Appalachian Folklore

i could tell that ghost anywhere he's not too scary at least all right friends i have 6 30 on the nose so we're going to go ahead and get started but just a few housekeeping items first let me welcome everyone i think a few of you this might be your first time joining our series so this is class number 24 and we're rolling all the way through to november 30th before we take a little break and and come back next year with some guidance from all of you that hopefully that have participated in all our classes so far um just remember to keep your microphones muted and jenny is on here she'll be manning the chat box so if you have questions make sure you put those in there and i will extract those and answer any questions and make comments and we use that as a sharing tool and especially for tonight maybe more so than some of our other classes because as we move through tonight this is you know just scratching the surface of folklore in just a small amount of time so if you have other things you'd like to add from your region or your area make sure you pop those in there and we'll make sure we get that to to everyone that participates tonight so let me think i think that is uh well just just to make you aware we do have a google drive that goes along with all of our classes so if you've missed any uh previously you can make sure and capture those um there and you'll get an email in the morning with a link to to join that website and all of these are recorded so you can go back and watch them um again later all right so with that i'm going to just jump right in here so tonight we have dedicated uh this evening to folklore in appalachia and we've kind of been building up to this for um pretty much i guess the whole month of october we've spent a great deal of time on getting acquainted with the appalachian mountain range we've talked about how it extends over even into parts of africa and scotland we've touched a little bit on some of those cultural type things we've spent a great deal of time on plants and so tonight hopefully this is going to help tie a lot of that information together we're going to focus a little bit more maybe on the people and some of those cultures and customs that have shaped the area so probably one of the best ways to do that is to talk about the weather when and it's a pretty good time to do that because as we transition from fall into winter we know that there's a lot of things that we utilize as predictors for the weather uh one of those is the number of fogs in august and probably several of you have heard of that you know what does this mean and you know for for wintertime well for every all fog that we have in august that's a snow that we have in the wintertime and this is probably one of those legends that's pretty familiar with all of you but just another one to make mention about august that if we have a cold august followed by or a cold august following a hot july and that's going to tell us that we're going to have a hard and dry winter i don't really recall us you know having a cold or mild july so that might foretell that we are in fact going to have a dry winter uh the woolly worms or the woolly bears as some people call these they can also predict winter maybe less effectively than some other methods but just to give you an idea these are the uh the larvae of the isabella tiger moth and you can see uh some variances there and each one of those woolly worms but it's been said that if that band in the center is is wide then winter's going to be a mild and short one and you can kind of see what some of those sayings under here if um if you see a solid black one then that means we're headed for an ice age this winter i've seen several of these this year but i've also seen several blonde ones so i'm kind of leaning toward the the blonde i hope i have a snowless winter but probably will be meeting a little bit in the middle i put a link in the presentation for a fellow at new york city's museum of natural history that actually tried to document some of his work with scientif scientific imperial evidence to show that the woolly bears can actually be about 80 percent accurate in predicting the weather so make sure you read up on that of course we all know probably about the persimmon seed the key to the persimmon seed though whether you grow a persimmon or whether you buy persimmon it has to be grown or purchased in the region that you you want to predict the weather so the legend is when you when you cut open one of the persimmon seeds you're going to get a knife a fork or a spoon we've seen a lot of spoons this year if you've been testing this theory which means that you're gonna be shoveling snow all winter um if you have a fork you're gonna have a pretty mild winter but if it's a knife that means it's gonna be a really cold and cutting wind that we're gonna be experiencing uh this is probably one of my favorites i had to put this in in there for some of you that that like these little silly cartoons so i've actually got a few nuts that are on here with me tonight so hello friends i hope you all don't go missing um but anyway if it's always been said i can remember my papa saying this growing up that if there was a bountiful supply of any of the nut fruits uh be it chestnuts walnuts hickory nuts whatever and the squirrels were really really active then that meant that we were we were headed toward a really cold and snowy winter and oftentimes that that rain very true there's a old saying that goes squirrels gathering nuts in a flurry will cause snow to gather in a hurry so keep an eye out for some active squirrels another that that kind of predicts a hard winter is if the shucks on corn or the skins on onion are really really tough that's going to tell us that a thicker skin means that a heavier winter is on the way and also right now we've got a lot of leaves that are clinging to the trees if they cling to those trees later into the year then that also is going to foretell of a pretty long cold winter here's one of my favorites if we see ants marching in a single file then that typically is going to indicate a pretty bad winner instead of them just meandering about um a cricket in your home and i've suffered from this i actually have been chasing one for the last couple of weeks in my house and i know it's bad luck to kill a cricket in the house but they're really annoying he's very loud and it interferes with my sleeping but anyway cricket coming in the house or any other uh creatures taking up residence means it's getting ready for a cold winter um of course bees building their nests higher in the trees or if you see spider webs that are larger than usual that's also a good indicator so we get through all these signs and then winter does arrive so how do we know you know if it's gonna gonna snow so an old saying goes there halo around the sun or moon rain or snow soon and there's actually some scientific evidence to this because it's basically the moonlight or the sunlight that refracts ice crystals and cirrus clouds and those serous clouds are the type that usually perceive an approaching warm front so when when we see that high level moisture sometimes we'll see those halos around the orbs in the sky and weather is significant that's usually where a lot of folklore lies within appalachia but there's so much more it's like i tell folks all the time the mountains are full of mystery and it depends on what part of the range you come from what state you live in um it has a lot to do with your genetics if you will as far as ancestors passing traditions along and you know maybe some of the things i've heard growing up are not going to be the same as what y'all have heard growing up and that's why tonight is you know i see the chat box lighting up i can't see what's in there but i hope some of you are sharing some things because you know oftentimes it's going to be a little bit different just depending on on where we're coming from uh but but tonight we've had a lot of interest again just in some of the folk magic because it is a craft that's alive and well still maybe not as much as it of course used to be even hundreds of years ago but it's it's these medicinal beliefs and knowledges and practices that are associated with a particular culture or ethnic group and as you're going to see tonight there's going to be lots of cultures that have helped create this appalachian folk magic again these are methods that have not been scientifically tested um there's no animal or double-blind study so if you're if you're coming from a scientific background there is none of that with this but they've been used hundreds or even thousands of years so keep that in mind so there's a lot of empirical evidence to to support some of this that actually helps support some of their efficacy and even even safety uh the big thing about folk medicine or folk magic is that it focuses more on prevention and the overall well-being of the individual it's focusing on lifestyle behavior all of these remedies some that you see here are gonna support health they're gonna be non-toxic they're spirit oriented in conjunction sometimes with conventional modern medicine not always but sometimes and you know they've again been given to us from so many cultures spanning the globe you know this is just not something that just popped up in in appalachia one day it's um you know it's been traveling here for literally hundreds of years and each generation kind of put their own spin on things so um maybe some of you have heard the term you've been hoodooed or have you ever been hoodooed and that's actually an appalachian term hoodoo actually comes to us more from a african-american folk way it's going to be found predominantly more in in the deep south and and then it kind of started spreading upward um after the civil war with the migration of the blacks into into new england but hoodoo is often tied more to the to the lower class struggle hardship and more in some of those rural southern appalachian areas and you can see pictures here actually of the west coast to africa because this is where a lot of the moors and some of the first slaves actually were transported from this area and then of course we have the the ulster scots in ireland and just to kind of make mention kind of show you on the map there what that looks like when we say scotch irish that doesn't always mean that a person is of irish heritage um it it doesn't mean that that person has a mixture of irish and and scottish if if they're scottish irish it means that there's of scots heritage and their scots family actually lived in ireland before they came on to um the new american colony so they basically migrated from scotland first into this northern ireland what we call the ulster so oftentimes you'll hear them called scotch irish or ulster irish of course we cannot talk about folk magic or folklore at all without mentioning um our native american tribes they helped really massage this culture and make it what it is today and especially the five civilized tribes that you see here which were the cherokee the creek the choctaw seminole and the muskogee so all of those kind of put their own spin on the healing use of herbal modalities um and really helped kind of forge the path when the settlers the colonists first started arriving in the appalachian regions