Folklore and Superstitions in Appalachia

appalachia is full of folklore and superstitions and although people don't live by them maybe like they did once upon a time they you just still often hear them pass down it's more of in a way either in a joke and manner or in a way manner of maybe i don't believe that but just in case kind of like the people that knock on wood which is a really common one not just in appalachia but everywhere so it's kind of like granny she'll knock on wood she's one of those people that'll say like i've been really good in good health this year knock on wood i hope i continue to be but there's um so it's it's a little bit of both maybe something that's passed down through the families because grandpa or grandma said it and maybe you don't maybe you believe it but maybe you don't necessarily believe it but because they said it you find yourself thinking it or saying it yourself but i've jotted down a few of them for us to go over today and i hope you'll leave a comment and tell me about the ones maybe that you're familiar with that i share are the ones that you've never even heard of so there's tons of folklore about weather one of the ones that i wish would be true that i look for every year i've heard it my whole life but it doesn't it doesn't come true i love snow so i'm always longing for snow but one of the common ones is forever how many fogs you have in the month of august that's how many snows you'll have that winter that one doesn't work out here for sure maybe in another part of appalachia but where i live i don't live high enough elevation to to actually get a lot of snowy winters a cat eating grass you see a cat eating grass that foretells rain one of my favorite ones about weather um is if the sun is shining and it's raining while it's raining if you see the sun shine and then that means the devil is beating his wife now i've heard that one my entire life and it's just such a colorful thing to say or to think about here's some other ones about the sun if the sun shines while it's raining it'll rain at the same time the next day it will rain the following day if the sun sets with clouds and then there's this one it's biblical so it's not just in appalachia of course you hear it all over the world but you know the red and scot red sky and morning sailors take warning red sky at night sailors delight that kind of plays off the biblical uh bible verse there uh if you lay a black snake over a fence or tree with its belly facing the sun it will soon rain so you know you wonder how many drought-ridden summers when people were praying for rain that they actually got a snake and did that to see if it would help those make me think of some other colorful saiyans not really folklore at all but that we say uh when he thinks the sun rises and sets in the in his hind end i don't know if you've ever heard that but somebody if they're really proud of their self you might say why he thinks the sun rises and sets and his hind in and it don't happy as a dead pig in sunshine you know that just don't even make any sense whatsoever but that's one i've heard a lot and this one i'm just saying that's kind of wise uh one of the wise ones the sun don't shine on the same man all the time or the sun don't shine on the same dog all the time so you know every everybody goes through periods of happiness and not happiness i guess the probably the most common folklore superstitious ones in appalachia are all about death everything ends in death it's always about death so a dog helen at night pretends death and i'm thinking when i i first read that when it's not one i grew up hearing but i thought well i hope they never lived near somebody had dogs because that's all i did i grew up in a family of hunters so there's a lot of howling dogs at night this one is really interesting an apple held by a dying person until his death and then after his death given to an alcoholic or a habitual drunkard to eat will cure that person of his craving for strong drink that one was shared with me by ethelene dyer jones a dear sweet lady she told me about that one she grew up in uh the cho estoy area of appalachia which is in northern georgia this is the same one she shared this one too if a person has a goiter on their neck he or she should go to where there's been a death take the hand of the deceased and rub the dead hand over the quarter and this is a sure cure yikes that's a scary one if a picture falls off the wall that's supposed to indicate someone might die if a bird flies in the house that's also supposed to indicate someone might die or death is near um those are ones that i've heard those two that about the bird and the photo and the picture i've heard my whole life but i've never seen neither one of them to be true death comes in threes that is one that kind of seems true to me it seems like somebody in the community dies and before you know it there's other two other people not connected with that person but somehow in your life i guess connected to your life that one does seem to hold true to me another one about death this is not really a folklore but a custom just before i'm filming this i had to take granny over blairsville to the doctor and there was a funeral procession and i don't know i know they do this in lots of places in the south but i don't know about in other areas of the country you can let me know if they do it where you live but as soon as we saw the funeral procession i noticed that i seen them actually before i seen it i seen people in front of me pulling to the side of the road so that's like a sign of respect that if a funeral procession comes through everyone stops on the side of the road and waits till the procession is gone before they go on in traffic and go on to where they're going to there's also a lot of folklore and superstitions about being sick or about sickness so this is an interest one interesting one which doesn't like this so many of these just like everything else like our language and appalachia changes