in 1919, in Toronto, Ontario, by J.M. Dent & Sons. It is a fascinating book on farm life, with stories on sick cows, feeding pigs, racoon hunts, and horse contrariness. How a line of it came to be memorized by a young Miss Burke in Tilting is anyone's guess.

The full quote is as follows:

Although the oak is my particular friend among the trees on the farm, there are others with which I can claim at least an acquaintanceship. There is a maple at the edge of the wood-lot that always makes me feel uncomfortable, because I have a feeling that it has a joke on me. It stands on what would be called rising ground " which means an elevation that does not deserve to be called a hill " and while lying on the grass in its shade I can see over several farms to the south and east. It used to be a favourite of my boyhood, and once I composed a poem while lying in its shade. If you bear in mind the fact that I was seventeen years of age at the time you will understand why the tree has a joke on me. Here is the only stanza I can remember of the little poem I composed to express the "unmannerly sadness" of youth.

It long has been my cherished hope Upon my dying day To lie down on some sunny slope And dream my life away.

At that age I could not have cherished the hope so very long, and the old tree must have chuckled to its last twig at my absurdity. Anyway, I never see the tree without recalling that wretched stanza, and I immediately hurry away to some other part of the woods.

Got a piece of folk poetry stuck in your head, or a counting crow rhyme of your own? Leave a comment below, or send me an email at ich@heritagefoundation.ca.

- Dale Jarvis