so again you have this blend of cultures european african and native american they've shaped our region in a way basically fostering what god gave us in the sense of the plant and animal world uh one thing to kind of make mention is what sets vote medicine apart from our modern day contemporary medicine would be the language think about when you go to the doctor a lot of medical terminology that doctors anybody in our professional medical field use to communicate one with one another but folklore basically uses just normal conversation like we're doing tonight as their communication channels to where all peoples can understand now as we go through tonight just keep one thing in the back your mind you probably all practiced in some form of folk medicine or folk magic folklore at some time maybe in your life um so just kind of keep that tucked in the back of your mind um and also remember that some of the uh the old world modalities if they didn't work when colonists arrived here then they just kind of cast on a side they only they only kept the practices that were going to help people heal because as you see here survival was way way more important so a lot of a lot of those ancient customs were let go and some of those things we don't see today so again with most of my classes i take you back to as far back to the beginning as i can go and when we talk about appalachian folklore um most often people tend to think about the pilgrims coming over on the mayflower and plymouth rock and this is the plymouth rock which when i first saw the plymouth rock i was expecting this giant ginormous rock and it was this little rock but anyway that's a whole other story so um but the thing to remember here 1620 was when when the pilgrims landed but uh we had had colonization occurring for about hundred years prior to that many folks don't really recognize that the spanish really uh kind of put their their uh touch on some of this folklore long before the migration from the from the old world started taking place and actually yeah here we go it was in this area somewhere around charleston um that vasquez came over in 1526 he had about 600 colonists plus slaves from north africa he had brought the slaves over of course to help build the new world the new colony and that didn't really pan out times were a lot tougher than what they expected the slaves revolted and they moved off into the wilderness and they joined up with some of the native native american tribes that were in existence so the reason i say that is just to think about that pattern that kept occurring over about a hundred years and by this time we've already got uh different cultures taking place we've got this immersion of cultures that are that's already happening uh long before the pilgrims landed in massachusetts i do remember saint augustine was actually our first permanent colony and of course that was a heavy spanish influence and then of course after that we had some pretty significant french influence as well especially along some of those gulf coast coast states and and moving upwards to the west spine of the appalachians uh one of the things i really like to think about is what we brought from the old world as as the colonists started coming over they brought many plants they brought many seeds and remember when we talked about natives last week um go back and study that because we talked about natives becoming something you know they had to be naturalized in an area for a prolonged period of time and they basically have to adapt well these are some plants that actually came from the old world that they brought with them and you see those listed there dandelion cleavers chickweed calendula ella campaign red clover alfalfa and mullen but now take a look at what was here and this is not a full list but look at what the native americans have access to so you can kind of see where um the colonists were starting to want to develop this relationship with the native americans um they knew what each plant's purpose was whether it be from the forest floor or an open meadow they knew how to treat their own and you know also with the plants that came from the old world um you know it was just again it was it was the beginning of this meshing of culture now remember when slaves were coming being brought over they couldn't bring their plants and their seeds from their native world but as they were being brought over when the slave trade actually was initiated in 1626 um they would bring plants the colonists would bring plants for them to be able to eat and that's basically where some of the origins of the ochre rice sorghum watermelons all of those came from the african coast that we now enjoy today but also to remember that that healing framework even though they weren't able to bring and share those plants that framework was in place so think about um their herbs their rituals customs especially dance and music all of that um had a place at the table but already nearly three million georgians have persevered and cast balance okay so in conjunction with earth we also have a lot of our customs that made their way from the old world to the new world you see the irish step dance there basically clogging stem excuse me um there's some background noise and i'm not able to mute are you happy okay can everybody take a look at their microphone id you need to mute garcinia okay pretty good we're good all right so anyway when we when we came from the old world to the new world a lot of those customs came with us um and you see some of that listed here i don't know some of you probably know what this picture is up here in the far right corner but that's just uh to be reminiscent of all blanxine which was gaelic for days gone by and that was actually sung at funerals back in the day um also a lot of our musical um origins are rooted in africa and in europe so the swing dance uh the banjo bluegrass jazz all that has its roots right there along with some of the plants and seeds that made its way to the new world a lot of people don't realize that the banjo was in fact given to us by africa um also just some other traditions this is actually what they call mush in northern ireland which is just oats and milk and of course we still eat that today but kind of one of the things that evolved in appalachia was cornbread and milk or cornbread and buttermilk so that's something that we kind of see pretty prevalent today along with that in ireland they grew barley for the scotch whiskey but then we kind of took that and made it our own when we took corn to make bourbon whiskey ourselves here but again all of this is just to kind of show you again the mesh of cultures because you know like i said appalachian or just sprout up um out of the out of the blue okay so um it we are getting close to halloween so we got to mention the origins of halloween and what that has to do with appalachian culture so um you can see there um cywin it's gaelic it's a gaelic word uh it was a tradition that actually came from the sails um people would like bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts so you can see some of those parallels and then november 1st um it was one of the popes that designated this data to be for all saints day so then of course halloween became all hallows eve and then later evolved into halloween that that we know today but siwen is a pagan religious festival it originated from their spiritual traditions um it was basically an opportunity to usher in the dark part of the year and they did this after harvest each year as far as trick-or-treating that was derived from the scotch and irish practices which led up to salwin but and um they called this practice mummying because they would put on costumes they would go to door and they would sing songs to the dead and as a treat they were given cakes as payment for that um bobbin for apples this is something that also came to us from the romans when they defeated the celts they started their own traditions if if you will at halloween so they have the symbol of pomona which is the apple so they incorporated that into the cell celebration of cywin and that explains the whole bobbin for apple so if you're interested in that history there's a link in there that'll that'll give you a little bit more information on silent in general whoops so um foam magic there's lots of different areas all up the spine of the appalachians and even into the ozarks uh you can see some of those differences there uh we're not gonna spend a lot of time on the ozarks or the the pow wow we're going to focus a little bit more on appalachian and and hoodoo um the ozarks and the appalachian are very similar but if you're practicing in folklore you want to make sure that that you know know what you're doing for either for either one of those i do want to make mention of the powwows if you've ever heard of that um the powwow terminology it's have you been to a powwow that actually originates from the pennsylvania dutch with some of that german lineage it actually originated in the 19th century and of course what sets this apart is that they use their their bible off for guidance so pow wows that was just a collection of spells and charms and it was used to heal and cast out magic and these are actually hex signs that you see um on the barn door and if you travel to that area it's something that you're very liable to see so even though it's called hex signs they were actually used for protection and again they were based on passages from the bible of course again bringing it back to the appalachian folklore most of the region that we talk about would be in this area shaded in red and one of the things that really ties all of those cultures and customs together that i was talking about was the tree of life and usually it was the oak tree that depicted this tree of life in whatever culture whatever custom that that we were talking about so in ireland um every uh clan had a mother tree often it was an oak the celts believed that the soul of every person was tied to the soul of a tree africans thought that the first people in the world were actually carved from an oak tree the cherokee built sacred fires we'll talk more about that a little bit later but they built these sacred fires from oaks when they did some of their rituals and their praying and then to the druids the oak was very sacred so that was one reason when the roman catholics took over the british isles they burned a lot of those oak trees because druids were more pagan in their their beliefs but of course in appalachia and some of you probably still practice this uh with the birth of a baby a tree is planted and it's been said in appalachian folklore that um that the planting of that tree would link that tree in that child all the way through adulthood so if that tree ever had a sickness or you could see the decline in that tree then then that would also be linked to that child so something you always wanted to keep that tree healthy because then in turn it kept the child healthy as well so when it comes to appalachia who facilitated these pathways and these are what we call granny women and i put a couple of links in on these slides and you probably recognize grandma gave wood there underneath the appalachian trail sign she's actually hiked the trail i think three times in total and accomplished that by the time she was 