these have changed or went away fell out of fashion whatever you want to say because society is different so like in days gone by you really had to worry about having the whooping cough whooping cough today that's not as much of an issue with kids because they take vaccines but a milk or food stolen from a neighbor and fed to a child will cure the whooping cough amazing huh if you're homesick i've been homesick before i've been out of town uh one time when i lived away from my home and i was homesick but i didn't know this this was one i just read if you're homesick you can look up the chimney in the house where the homesick person where you're at are residing and that'll cure your home sickness or you can sprinkle salt between the sheet and the mattress on the bed where you're sleeping and that'll cure your home sickness that's interesting if you have a sore throat i've heard this one my whole life a cure for it according to folklore is to put dirty socks around your neck and sleep like that and i've heard that one and that's one of the ones that makes you smile because you're like that's so silly but recently on the blind peeking acorn someone left a comment and they was really nice and they were talking about whatever subject we were talking about but they said oh and by the way my father was one of those people who believed at the first sign of a sore throat he put a sock a dirty sock around his own sock around his neck and slept like that and swore that it worked that it cured his sore throat so that was just really interesting to actually see someone that was familiar with um that that one actually being lived out not just reading it in a book or something if you've ever had a spy in your eye i have it's very painful to cure a style you're supposed to rub the tail of a black cat over the sty that's supposed to cure it i suffer from headaches i have migraines a lot so i'm always interested in the ones for headaches and this is i've read some where it says for a headache you're supposed to cut a piece of your hair and you put it in a tree that's been struck by lightning and that's supposed to cure your headaches or bury it take your hair out and bury it it seems like papaw told me one one time he actually let cory and katie cut his hair one time this is years and years ago it turned out okay but at the time i was like are you crazy why are you letting them cut your hair but anyway he said you had to bury your hair because if a bird got a piece of it and took it off then that you would die it's another one where you'd die if you a child has asthma katie had asthma as a child but um you're supposed to take a piece of their hair and put it in a tree and make a mark like where you put the tree put it in the tree and then when the child grows past that mark their asthma will be cured that's an interesting one there's all kinds of talking about the sicknesses but also for toothache remedies if you've ever had a toothache man i have i've had them before one time i had one so bad i would have done anything for anybody told me to do no matter how crazy it was if i thought that it would have helped me toothaches are miserable but one is if you have a toothache drink liquids from a cobalt blue jar or glass to cure it i didn't know that i would have tried it this one's funny hold liquor in the mouth for several minutes and then swallow it so i guess after you do that a few times you wouldn't worry about your toothache anymore chew ragweed leaves see i don't even know they may be poison i have no clue put cinnamon oil on the tooth and put clove oil on the tooth i have used clove oil and it does help it helps it doesn't make it completely go away but it eases the pain put persimmon juice on the tooth never tried that one place a piece of cloth soaked in kerosene on the tooth and if you did that i think you might have more problems than just a toothache that sounds too scary hold a warm bag of ashes salt or water on the cheek i've done that like with a heating pad or a hot water bottle remember those old hot water bottles that had like the screw in they were rubber and had the little screw in top granny had a red one and i remember me and paul and steve we loved that thing or maybe it was just me and paul i don't know for sure about steve but we'd heat that thing up we'd wrap it in a blanket and pretend like it was a baby or we'd want to sleep with it those old water bottles like that i've heard people putting in in the winter months when it was really cold in a cold house of course you heat rocks in a fireplace and put them in your bed like at the bottom of your bed wrap them in towels or something but i've also heard of people putting hot water in a milk jug i guess that's similar to the hot water bottle that i was talking about you can make a hole in another hole in the tree trunk a little higher than the toothache sufferer's head cut a piece of their hair place it in there and plug up the hole that's supposed to cure the toothache get up before sunrise each morning say a bible verse for three days this one's funny take a splinter or piece of a tree that has been struck by lightning and pick at your cavity that's supposed to cure it and then you can stuff your cavity if it's like a cavity i guess where your tooth's almost gone with soda sodi old people call it older people granny and pat both called it sodi that's baking soda spider webs aspirin or aspirin maybe the aspirin would help i don't know or salt i don't know that one might might cause other issues but then you can prevent a toothache by carrying a hog's head bone in your pocket always put your left shoe on first i have no clue which shoe i put on first i don't have to really pay attention next time wear nutmeg around your neck i would think nutmeg would have been hard to to come by but maybe not always cuz these are funny always cut your nail fingernails on friday to keep you know the headache or the toothache away but then the other one another piece i found somewhere else said never cut your