Untitled - Memorial University's Digital Archives - Memorial ...

PURITY
The Kflown
The Natural
Present
The Living
LIMlNALlTY
OMENS
117
DA 'GER
The Unkn.own
The SupemalllrJl
Future
The Dead
Spatialliminalily between "known space" (the community) and "unknown space" (outside
the community), on the one hand, and omens bridging the present and the fUlure, or the
natural and the supernatural, on the olher, yields a synthetic conception in which time,
space and symbolic reaJity sland in a parallel relation (0 each other. One might posit the
validity of this interpretive mcxJel across other expressive forms pertaining 10 dealh.
The so-called fatalistic outlook of Newfoundlanders among olher maritime people
supplies a rationale for the bridging of these different reality levels. The correlation of
omens and tragic deaths in her Breton corpus makes Badone reOeet that omcns provide an
explanation for thai which has none apparent. Where "the natural" comcs short of
explanations, "the supernatural" is an unfailing resort. I found this view expressed by one
of my Tilting informants questioned on the subject:
RB: ... Omens? Everybody used to have that. Cenain persons, you'd
hear knocks, they say, and Ihe next thing next morning then someone is
dead. That used 10 happen all the time. l
In reconciling apparent contradictions, such as death versus youth, good health and
productive life, omens, in whatever fornl, conveniently restore confidence and belief in all
ordered universe in which man merely achieves a predetermined destiny SCi by Ihe gods.2
Badone's interpretation of the worldview underlying omen belief agrecs with Gillian
Bennett's suggestion that the idea of dead relatives appearing to theirbwn expresses "a
philosophy that sees creation as whole, ordered, hierarchical, hamloniolls and more than a
lillIe magical."3
IMUNFLA 87-1591CI0636.
2Badone 10!.
3Bennetl. Tradilions 80; a discussion and full quotation of this statement was given in 2.4.