63 but um she's what many would consider a granny woman you know living off the land knowing again that every plant had a purpose what to use it for and you can see how she uh her backpack there she'd slung a poke over her shoulder and and took off um they're pictured on the left is nance dude um now old man's dude she knew how to live off the land and she done some some things that maybe weren't appropriate as far as um as with her family and i don't want to ruin the story if nobody knows the story of nance dude because i've put a link in the in the powerpoint so you can look that up this actually took place in western north carolina but it kind of showcases um true mountain life and and what people had to do given hard circumstances uh here's a granny most everybody can relate to this is grandma moses granny moses um on the beverly hillbillies and of course we know that several shows back in that era actually kind of i guess in a way made fun of the mountain folk you know hillbillies a lot of that terminology come around about that time but um all that aside think about granny mother never watched that show what was she always doing for any ailment that that happened to any member of the cast or whatever on the show she was treating them with a plant or you know she you know you could see those parallels on the show and you see her of course holding her moonshine down there in the corner but you know you'll see that was a huge part of appalachian culture as well but these grannies were the ones that took care of folks in the mountains the home remedies of course again with that whole mesh of cultures with the native americans and learning to communicate with one another and treat one another it was the grannies that were pretty well widespread and helped help take care of the folks in their communities uh think about how far out a lot of these people were in in the hills and the hollers very remote areas even if they did have access to local doctors maybe they couldn't get there maybe they couldn't afford it some of the toughest women in the land strong-willed and stubborn and and just as hard at working as some of their uh men folk counterparts the men would tend to the fields but grannies were the ones that took care of the home and you see here with with the chickens um did the gardening and the cooking the laundry all that good stuff plus taking care of everybody else in the community as well so uh the next few slides is just a little excerpt from a song i hope my bandwidth will hold out it's just really short it's going to take you through some black and white pictures but i'm going to let that play just for 20 or 30 seconds and then i'll it'll i'll come right back [Music] [Music] did [Music] okay i don't know if y'all heard that or not maybe i can't tell from faces um but basically that just shows you a little excerpt of appalachian life and that was actually a song written by three local haywood countians about leafy hicks who was a granny woman in in haywood county i don't know if many of you are familiar but she lived along the 12 mile and she was truthfully a lady that that did it all she made her own moonshine she she lived by herself of course attended her own garden uh grew tobacco made her own quilts preserved all of her own food hunted her own food i mean she could skin a deer with the best of them so um just a little song there about a true granny woman and just the appreciation for the mesh again of that culture so granny women they knew about herbs they knew about home remedies and they used witchcraft methods but now not the modern wiccan type magic but it was the old world witchcraft that they had brought with them from the old world that had been passed down from generations by the elders and they basically passed it on to daughters and granddaughters and there was also a belief that people were marked so if you were the first born daughter of a firstborn daughter then you know it was said often that you had the gift of sight or all of those um blessings were given to you bestowed upon you that you could carry forth that tradition um it was also said if you were the seventh born of family that you two were marked or if you were born over your face which was part of that amniotic fluid so way back in the day there was ways that they said actually help determine who would get these specific gifts uh but anyway the key to tonight is just recognizing that these grannies knew exactly which plant herb root or bark would heal each injury or ailment that came up um this is where it was also very similar again to the to the ozark mountains too and they would come up to uh or they would have their own concoctions depending again on what region of the area they were in um i threw this on here just to kind of make you all think what does an axe have to do with um appalachian folklore but this is again where granny women kind of came into play um one ritual that they would do was when they attended a birth they would place an ax or a knife under the bed of the lady giving birth because they said that this was to help cut the labor pains um also the first thing that they would do when they would walk in to a house with the lady giving birth was open all the windows because they said that that would in turn open the birth canal for easier delivery uh the big thing was just the amount of trust that was really built in the communities with with the grannies so uh another thing that you're gonna hear depending on what region that you're you're coming to us from you might hear um appalachian folk magic referred to as root work uh folk medicine folk magic kitchen witchery hill folk who do uh the work of the lord yarb doctors or conjuring so it's going to take on many different names and there's going to be different modalities different pathways that are going to be utilized for each one of these we're not going to get into the specifics of that but there's a few links that will help guide you through that if you if you so choose um one thing to remember too is that in folk healing there was a lot of again different plant use but also dirt prayers chants charms were used sometimes dancing was included and dirt or water sometimes water was used i don't have that one listed here but it couldn't just be water out of a spicket or it couldn't just be dirt from outside the garden it had to be specific to whatever person you were working on whatever that person's constitution was helped kind of define how you were going to treat them with which dirt did you need graveyard dirt did you need church dirt um did you need just good old garden dirt you know whatever it might be um same thing with water it had to be a specific type of water holy water on holidays for instance catching water or whale from or water from a whale or water from a stump so very specific to how they utilize these in in charms and you'll notice there that um with that prayer and ritual the first people to really do that were the cherokee and the choctaw another thing just to make mention of is that a granny woman was probably always a midwife but a midnight a midwife was not always a granny woman there was a pretty key distinction there a granny woman could employ plants and herbs to help a woman through labor and delivery but unlike midwife this is where the the chants and the charms and prayers would also come in to play for the baby they didn't call it a spell though but the cool thing again about the granny women they were pretty much the go-to person for any any type of medical issue in those communities okay y'all i'm getting a little bit of um noise so everybody check your heart shaftner mute your mic please okay thank you um another thing just to remember uh the i guess when you use adjectives uh to describe granny women as they were very pragmatic they were very resilient very stubborn had an enormous amount of fortitude and it's really what helped carry the tradition of folk medicine forward they knew that they had to do this in order for their communities and their families to survive so even with granny women and doing this kind of healing work um they didn't necessarily call it witchcraft it was just what they did when when you grew up in certain parts of appalachia you don't even really call it anything if you're actively practicing that if that makes sense it's just a matter of trying to prevent ailments trying to live basically the best life that you can be and prevent issues from arising later in life again just a lot of trust these granny women again they they knew the specifics for each one of these plants and they believed that god made these plants that plants were here for our food and medicine plants were given to us long before people were god made those plants first they recognized that timber and fuel dyes even perfumes even back in the day uh scents that they would use for themselves natural pesticides fibers for clothing and even their own prescription drugs come from from the forest and the woods and the valleys surrounding uh their communities it was the grannies that actually understood this so this uh lawn of dandelions um a granny or anyone practicing folklore would look at that and be like well that person's got some issues going on um they need a good cleansing because it's always been said that a plant grows where you need it it's always going to be close by or it's going to serve as a sign so dandelions you know that's one of those plants that we use in the spring as a spring tonic a spring cleanser we would it's one of the first bitter greens to really emerge after a hard winter so it would really help provide stamina for the settlers after a long cold winter so if you have a lot of dandelions growing in your yard that might mean you need to take care of some of those issues uh this picture here is a thistle so if you um see a lot of this all growing nearby or in your yard then i would say there's a prickly situation maybe going on with you that you might need to evaluate something going on on there that you need to kind of look at um another thing uh what we call tenants and southern appalachian folklore and i'm not going to touch on all 20 some of those but just to hit on a few but the antidote always grows next to the poison so if you've been attending other classes you've seen this picture of joel weed or the wild touch me knots um before uh wild impatiens you know we know those seeds pop open that's why they're called touch me knots they've got a really loud smell a really loud odor but normally you'll always see jewelry close to where any kind of poisonous plants grow on poison ivy poison oak because it's a natural antidote to that and again grannies knew the relationship with those plants um this is a good time to mention nicholas monardus you might notice that name looks very familiar to a genus that we probably all know and love which is menarda that genus was in fact named after him but it was in 1569 that he actually documented it's a really long title y'all but something about all the plants that were growing here in the new world that had been brought to us from the west indy countries or something like that anyway he documented 75 plants and their medicinal uses he really paid close attention to tobacco and sassafras and tobacco um had many therapeutic benefits and again we're going way back to the to the 15 and 