fingernails on friday to keep the toothache away so it's funny uh other folklore about teeth is if you dream of losing a tooth it's a sign of death see i told you death is everywhere i always like these uh if you get too close to a spider and it counts your teeth you'll die i don't like the dying part but teeth or spider like the rotten spider if you've ever seen them and i know i don't know the scientific name for it but you know it's web looks like it's trying to write out someone's name or something that's the one that's supposed to be able to to count your teeth so you're supposed to keep your mouth closed if you go around it so you can't count your teeth another one about that is reminds me an inch worm if you catch an inch worm on you it means that little inch worm is measuring your body for your fume for your coffin so that's a sign of death that's funny so some of the ones that i actually grew up with these are all just funny to think about but most of those i didn't grow up with anybody saying them but one that granny lived by and still lives by today although she don't get to get out and go places much anymore but as if you you have to leave by the same door you entered so if she come to see me and she come in the back door when she left she made sure she left by the um back door she didn't go out of the front door she'd say no i gotta go out the same door i let i come in and you think well that's so silly but you know you think what's granny and she was born in 1940 and she holds on to the old ways but the interesting one about that one is that one time i used to work at a college and i was in a college boardroom with a board meeting going on and i heard someone in there say that so see those things kind of hang on maybe that person didn't believe it or maybe it was something they they just always observed because their mother or father or grandparent whoever had said it but so there that was still hanging on and not to say that a college campus is this great fancy place but it you know it is odd that you'd hear a piece of folklore like that in the boardroom of college campus i guess what i'm trying to say i i would hear this one often when i was young sweep if you sweep under somebody's feet they'll never marry so if somebody was sweeping around and i wasn't getting out of the way they'd say tipper you better move if i sweep under your feet you'll never get married um and another one that granny always told us is never tell your dreams before breakfast or they'll come true well i used to think well what if i want them to come true you know maybe i will maybe it's a really good dream and i want it to come true so that's an interesting one some of the ones um even when i was small at elementary school that kids went around saying especially girls girls was more of course into it about uh into folklore and superstition than boys and mostly it was because it all they all all those kind of things meant who liked you who was gonna who's gonna be your boyfriend you know but uh one was necklaces so i have one of katie's beautiful necklaces on today that she made me but the clasp so if the clasp got all the way down you know sometimes the clasp your necklace will ride down to the front it meant somebody was thinking about you you know your the boy you liked was thinking about you it um and then you were supposed to if it fell to the front you're supposed to kiss it make a wish and then put it back around the your neck where it belonged at the back of your neck and then your wish would come true and then um we that's all the ones that we observed that's the ones that we thought about but then after that i found out no if it moves to the left in front of your neck it means someone's thinking about you if it means to the right it means somebody's talking about you so those are funny ones and then if a necklace breaks you'll have bad luck i think that would be bad luck if one of your favorite necklaces broke so but and we also back then like most young girls we like to the ones that not just would foretell who we might marry but also how many kids we might have so of course there's the one um like a daisy which everybody's familiar with that that you pull out the petals he loves me loves me not he loves me he loves me not how it ends but then that little center of the daisy we would tear it out into little pieces and put it in our hand and then we would throw our hand up and then every how many pieces of the uh bloom were left in our hand how many kids we were going to have well of course sometimes it might be one or two but sometimes it might be 15 you know which would just make us roll around and laugh about that one but um every time we ate an apple you turn the stem and as you're turning it you're like a b c d and whichever letter it comes off on that's the initial of the person that you're going to marry another one about how many kids you're gonna have so we would do um every how many times you could reach around your wrist as you go down your arm and and you know i can just well i can go i guess i can go more than that i can go more than i actually have i only have two children anyway that was another one that we did it's all silly i know but there's part of me that thinks i just hope there's some little kid some little girl at martins creek or whatever elementary school around me i went to mars creek that's still doing that today you know it's just i don't know it's just a neat thing when you're hopeful as a child and you think you can your heart's just full of belief that anything can happen so um more about the bad luck ones kind of bad luck ones there's a whole series of those about having bad luck one of them is if you see it and this may be common in other areas too but if you see a black cat at night cross your road of course that's bad luck i used to run around with a girl that every time that happened she would lick her finger and make an x on the windshield of the car we were in so that was supposed to cancel it out you know then