A Few Tales of Old Jim Young

by TwoSkeletons

I've noticed that not a lot of people talk about Old Jim Young anymore - which I suppose I understand. For all he got up to, he didn't leave much impact on the cultural landscape - mostly it was the physical landscape. Yes, he may not be well remembered today, but there's no doubt the island would look very different today if he had never walked its shores.

Old Jim was, it's generally supposed, born in Boom Siding, many, many years ago. He was a small, slight fellow, but a true son of the Humber log drivers, brave and adventurous, which worked out better for him at some times than others. There are various accounts of his childhood, but the primary even of interest is his meeting with the giant.

(It isn't clear which giant this was; giants not being Christians, we cannot rely on church birth and death records to identify them. There were still giants on the island at that point, though. Newfoundland was settled early, after all, when such things were still relatively common.)

The point is, Old Jim - he wasn't actually that old at this point; it was an ironic nickname - Old Jim had wandered off into the hills somewhere and gotten himself lost. Some say he was fairy-led, but I think that's selling his adventurous spirit a bit short. In any case, around nightfall he ran into the giant, who luckily took pity on the boy and brought him home. Old Jim stayed for many years with this giant, who fed him on moose and potatoes and giant's tonic. And it was thanks to this last one that Old Jim grew up to be giantish - not quite a giant himself, but not far off, either. Finally, when Old Jim was grown enough, he set off to earn his fortune.

Old Jim Young had such a long and illustrious career that it would simply not be practical to detail his entire life; instead, we must satisfy ourselves with the highlights. Early in his travels, for example, he was moving a cartload of firewood near Sally's Cove when his horse stopped, exhausted and thirsty. Old Jim wheedled and cajoled the horse to move, but it refused to budge until it had something to drink. Old Jim had nothing to drink on him, so he was obliged to search for water.

Eventually he came upon a beautiful blue lake, but realized that he had nothing to carry the water in. Grumbling, he was obliged to break off a tree branch and use it to scratch a furrow into the ground, all the way back to the horse, though which the water might flow. This furrow can actually still be seen today; the locals have dubbed it Western Brook Pond.

Old Jim was mostly a west coast man, but he made his way out east on occasion. He worked in Bonavista for a time, but the other fellows out there were jealous of his size and strength, so they resolved to get rid of him. They dug a great hole near the coast, where Old Jim was known to enjoy a walk, and covered it over with branches and leaves. Sure enough, Old Jim stumbled it and was stuck. One of the fellows, who was unusually mean, took a cannonball and threw it down at Old Jim, meaning to finish him off, but Old Jim caught it as easily as a softball, and the other fellows, who were less cruel, decided to let him keep it to amuse himself. They came to check up on Old Jim occasionally, and took to calling his prison the Dungeon.

Old Jim sat in the hole and bounced the cannonball against the wall, and he bounced it so hard that it wasn't long before he'd bounced a tunnel clean through the rock and out to the sea. When the other fellows came to check up on him, they found him wading in the surf, free as a bird. "Get back in there!" they all hollered, so Old Jim, more amused than anything, hefted his cannonball and bounced a second tunnel back into the Dungeon. After that, the other fellows decided it would be best to leave Old Jim to his own devices.

It was also during this time on the east coast that Old Jim tried his hand at fishing. On one occasion, a fisherman friend of Old Jim's fell ill and could not feed his family. He was only a small man, and as his family were only small as well, he asked one morning if Old Jim would give him the smallest fish from the day's catch to keep his family from starving. Old Jim of course agreed immediately, being, at the best of times, a generous soul.

At the end of the day, up to the fisherman's house comes Old Jim with a whale slung over his shoulders and plops it down on the lawn. "Well, that's very generous, Old Jim," said the little fisherman, "but how are we supposed to eat all this? We only asked for the smallest fish." "Smallest?" said Old Jim, "Why, I've hardly seen one smaller than this to be caught. This little mackerel is hardly worth the selling, so I'd be much obliged if you'd take it off my hands." In the end, the fisherman's family ate their fill and Old Jim ate the rest, so nothing was wasted. And as it was the smallest fish Old Jim had ever seen, and the largest anyone else had ever seen, he donated the bones to science, and they can be seen today in the atrium of MUN's Core Science Facility.

(In later years, Old Jim would indeed come across much smaller fish, and began to feel a bit foolish about this early escapade; in fact, he would claim that he had merely been playing dumb in order to give his friend a larger-than-agreed-upon fish. But there is no reason to judge such an understandable error on his part. One must remember that Old Jim came from a logging family, and was out of his depth in matters of the sea.)

By these and other exploits, Old Jim had accrued a bit of a reputation by the time he made his way back to the west coast. In fact, he had attracted to attention of the devil himself, who wanted to win such an interesting individual to his service. He approached Old Jim in the woods a ways outside Norris Point, where Old Jim was once again cutting wood. The devil knew that Old Jim was proud of his strength, and had heard reliably that pride goeth before destruction. So he challenged Old Jim to a boulder-throwing contest: whoever could throw the largest boulder the furthest could ask one thing of the other. The devil planned to ask Old Jim for his soul; but being the devil, he just had to cheat. He went first, and he picked up the biggest boulder he could find and in a puff of brimstone, it disappeared into hell. "I've thrown my boulder clean off this mortal coil, Old Jim," he gloated, "let's see you beat that!"

Now, Old Jim had a feeling that magic spells were not really "throwing", or at least went against the spirit of the rules, and he was absolutely right. "If I win," Old Jim said, "you go off back to hell and never bother me again." The devil agreed. So Old Jim picked up the biggest boulder he could find and tossed it square at the devil, who was buried beneath it. When the folks in Norris Point heard the tale and saw the size of the boulder, they took to calling it Killdevil Mountain. And many supposed, for a while, that Old Jim really had killed the devil; but there was an election on at the time, and a quick look at their options disabused most people of this notion. Still, though Old Jim had not thrown the boulder very far, he had actually thrown it, and so the devil was not to never bother him again.

It was later in his career that Old Jim took a winter job. You see, in the more mountainous parts - around Gaff Topsail, say - the trains would always get bogged down in snowdrifts and blizzards and be delayed terribly. Finally, the railway hired Old Jim to jog along ahead of the train and clear a path; it was a narrow-gauge rail, too, so there was plenty of clearance on either side once Old Jim had been through. Still, he was getting old by this point - that's why he was called Old Jim - and after one particularly snowy journey, Old Jim decided to retire. The railway was shut down not long after, though the official word is that the timing was coincidental.

Old Jim was so tired from this trip that he gathered up his pillow and blanket and crawled into the caves beneath Short's Mountain and locked the door behind him, and settled in for a nice long nap. And as far as I have heard, from those who remember him, he is still sleeping under the mountain.

Return to Stories