1600s but lots of uh benefits for that he he believed it to be an antidote to poison and i know that a lot of people would consider this a poison today but it was considered a spiritual plant the native americans really appreciated and remembered this plant they used it in in their peace pots they used it for tea and powdered snuff and of course them and cigars it was said to improve energy created relaxation and calmed weariness so it would be something very similar to what um in south america the native tribes there would chew on coca leaves or the cocaine leaves so very very similar and provide that stamina uh just as an fyi this is the cultivated uh tobacco nicotiana but the wild species actually has a higher concentration of nicotine okay i'm of skipping around here but again to kind of just to draw your mind back to the point that even long before again those colonists started migrating into the mountains we had a lot of this being written down and passed along um even you know again before the settlers got here but another cool thing when the settlers started communicating more with the native americans they discovered that they had a lot more in common than just the healing use of plants of plants so think about where um the scotch irish were coming over and we always think about leprechauns at st patrick's day that's not a really good analogy probably but it's the little people you know um very fairy folk and then of course native american tribes and i'm probably going to just butcher this saying but the young way to sunday which meant little people and um you didn't mess with these little people at all they they could be really good to you or they could be really bad to you so even today you know it's always about grounding yourself in the land and remembering who came before you and taking care of the little people so you know back then they would make sure that they put out um berries or small pieces of cake or cornbread and that was said to help appease and delight the fairies and the little people and that still goes on today um gummy bears or m ms or any kind of colored baubles you leave that for the little people and and you can proceed with whatever work that you're doing and of course we've seen a lot of these type things what we call fairy rings or toadstools and if you see a circle of told stools then you can be sure that fairies have actually danced there if you stand in that ring of toadstools and make a wish then it'll come true and any fairy ring um with a ring of grass and no dew on the lawn that's where fairies dancing out before that was a mouthful and then this is one of my favorites if uh for logs and a fire burn with the blue flame then good fairies are watching you and we know there's probably some scientific evidence uh to some of that especially with the blue flame but it's kind of cool to think wow the fairies are out there watching us i'm also remembering that the fertility of crops and livestock and the people themselves was really paramount to the appalachians in this span back of course several hundred years so of course jack frost mother earth father winter many of those in some areas not all areas of the appalachians they still continued not to necessarily worship them as deities but knew that they needed to take care of these spiritual beings in order for them to in turn uh take care of them you can still see some remnants of this lady plenty of lady liberty are actually the goddess of harvest with the cornucopia there in hand that you see um that's on the official north carolina state seal even today um i want to mention byron ballard i've talked a lot about some of these uh folkways still being in use today she's got several books out there's several links inside the presentation if you're interested but she's actually termed asheville north carolina's village witch and she is one that has really kept help keep the spirit of the hill folk hoodoo alive and well in the southern appalachians this is a practice that's kind of dwindling down but several conferences in the last several years have have come forth and starting to get more and more of some of these ancient customs and traditions out there and and folks that are still practicing this and again you've seen this slide before as well but it's just to remind you as we move forward in the next several slides that again this is not just something that sprouted up this was a true melding of these cultures and customs and traditions um in appalachia so of course again granny witchcraft is going to have its roots in the scots irish tradition traditions but of course it just morphed into something much bigger so one of those things was luck and a lot of this still occurs today um good luck is something that every true southern appalachian goes after all the time and even if you don't necessarily believe it you don't want to tempt fate if you will so probably many of you know about the horseshoe tipped up that's going to keep your luck from running out so for goodness sakes don't ever turn that thing upside down and hang it on a bar or above your front door that would mean all your luck is running out another thing to do and it doesn't have to be fancy like this but like an old jar peanut butter jar or something like that keep it by the door and when you find change out in a parking lot or in the road put that money inside this jar and that that will uh ensure that you're going to be making riches uh for years to come this jar does not have it but a lot of people would put cornmeal in the bottom of that jar so they would never fall on hard times uh the four leaf clover this is one probably everyone knows but maybe you don't know this part you can't be looking for it if you go looking for a four-leaf clover it ain't gonna do you looking good if you find it and then if you do find it you can't tell nobody and what's always the first thing little kids especially want to do look what i found but don't do that you keep it all to yourself a lot of people you can see this picture here they would tuck it inside their bible or folks have even been known to sew it into the rims of their hats or even tuck it inside the insole of their shoe but whatever you do keep it to yourself to make sure you keep the look a couple of others we all know about the penny we've got we find um head side up uh but the same rings true if you find a button with four holes not two not three but it has to be four holes um if you find one of those you have to place it in your right shoe um it can't be the left shoe it's got to be the right shoe for the look to stay with you and here's one i just had this conversation today um with a colleague of mine she was talking about spiders being in our house and i'm like no no no leave those spiders alone when you've got a spider that comes in and especially in your kitchen let it be let it take up residence because that means you'll never go hungry but on the flip side of good luck we have bad luck right so of course this one up here is representing don't open that umbrella inside the house um that one's pretty self-explanatory i'm not sure where the origins of that comes from but it kind of sets you in line for for what else we're going to talk about um this is dogwood blooms beautiful spring blossoms but you'll notice they're in a vase you never want to bring dogwood blossoms into your house don't ever do that because this is the wood that christ was crucified on and it's just not showing respect so leave the dogwood blossoms outside and then you see the number three well a lot of things happen on even days number or even number days and odd number days and appalachian folklore so the three is uh symbolic uh when one death occurs you're guaranteed to have two and a third because death always comes in threes the back picture here is of a cemetery so this is really critical you again you don't want to tip fate don't point um to a new grave or don't point to the cemetery or graveyard at all because that will bring you misfortune uh sometimes even death depending on the situation and how old that cemetery is if nothing else your finger will rot off so be careful with that speaking of cemeteries this is a good time to bring up honoring the dead that's a pretty big custom and appalachian folklore many of you have probably heard of decoration day and that's going to be different again from place to place but decoration day was used as an opportunity to dress and clean and decorate the graves of the familiar dead and what i mean by familiar dead well that means folks that had just recently passed on but what they would do after they would do this of course you know food was a biggie you know you have decoration day and food on the grounds um there's actually a song about that and i can't recall it right off the top of my head but anyway when they would um bring all this food and set up to do this big potluck they would first offer food to the dead first to the familiar dead also toys liquor cigarettes anything like that especially with the newly deceased whatever they like they would make sure to put that on the grapes because uh they they believe that even if if they were dead it didn't matter you minded your manners and you were respectful so um you can see the decoration there too so i'm not exactly sure what you would call the long past folks but then they would go to the you know older parts of the cemetery and make sure that they clean those tombstones so they could be legible uh they would go around and recite the names on those tombstone and and lift up a prayer for that individual in the family uh one last thing about a cemetery um the old custom of traditionally wearing black or you see the ladies with head coverings and especially true back in the day with the men wearing the big hats um even today if you believe in this type of thing always wear a hat if you go into a cemetery if you're going to a graveside uh tuck something on your head that way something can't uh hate a spirit can't jump on your back and follow you out of the cemetery so that's the reason you see a lot of head coverings and speaking of spirits we know that both the good and bad spirits reside out there many of you have probably heard the story of the cardinal uh when we see the cardinal that represents a loved one that has recently passed on and coming back in in the form of the cardinal uh picture there on the left is um the giant slant eyed monster solo kalu his stomping ground is over on the uh in a couple of counties in western north carolina but he was this great big giant you can see the the native americans there there's there's quite a story there the legend so make sure you read that there's a link in there that'll give you a lot more about jetta cola and sewage but it's usually at this point we get asked well what is all this based on is this pagan is it you know protestantism or is it just pure common sense and most people in appalachian folklore or growing up with that um being involved with it in some manner will say oftentimes that it was in fact common sense uh some people you don't utilize the bible uh some did not it just depended on which area um you focused your folklore magic from so it's not to say one way is right and another is wrong it's just a matter of personal preference so we've spent a lot of time talking about some of these