Family Myths and Folk Tales

 

I posted this on our College Hill Farm Website some time ago. Since the website is now defunct and with Halloween fast approaching I thought it appropriate to revive it for this site.

 

Now my family, especially my grandparents, loved to tell tales to us kids. Whether it was haint(ghost) tales, myths, or hunting excursions. There was always a tale to be told sitting on the porch breaking beans or shelling corn. Granny, mom’s mother, loved to tell haint tales. Every time we were working on the porch breaking beans we would be talking of old times and a haint tale or two would come about. They were always told as if she was there and witnessed the event as all good tales are. My great uncle Floyd used to say never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Now that is the way of it in Appalachia, the old folks told family lore and information by way of oral traditions. The tales always included sisters, brothers, grandparents, so you had a frame of reference and you could draw on your own experiences to fill any factual voids there may have been. Often the stories had a religious or otherwise spiritual tone. Here are just a couple of examples:

 

Headless Man

Now I don’t know if this story has something to do with the civil war or some other tale. It is a little like the legend of sleepy hollow but not. Granny and her sisters were young and in their teens walking home from church one night. Now there were not many cars in Evarts – Punkin Center to be exact – so they were walking with their brothers Evan and Greenberry from church toward home. Now this would have been about 1918 or so, maybe even the 20’s, so street lights, nor porch lights, just did not exist. They were walking the road in the moonlight and were headed home. Now there was another man walking with them and they had just assumed it was one of the other guys from church maybe one of the Shoemaker boys or one of their cousins. They were all just walking and talking. Granny was about 11 years old. They were almost home when a car turned into the road with it’s headlights on. As those headlights swung around as the car came up on the road the person that was walking with them jumped into the ditch. Then the headlights swung on him he had on a uniform of some sort but had no head. Upon seeing this ‘haint’ the kids all started running for home. Later the boys came back with their dad and a couple of carbide lights, and I am sure a gun or two, but there was no trace of the stranger and no trace of footsteps in the ditch.

 

Every Feather

Paw was a young man and had been working in the corn field and was just horsing around with the other young men as they were filling the corn crib. They were nearly done and a small bird was over around the crib to the side. Paw in those days was a fractious man not given to any type of religious ways. He picked up a piece of corn. Now if you have ever put dry corn in a corn crib you put the entire cob in there with the corn on it after it dried in the field, so it has considerable weight. Paw flung that corn cob and hit the small bird. It was killed instantly. He never gave a second thought to killing that wren. Then in his later years he was reading his bible and just learning the tenements of his new found religion. When he came upon the passage about how God will remember every feather that falls from the wren. He told me he knew that when he got to heaven he was going to have to answer for this crime. It really bothered him.

 

Peter and the Woodpile

Around here we have a non poisonous snake that we called a blowing viper. Today I know it as the hog nose snake. But to Paw it was deathly poisonous. When it feels threatened it will open its mouth as wide as it can and will not close it throughout the encounter, even if you pick it up. To Paw this was the snake that Peter picked up in the woodpile and God locked it’s jaws so it couldn’t bite him. Now Hog Nosed snakes do all sorts of stuff to get you to leave them alone.  They will play dead and can even bite and their saliva is slightly toxic. But According to Paw and many others in the family the blowing viper can’t bite down hard enough to inject its venom because God had locked its jaws. Now, I cannot find a verse in the bible where God “Locked the Jaws” of a snake. There are several snake handling churches around the area which claim this to be true and will handle Copper Heads and Rattlesnakes and as long as you are right with God everything will be OK. That is just not something I could ever do. I would pick up any snake in Eastern Ky except a Copper Head and a Rattlesnake. I have caught my share as a kid. It is not a snake aversion but venomous snake aversion. It also feels to me like you are tempting God. Peter never intentionally picked up that snake in the woodpile.

 

I think about the tales told to me by my grandparents and there are lots more just no room here for more. I think fondly of them and wonder if I will see them again. I see them pretty often in my dreams. But it is only a fleeting moment and it is gone and hard to remember after breakfast. It is like that with the natural order of things. I pray that the natural order of things works within your life. It would sure be hard if it didn’t. Remember those precious moments with family and those precious family tales. Pass down what you have learned! Write down those oral histories for they may be important to your children’s children. Also, remember that life and Homesteading is Marathon not a Sprint – Slow Down and Enjoy the Ride!

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