there's some that are spring folklore i like these because we're getting this time of the year we start looking towards the end of winter and hoping for spring so if you wash your hair in march rain you'll have pretty locks your hair will be pretty and this would be for someone who has cows and has milk of course we don't have cows but never mix april 30th milk with may first milk our butter will be slow and coming if you get your head wet in the first rain of may you will not have a headache all year long i need to do that when i need to make sure that i do that one if you wash your face and do on may 1st you'll be pretty march snow is good for sore eyes snow in april is manure so snow has i think nitrogen you tell me if i'm wrong i probably am but anyway there's something in snow that's good for the soil so that's what where that one comes from uh spring peas placed in the child's shoe will stop their growth papa tony used to tell corey and katie because he didn't get to see him often and when he would he'd be like i can't believe how you growed i'm gonna have to put a board and a rock on top of your head to keep you from growing anymore um and then there's some saiyans that made me think of those poorer than a crow in spring or a thin as a whipperwheel in spring i've heard those so this time of the year before spring during these winter months there's nothing better than just sitting by if you have a wood stove or maybe you have a fireplace or something and listening to the or if you do it outside a bonfire or something but listening to the hiss and pop and crack of the of the logs as they burn so there's lots of folklore about that so one of them is when the log tramps along like someone's walking they're telling you companies coming company will be here another one about company is like if your nose itches or the variations of that if you drop the dish towel means companies come and there's a bunch of those like that when the logs make a sort of sobbing sound rain is sure to follow when the logs putter and make a sound like a person walking through snow you know it will soon snow and lonnie dockery he was a dear friend and a blind pig reader he told me he always heard that the fire was tramping snow when it made that noise when it sounded like someone was walking on the snow or walking out walking on snow when the fire roars up the chimney like it wants out there's sure to be a fuss in the family one time when the deer hunter and i are matt and i were dating we were at papa tony's and he had um a basement that had a wood stove in it kind of like our except his might have been a little nicer than ours but anyway that's where me and matt would hang out there was a tv and a couch and stuff you know and we were sitting in there one day watching a movie or watching something i don't know what we were doing and just immediately you could tell it was a chimney fire but we just happened to be sitting right there when it first started well papa was upstairs and he heard it too we took off running and he took off running towards us and we kind of met in the middle but he put the deer hunter shoved him up on the roof with a water hose and they got it put out thankfully but i'm thankful we were just sitting right there by it right when it happened so i know what it sounds like for the fire to roar up the chimney i don't want to hear that again these are just some random ones you're not never supposed to change your calendar until the next month or that's bad luck and poor granny she's got to where she can't really reach up now so i one day i was i try i'll forget but it's right when you go in her door it's where she has her calendar and i try to make myself look at it and see if it needs to be changed but of course i don't always sometimes i'll look at it and it'll be half the month i'll be gone and i'll be like granny i need to change your calendar i'm sorry i forgot but that so that's one granny would never have to worry about bad luck for not for changing her calendar too early um this is just a silly one i'll end on but if your child is having trouble in school with subject you know maybe they're having trouble for me it would have been with geometry or algebra you're supposed to sleep on the book put it under your pillow and then while you're sleeping all that stuff will you know go into your brain and then you'll do better about it anyway that that's a funny one to uh to stop on but i hope you'll leave a comment and share any pieces of folklore maybe that you really did observe or you do now you know or that you just heard growing up or if you're in appalachia if you've heard any of these that i've mentioned and like i said i by no means cover them all so please leave any that you think of that was common in your family another one i thought of about the the dishrag made me think of or dish towel was feet if your foot itches it's supposed to mean that you're going to walk on strange ground so that's a neat one too i like that yeah i could it's just fascinating for me to think about them and and dwell on them and even though i don't necessarily believe them all or anything like that i just really find them interesting and i hope you do too i hope you enjoyed this video mostly i just hope you'll drop back by often as i celebrate appalachia

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

Views: 82,334

Rating: 4.8934326 out of 5

Keywords: Southern Appalachian Mountains Culture, Appalachian Folklore Beliefs, Smoky Mountain Folklore, Appalachian Folktales online, Appalachian Folklore omens, Appalachian Folklore signs, Appalachian Folklore superstitions, Mountain Folklore sayings, Appalachian Mountains, NC Mountain Folklore, Blue Ridge Mountain Folklore, Appalachian Omens, Appalachian Folk sayings, Mountain Folklore Sayings, Appalachian Mountain Folklore, Mountain Folklore Superstitions, Tipper Pressley

Id: OmDrLxj2zrM

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021

Reddit Comments

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