different cultures so to kind of bring more of the native american culture into this and you heard me talking about the native americans building the sacred fire a few minutes ago with the oak and then and then praying in those directions well directions really mean something and folklore and i mean truthfully you could spend an enormous amount of time just on this one facet of folklore but um the native americans believed that east was actually the home of good spirits and the sun so anytime they wanted to remove disease or witchcraft they would pray toward the east and the north was what they called the blue man and he was the home of winter so this is where that they would pray for healing any type of burn or any kind of disease that was associated uh with wintertime uh the south was home to the red man so any kind of winter-related ailment not disease but any ailment so think about uh frostbite would be one of those they would pray for healing from the south and then as probably most of you have guessed to the west was where the blue man or the black man or also known as the purple man resided and that was oftentimes referred to the devil himself um sometimes this could mean spirits awaiting at the crossroad um crossroads as you can see from the compass that's also very important in folklore modalities um because often that's where spirits intersect with um the real world but anyway west was where um the black the black man the purple man lived um east is always very important you always want to go clockwise to grow with the sun if you're trying to lift a spell or diminish any kind of issue then you go counterclockwise so a good way to maybe um describe that is if uh if you were bit by a snake they would rub that wound counterclockwise and basically that would represent i'm calling that snake and thus eradicating that toxin from the individual because when you go counterclockwise again you're removing you're erasing the famous black cat many probably know when a black cat jumps in front of you it's bad luck and we do the mark with the x uh three times really fast or there's other different origins of that uh one here if you if you do see that black cat across your path uh turn your pockets inside out and that helps guard against paints or turn your hat backwards because remember the clock we want to diminish the spell diminish the hint so you turn it counter clockwise on your head another thing um if you hear a whodowl and i i've usually always gotten excited when i hear a whodowl i just like i just like the sound they make um but in folklore it said if you hear it it's not good it means that death is at your door or death is near so to protect yourself you need to take your shoes flip them upside down and tuck those under your bed not just for you but every member of your household and that will protect death from from crossing the threshold another indicator of death is if you saw a white dove that would also tell you that death is um is near or the witching deer which was a white deer if you ever saw an albino animal in the wild then that that too would signify death the cherokee believed that both white and black animals were creatures from another world and then anytime you hear bells ringing then that means that the angels are close i think there was a christmas movie it's a wonderful life maybe every time a bell rings an angel gets its wing so similar folklore there um one group of people i want to make mention of too because they really kind of help for a little while um shape some of the pathway for our appalachian folklore and these were the shakers up around harrisburg kentucky but they were a sect of christianity they practiced celibacy which is why they are no longer here and didn't really um provide a lot of information for too long of a time just for that but they practice celibacy communal living uh confessionacyon uh egalitarianism and pacifism so they basically started in england they left and came here in about 1774. you can kind of see that communal living picture there but the cool thing about them was that they were the first people to really provide herbs large scale to communities throughout appalachia they published this mail order catalog in 1837 and they actually gathered close by in their local woods their herb farms and they were able to fill um orders and you can see there that they've become world-renowned suppliers and medicinal herbs and had about 350 species in their their catalog they did kind of remain shut off from the outside world but it's it's one of those things you you've got to acknowledge that they did take an active part in helping spread appalachian folklore throughout the mountains which kind of leads into some of our healing traditions or folk remedies you've got to remember that again they're going to be mingled in with the knowledge of our native american tribes the iroquois the cherokee and any of those other woodland indians and there's so many it's impossible to name all of them but when the colonists first came here again remember they brought all those familiar plants and seeds so they already had a basic understanding and a basic a basic work in knowledge for a lot of these plants for food and medicines um they knew what herbs were available and what would grow and what stage to harvest for specific ailments throughout the year this was also the time that guards herbal and culpepper the farm pharmacophia book was in print there's a link in the presentation so make sure you check that out it's still in print today but that was where there was a working knowledge of about 300 formulas and then you can see there the cherokee had about 600 formulas so that was a lot of information that they were utilizing and of course we don't have time to go through a lot of those but to share some of those with you um some of the things growing catnip and red alder are granny women they knew that that would help treat hives i started to say wise oops another cool plant is well this one actually has several names it's calamus or sweet flag bitter root i've heard it called sweet sedge or sweet rush i've heard it called myrtle flag it's just going to depend on where you're coming from but this is this is a plant that it's actually the only plant that will truly flower that grows in water um it it tastes a lot like ginger and so they would actually use it as a substitute for spice i mean for cinnamon or nutmeg or allspice or any of those but a little dab will do you just need a little bit to be able to to substitute they would also use this um on their window sills to keep ants away this was a very calming plant but it wasn't a sedative if you will so it would keep them chilled out but not permanently put on uh to sleep so again it had a lot of the same characteristics of what uh coca leaves in central and south america would do and native americans remembered it because they said that it could reverse diabetes and if any of you follow that the cherokee population is known for having a higher occurrence of diabetes on the reservation and there's just a picture of what that root system looks like and then we have granny moses again i kind of already alluded to this a few minutes ago but a lot of the mountain folk made their own moonshine and they made it not to get slammed every weekend and to have a good time they used it as a carry a carrier agent they used it as a pain reliever as an anesthesia for any kind of surgery or operation that might have to occur uh this is actually a picture of blackberry brandy so a lot of those pure fruit liqueurs um our ancestors were making long before popcorn popcorn entered the scene probably not a good picture in the midst of kobe but uh it would help often with coughing or upper respiratory ailments especially when you mixed a little moonshine or brandy uh with honey and lemon of course you wanted to make sure the honey um was your own or close by for it to be effective and that of course still rings true today uh making lie creation a lie soap that was really big in the in the mountains they would take the ashes from from the wood often boil that down and render that with lard uh they could make different astringencies of that if you will but it was great for any kind of skin lesion probably because it was so stout and take the epidermis layer off some of that last soap could be pretty tough stuff but it's been used in appalachian households for a year and there's actually still some of these demonstrations that occur today if anybody's ever been up to monticello for heritage harvest fest uh they do some of that but um this also used as a bug repellent so again it was just taken the practical use um you know ingenuity combined with self-reliance and that's kind of where a lot of our modern day herbalism uh midwifery we're seeing um a huge trend going back to that and foraging and homesteading evolved from a lot of that of course dowsers again this is one of those practices you see a granny down here doing that they were the ones that were often called upon to do that of course like most other things in the cemetery i forgot to mention that in the cemetery you're always buried with your head to the west so you're facing the east so when jesus comes back for judgment day you can see him so a lot of directional significance with east same thing with dowsing you always start in the east and you work your way clockwise to find water but there's still a few dowsers today raleigh north carolina has has several active dowsers or water witches whatever you want to to call those still active today but like i say a lot of these older practices lended the way for our modern day homesteading so it was grainy women not really the men folk that studied the patterns in the land and and the properties of the plant because they knew where one plant grew uh the antidote for that plant grew close or whatever element you had those plants were nearby because god would put those there to help heal the ailment they would use natural and supernatural resources to guide and aid them in their communities again it was never taught really outside the immediate family never to outsiders it was just passed down for generations so a lot of those traditions oral traditions are starting to fade away as some of our granny women are starting to pass on again the bible was often used as a main component in formulas not always but in parts of the region it was many formulas were actually crafted after biblical tales and animals as you can see here were actually used based on some of that biblical theory so many people swore that if you utilize the bible you had to say it verbatim as it was said in the king james version you couldn't use one of the more modern day bibles i can't even recall the name of those off the top of my head but kings king james version of the bible is the one that you want to use because it would be as repeated as god said it herbs are actually mentioned in the bible uh many times especially in ecclesiastes that's the first mention of it and throughout the bible 128 plants are mentioned and that of course is where we garnered a lot of information about essential bulls as well thank frankincense and myrrh in in simplest terms can't go into all 128 of those but to make mention of a few um this tree here on the on the left is actually aloe um they think that the aloe mentioned in the bible was not what we call today the aloe coming from the uh the cactus plant but actually uh the tree so i put the latin in there so you can refer to that if you want to study up on that but it too is used for sunburns burns itches any kind of skin irritation the pharaohs thought garlic held mystic powers they would actually feed garlic to the slaves that were building the pyramids and garlic was touted for any kind of stamina for increasing lung capacity uh this picture here is uh dil or a niece they actually say um that when a niece in the bible was actually what we know as deal today and there's a link in there that will give you more information about that but they're both in the same family both aromatic herbs but you both kind of use for the same purpose the essential oil extracted from the seed and of course this symbol here is of the sweet bay laurel and we still see that symbol in many churches and temples even today and when we talk about gardening of course we go back to the direction we always want to run those rows from east to west going back to the cemetery the other reason that people are buried with their head to the west and their feet facing east is also because witches are known to run from north to south or even the devil himself and so it was often said that if anybody pre-marked their grave running north to south and you knew that they were a witch when you're planting in your garden this is where the even numbers come into play you only want to plant on an even number day of the month never plant on a friday ever ever ever unless it's good friday and if you do plan on a friday usually those seeds will never germinate they'll never sprout unless you do it on a good friday and a lot of southern appalachian customs is planting um potatoes and green beans on good friday and it goes back to water the water and dirt that i was talking about earlier um this is a good day to collect water also if you of course you can't make it rain but if it happens to rain on good friday make sure you collect that and use it for later plantings or nourishment in your garden if you spread manure on your field or on your garden make sure you do it when the horns of the moon are pointed downward and that's basically when the new moon is just coming over the horizon and that way all that nutrition from that manure will enter the soil and be more readily available to your plants you see the picture there on the right is a bushel basket you see that it's actually lined that's still common practice today whether it be a newspaper or some kind of fabric always line your basket when you harvest especially if you are harvesting for medicinal uses this one was kind of hard to put in a picture but have you ever noticed when you are harvesting whether you're harvesting from your garden or if you're wild foraging or even picking fruit um picking apples or picking peaches whatever grapes um have you ever noticed that sometimes a plant won't just let go and you feel like you're having to tug and yank and pull well that's that plant's way of saying enough is enough you've got what you need i need this now let me save this for you later um it's also been said that if you are foraging you always want to pass by the first four to seven plants and leave that for future generations to come so again when you're harvesting if it's if it's easy for you to harvest you're good to go but if you ever have any kind of resistance from that plant just take a step back and come back another day um if you are again out foraging or even in your gardens a lot of people will still do this practice today give an offering of something to the little people or to the land to mother earth a lot of people will use cornmeal or even tobacco but this is basically the tide um in return for their favor and well here's where my apple comes in if if you do have trees um for goodness sakes leave one apple on that tree always after you've completed your harvest leave one on there because otherwise you're going to attract the devil so if you ever see a single loan apple hanging on a tree that's probably why we also talked a little bit about the oak tree and acorns last week so if you gather acorns and put them in your windowsill that's going to protect your home from any kind of lightning strike so you just thought those lightning rods were doing the trick it's really those acorns that are protecting you um here's one of my favorites is uh the donkey a lot of people don't realize just how significant this animal is and appalachian folklore they are of course utilized for protection with sheep you can see the picture there or with goats to keep coyotes at bay but they also keep the devil away and true appalachian folklore the donkey represented the vehicle of christ in the book of mark because he called for a donkey cult that had never been written to take him in to jerusalem so then after that that was when jesus marked him with the cross on his back um there's a lot of significance again to numbers and direction with folklore modalities so one of those is the number nine um certain elements you want to pass a child an infant under the donkey nine times because it does have such miraculous um superpowers now if it's an adult like one of us then we would just do that ourselves basically crawl under the animal and go across it nine times and nine is significant here because uh christ died in the ninth hour on the cross and then also in the book of genesis the first battle made mention of nine kings and then in the book of acts nine is associated with prayer so that's why the donkey and number nine are so important in many southern appalachian traditions and then you saw this picture a little bit earlier too you're probably wondering what in the world is she sweeping outside on the yard for but that's still pretty common practice today you sweep out the negativity or sweep out the hanks you basically start from the inside corner of your house and work your way out the back door and you sweep all of that bad stuff out and then you'll continue sweeping out and away from your house or a lot of folks would just do this at night before bedtime they would sweep the yard to make sure they dispelled all of the spirits i like this quote here this is not my quote i took this off the internet so it's in there where this came from but i think it kind of sums up a lot about the granny witches uh we are the last of the grainy witches the old ones the original appalachian queens were daughters of the celts and the offspring of druids and medieval mavens and the natives the old world craft and we are their children and although we are indeed as mysterious as these old hills we still have that silt and cherokee elder magic in our bones i just think that's a good quote because it kind of showcases again all of those cultures customs and traditions that came together to continue this tradition that we still know today as as appalachian folklore so that kind of brings us to ethnobotany and appalachians you've heard me kind of mention this in other classes but ethnobotany when when we look it up in merriam-webster is actually interactions and relationships of people and plants over time and space so basically this is a this is something that has been practiced since the 1600s when colonists first first came here ethnobotany is actually an avenue of preservation it's basically recognizing all the wonderful things that plants have and can do for us as far as medicine uh food and materials for everyday life and it's about how we can continue uh paving that pathway for the next generations to come to kind of give them the spirit to um protect the plants and mother earth if you will basically if we don't care about it then how do we expect generations to come to care about it so just to kind of go in real simplistic terms to some of this um and their specific uses if maybe some of you recognize these as ken bit and dead nettle uh this is chickweed um all of these are gonna be what some consider weeds and are actually going to be starting to put pre-emergent herbicide on here in another month but for folks that really truly live off the land um this again is going to be one of those first greens to emerge in the springtime and often serves again as that spring tonic kind of a cleansing of the body from the long cold winter so um if you see these plants in abundance many folks in appalachia would say then that's a sign you need you need a good cleansing of some sort of course you see elderberry there a lot of uh a lot of it i mean this has just really taken off in the last five to ten years but the cool thing about elderberry is that our ancestor knew the properties of this plant years ago the native americans knew how special this plant was years ago so it's touted of course for keeping a cold at bay lots of many benefits there that you see listed plus it's a pretty cool looking little plant too and you can even make wine out of this as well another plant is plantain it was it was just considered a i mean one of nature's best plants i mean by many different cultures throughout the world uh you see there the saxons considered it one of the nine sacred herbs um it does have tremendous healing properties but again a lot of folks consider this a weed but if you actually take the the leaves of this plant and make that into a postus and put that on bites or stings it helps draw out inflammation and heal the skin so a lot of practitioners will use this in a sad sometimes it'll be mixed with comfrey or calendula for its healing properties and you'll also notice there if you have the amalgam feeling of fillings that plantain has been found to be a superb eliminator of heavy metal toxins from the body another good one to make mention is time of course this could be utilized as a breath freshener but years ago they would take the the plant and actually um of course make homemade bandages but they would chop up um the thyme and put it close to the wound and it would also help draw out any kind of infection and of course we all know that we utilize it to season meats and veggies salt water salt was a huge staple back in the day we here don't pour salt on an open wound because it can actually burn but it can help in the right stitch situation in the right quad quantity we use it to cure meats and season um veggies and of course if we gargle salt water gargle or any kind of mouth issues that you may have going on it can help cure that it helps dry that infection out soaking even an epsom salt a little bit different salt but lots of different uses for salt um this is if y'all have been paying attention you know i love evergreen forest it's my it's my favorite when i'm out on the hiking trail especially love the scent of pine and actually they can be used for so many home remedies a lot of folks don't realize that about the the pine first of all it's really sticky that sap is really sticky the resin you can't get it off your clothes but that that should serve as an indicator that it's pretty useful um if you mix it with honey um it can actually be used as a chewing gum or even as a mouth lozenge coughs congestion sore throats you can get relief from from chewing the sap the pine needles themselves are going to be a good source of vitamin c and you can create a tea made out of the pine it does have a strong flavor but if you add honey it can help balance out the flavor um another plant that our native americans really loved was burdock so i like this picture i'm not i'm not pregnant i'm just bloated burdock can be the cure you can actually see this in the pot this is a portion of the root um it can get really tall about four foot tall you're going to get those little sticky burrs that will absolutely stick to anything but hey that's how it reproduces so pretty smart but often used for dysentery uh back in back in the day many anti-inflammatory properties so if you have a lot of aches and pains burdock is a good remedy for that along with elderberry uh native americans utilized echinacea help supported the immune system today we all put our spin on fire cider and of course smudge sticks are pretty common to ward off different spirits or to increase health and vitality fresh ginger also used of course helps combat nausea you can also use that not really as a sedative but kind of a relaxation you can see the wild ginger growing there compared to the cultivated what you would see like in hawaii or somewhere but ginger tea and with a little bit of syrup or lemon and honey a really good a really good tonic uh kind of stepping away from the plants just a few minutes uh when we do talk about plants and many of us are involved with plant swaps or seed swaps one thing you want to remember this goes back to bad luck if anybody ever gives you plantings or seeds cuttings anything like that never say thank you if you do they won't thrive um oftentimes they won't even survive same thing goes for sneezing if somebody blesses you don't say thank you or you kill a fairy so again these are just some of those folklore tales that have been passed on uh for years but they really do seem to work so if you ever dream of thorns that's considered bad luck never always plant tomatoes on memorial day kind of like green beans and potatoes on good friday if we do have a snowy winter then that's going to tell us we're going to have a good year for harvest but if we have trees like apple trees and stuff that bloom twice in a year then that means it's going to be a bad crop and then anything that you plan on that first day of spring um has often been said to live uh plenty by the signs this is gonna be a class um devoted entirely to itself because it's so big uh but just to kind of break it down in simplistic terms when basically there's two moon phases anything above ground or below ground if you just keep it simple like that anything below ground during the waiting moon that's between the full moon and the new moon and then you just do the opposite for any above ground crops the other thing to remember is incorporating the signs in that as well each one of these are going to pass through like retrograde every 30 days so just knowing which sign is best for planting and which is not so cancer for the crab is best for overall planting followed by scorpio and then fish notice that those are all water signs on the other end of the spectrum you can never do anything with the line remember so any of you leo folks out there you're just you're so fickle you just can't you just can't grow things um also the twins and sagittarius those are two other signs that planting in won't reap a good harvest uh what about this anybody know what this is it's just the color blue glenn you look confused um no this is an old tradition too it goes um back to working with the spirits of the bed um this is what we call the haint blue but often in folklore you work with your ances ancestral spirits um again some people would call that conjuring or or root work but the hate blue is like a bright blue kind of with a periwinkle tinge maybe a tad darker than the carolina tar heels color but if you if you paint blue it keeps the hands or the spirits from coming in because they can't traverse water and blue signified water so you see a lot of different um ways that paint blue was utilized you even still see some of this today if you've ever been into cataloochee the caldwell house is trimmed in and blue but the hain blue tradition still alive and well today so you notice i'm bouncing around because i don't want to just focus all on the plants i'm trying to do a little bit here and a little bit there but when we talk about plants and their healing modalities we all have our favorites so again it's going to be one of those it's impossible to list them all but just one thing to keep in mind that years ago we didn't have apple and peach trees remember that they were later cultivated you know for their specific use but years ago we did have plums and cherry we had a lot of wild perennials and plants that were foraged um any time granny women or even the men folk and their children were out walking again in the forest or whether they were hunting or whatever they were doing they were always kind of foraging for plants but the other thing about it when grainy women would be out actually harvesting they would document where you know these specific locations were or in case something happened and they passed on generations would know where to go back and actually harvest those plants later on for future use this is one that you've seen before in other classes this is the paw paw many folks don't recognize the appalachian banana has actually always been associated with witchcraft um and and the dead um it's said that you can chew on the roots it'll actually protect you from from hates or heal addictions or it can even be helpful in laying curses on other people um here's one that so the club moss and doctors or granny women or healers back in the day would actually coat their hands with the i may say this wrong like a podium powder and again that's just the spores of the club moss because it was water repellent and it had antiseptic properties that they could use so kind of a precursor to our modern day um gloves again um all these plants usually looked like what they treated so a good one to think about is hepatica it's one of our spring ephemerals one of the first ones we see blooming it's shaped kind of like a human liver also notice the name hepatica so anything to do with the with the liver stems from that latin root but it's also called liverwort i had another picture in there but i'm not sure what happened to it um the native americans love bloodroot sanguinaria it gets its name from that bright red ooze where's that there it is um that you can actually see that oftentimes before the flower sprouts in the springtime um if you're not familiar with blood root you saw that you'd be like what in the world but not only was it used for its healing properties but the native americans also use it as a dye for um war paint uh the sassafras this had many uses too go back to nicholas menardes like i said tobacco and sassafras were the two species that he really documented their magic powers so the cool thing about sassafras was that all parts of the plant can be utilized the twig like you see pictured here uh was actually our first toothbrush if you will uh it was used for chewing gum it was used to make root beer the wood was utilized in making furniture even timber houses so it's been used [Music] for many years the butterfly weed is also known as pleursy weed again we're going back to what it treats so ironically and you're going to learn more about this next week when we talk about some of the phytochemistry elements but this the butterfly plant is great for attracting the monarchs and the swallowtails and everything but it's it's actually pretty toxic to humans but native americans would powder their roots up and and mix them into a paste to spread on on sores and then they would use it to increase sweat perspiration and any kind of respiratory element because they said that that would get rid of the fever and that's one reason we hear it called pleurisy root even still today another one you've heard me mention before is cohosh this is the blue cohosh gets touted for relieving many uh women's symptoms um pms rheumatoid um anything with to do with the with the eyes colic for babies so it had a lot of different uses and remember your cohosh the blue has got the yellow flower the black has the white flower with the white flower spikes uh this one you've seen before too this is ginseng um again long before um the chinese figured out the special use for ginseng our native americans and our early colonists knew just how powerful and herb this this was again the key there is is when you are harvesting for medicinal uses to make sure you you harvest the right one um this goes back to the ethnobotany you know we want to make sure we're not poaching from our native or natural national forest and our native woodlands uh we want to again kind of remember that folklore passing by the first four or seven to leave for future generations because this and goldenseal and ramps are all starting to be over harvested in most of our appalachian regions uh queen anne's lace or one that we often call chiggerweed it is a member of the wild carrot family uh it is a biennial we had a pretty prolific year for queen anne's lace here in east tennessee but one medicinal use that was discovered years ago was treating kidney stones and quelling uh gas also used as a diuretic you got to be careful with this one they discovered that it could actually deplete you um too quickly and also large amounts of vitamin a could be detrimental to your health too so the native americans kind of knew where that balance along with the grainy women on how to use some of these wild herbs chamomile was often used as a salt substitute had antiseptic properties this one is one of the monarda species we i called this horseman growing up also here it called oswego tea it was used in abundance for treating sinus infections and this is one of the plants that early colonists utilized for for perfumes making them smell better you know they didn't bathe um as often back in the day so this would be used to kind of hide some of those working out in the herb garden all day sweats i made mention of dandelions several times and if you do utilize dandelion that it's it's a highly concentrated tea but you have to dig the root before the plant goes to seed you'll notice there it was so relaxing it was used as a substitute for opium a lemon balm came along much later but um colin has soon discovered that it was used for um headaches as well uh say or whorehound and sage both utilized in cough drops even today marshmallow or swamp rose was utilized for internal inflammation our confection marshmallow actually come from the cheeses or the chopped up roots of this plant you can probably tell there it's related to cotton and hibiscus and okra the seeds were used as a substitute for coffee um oxalis you'll see there written beside it is cooling and so in the folklore we didn't go into the hot cold uh wet dry capacities but that's a huge uh tenant to some of the southern appalachian folklore again that that takes too much time to try to throw all that discussion in here tonight but oxalis was known for its cooling uh properties it was just made into a cooling paste for any kind of skin ailment calendula i've made mention of that one anti-viral anti-bacterial properties it was also used as an eye wash of course echinacea was used to boost the immune system any of the aliens were great for opening up the sinuses uh larkspur which is um also what is the delphinium is the latin for larkspurl larkspur this was utilized as a wound astringent uh hydrogen peroxide a yarrow was always chopped up and used as a paste for stopping blood clotting blood uh the one thing to make sure any kind of open wound you wanted to make sure it was clean and free because otherwise you would seal the wound or sell the bacteria in because it is so superior at clotting blood uh cotton had some unique properties it was used for bandages or not really bandages it was used for padding for splints and dressings for burns but because of the high oil content blood water any kind of liquid would just run right off of it so it wasn't used in that capacity but the seeds actually were made into a tea to help treat against malaria some of the substitutes that they discovered for soda starch and sugar uh red corn cobs and you've got to make sure they're red but that served as a great uh substitute for baking soda because they had a higher alkaline content it would help raise dough if you uh took cornmeal and you washed it repeatedly and kept pouring off the water and then dry that sediment that was actually going to be used as a starch or a paste a really cool way to recycle salt if you will um the dirt floor of smokehouses they would take that dirt and boil the salt out that had been dripping into the soil for years and uh excuse me the the taste for sweet tea come years ago they actually called it confederate raisins it was just dried up peaches so when peaches did come into cultivation they would dry those cut them up and that's what they would make sweet tea out of and then of course any kind of sugar substitute included sorghum honey and then cooked down watermelon juice was also used many plants they utilize for dye um myrtle would yield a really cool gray color poke berries we know how bright those are the birds just love those but they were used to yield a reddish or purple dye hats would be made from palmetto leaves you could make plaid braids out of rye straw and then they would actually use um shoe polish out of various oils from plants and then one of my favorites too is a substitute for cement or putty they would just take sweet potatoes um cook them in the ashes peel them while they were hot mash them up really fine and mix with flour and then they would apply that putty or that cement to anything um that was chipped um like any kind of pictures or houseware anything like that old pottery when it was dry it would be as durable as putty that we know today i did throw in peppermint of course we've talked about some of the mountain mints in great depth in several of the classes this is just plain old peppermint but i just put this in here to remind you that all of those mints that have the square stems are going to be beneficial in some form or fashion our native americans and our colonists discovered uses for those years ago so there's a link that will take you to a website with various uses for all the different myths but especially especially our native pycanthemum uh muticum species and that's the true mountain mint there uh of course this is a wart or any kind of papilloma that people get um the humble may apple was one they discovered years ago that could could cure that they also utilized it as as a like a laxative and this is a plant you're going to see more of next week we're going to go into quite a bit more in depth on on this one so stay tuned and of course violets we see these so prolifically in the spring again some folks are going to consider it a weed but they're known as a springtime tonic much like some of our other plants that we've talked about uh folks maybe back then didn't necessarily know what cancer was but they knew that this heavy sickness that would befall people um and so native americans and colonists alike felt like violets were one of those anti-cancer it would help fend off the poison if you will oh and this one is also good for lowering cholesterol so if you chew the leaves it's just as effective as oatmeal uh this is one stinging nettles and this is when we're starting to see a higher occurrence of it being grown but it does naturally occur pretty much anywhere it likes to be close to water it actually grows close to people which that might be the plant's way of saying that we uh that we need more stinging nettles but um it is a very nourishing tonic um it's a supreme blood builder it's why a lot of people like it it builds your blood up and that's another thing we didn't go into tonight on folklore is all the different blood types and appalachian folklore when you do harvest for medicine you want to make sure the plants are knee-high and pick them before they flower and if you use these in place of kale or any other kind of green again it's going to be really good to provide high iron content but it'll actually cook the sting out of them so a few more slides just talking about what appalachians would call bringing the devil down lots of different modalities and i've got some references because it's just there's too many to put on here but um just to share a few of those with you if if you wear a copper bracelet or a ring that protects you from disease uh if you carry a walnut with you it will help with your arthritis but now there's a key here you have to collect the walnut when it looks like this in the green form but then when it completely dries out to this stage then we want to discard it and start all over so make sure when it gets to this point to keep your arthritis from coming back that you you start all over here's one you probably have seen on many occasions this is just to buy or this one looks like tomato sticks um shaped into a five-pointed star this is called the witch's mark and it was always said to help protect against hate or roaming now the next one is kind of gross i'll just go ahead and tell y'all if you have a aversion to feet you're not going to like this but if um if you're wanting to win over a new love then you you cut your toenails and then you take a glass of wine or a glass of whiskey and you soak your toenails in it for three days and it has to be a wednesday to a friday and then on saturday morning you strain your toenails out and give the glass to your new love to drink and your best for life so if somebody tries this let me know i'm not going to do that but i'd like to know if it works um another i get uh this is maybe not such a nice one but if you if you're wanting to get rid of someone lord i'm helping contribute to murder i might should shut my mouth up but uh you take a splinter of a lightning strike wood and you place it under the person's porch steps or anywhere that they're going to walk over it and you'll never have to deal with them again so again make sure you know if you're going to practice some of these that you know what you're doing okay so um we've talked a lot about folklore so i wanted to leave you with a few legends and i'm going to let you kind of assess some of those on your own um i tried to grab some from all areas of appalachia but i don't i don't know if i got them all in here or not but uh the brown mountain lights uh this is in western to piedmont north carolina people have studied these lights for years they don't know where they come from and don't worry i'm not going to give all the good away each one of these slides is going to have links and the full story because i'm not a very good storyteller and i really don't i don't want to ruin the ending for you but really no you know we really don't know what causes these mountain brown mountain lights but um it's it's kind of a cool phenomenon so definitely research that uh the mothman you've probably seen this from point pleasant west virginia you can kind of see him up here on the bridge a lot of folks have said they've seen this moth like creature again not really much of an ex explanation for that uh the moon eyed people this is a cherokee legend so there was a race of small um bearded fat man who lived in the mountains so again i'm not going to ruin the story for you but this is a pretty cool legend so i would highly recommend then one of my favorites uh this is the bell witch so this is in adams tennessee out in west tennessee um a pretty cool little story there i'll have to tell you my own personal story of that later once you become more acquainted with betsy bell but uh very cool story here if you've ever seen the movie uh let's see what's the name of an american haunting uh it it's it's supposed to be based off the bell witch so since if we're running out halloween that might be a good movie to watch and then of course bigfoot um i'm just gonna leave that legend with you because we all have probably thought we saw a bigfoot at one time or another camping or hiking in the woods or we saw something i don't know but we probably all had those sightings but again there's links to every one of these and with the story in great detail so you can kind of read that on your own the last thing i want to leave you with is that again halloween is the saturday so at the stroke of midnight on halloween a lot of candle will reveal the future in the mirror's reflection look above your left shoulder so kind of remember that and just to give you a sneak peek into next week which is going to be um phytochemistry we're going to kind of take what we learned tonight in the last couple of weeks and move into [Music] more modern medicine so we're going to look at and i'm going to run through these because you don't see these next week but foxglove witch hazels yeah we're going to talk about coding or poppies all kinds of good stuff i probably shouldn't talk or show you all these but the cohosh uh tobacco we're really going to get down and dirty with some of these plants and find a lot of many uses for some of these plants that i think i think many of you will find quite fascinating or at least i hope so so with that a tremendous amount of information and again we're just scratching the surface and i do want to share with you you probably can't see this no yeah the farmer's almanac is chock full of a lot of resources um there's a couple of folks just to kind of make mention of course byron ballard sharon mccrum if you're into historical appalachian fiction she's great um jake richards who hails from east tennessee i utilize a lot of his reference material and i'm going to put all those links in the presentation so you can go in and read about a lot of these in more detail but i hope you found something a little bit interesting especially since it's tis the season and i hope you'll join us back next week as we delve a little deeper thank you melody really enjoyed it good deal thank you so much like i say come back next week a lot of not our little i'll i'll make sure that you get the powerpoint presentation with all the links but not a lot of supplemental information this week it's all embedded in the powerpoint so we will see you guys next week and happy halloween everybody thank you thanks mel okay i didn't realize i had to keep a distance from you i i know i put a hex on you i'm kidding thanks y'all see you next week okay

Channel: Big Spring Master Gardeners-Greene County

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Length: 105min 44sec (6344 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020