Signs, Cures, & Witchery

[Music] do [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] you [Music] go to a spring and wash yourself since he was a moon doctor say it's awful hot and they want to buy something [Music] yes we got plenty of witches over on the mountain and on its side was don't let them borrow nothing [Music] the idea of which seems to scare people in to think an evil thought [Music] the appalachians are the oldest mountains in the world for at least 10 000 years people have matched their wits against this unyielding land without benefit of today's scientific understanding and principles european settlers and now their descendants inherited old world physical and psychological ways to deal with dangers both real and imagined this rich body of lore remains in existence and still functions within the folkways of some very special people [Music] beginning in the late 17th century large numbers of religiously and socially oppressed germans immigrated to the mid-atlantic region of north america as settlement came to western virginia in the 18th century many of these people came to this new frontier and even participated in the indian wars they quickly gained the pioneer skills needed to survive in this new harsh environment but they retained old world folkways as well their german ways remain particularly strong in some areas and their old world folklore continues as a presence in their belief systems johnny arvin is the keeper of local history in this neighborhood all through life johnny listened and remembered he didn't learn it from books he learned it from people he's a man in his ninth decade of life but he still begins stories with daddy said my daddy said what what his grandfather told him he'd take a piece of cloth that laid the closest to the rupture you see the curing for rupture in that case his father used some sign sign cures like one was uh rupture and then a little better and there's a plug and an apple tree there i said bill what is i'm doing now i'm going to pull out oh i said don't pull that out said that dad put that there he said don't pull it out and one old gentleman told him on the ball yes she said i know your daddy said i had a kid was ruptured one time uh he had to come early morning before sunrise uh and uh face and east where you're supposed to do it at a fruit tree there they took a had to be a piece of a fingernail something from the other part of the body piece of toenail he would bore a hole in a fruit tree it had to be some buried fruit then take a a piece of your fingernails a piece of hair and maybe a piece off a toenail you know just like you're trimming them and put it in that and close it roll it up and push it in that hole put it in drove a plug behind it put a wooden plug take a hammer done in three blows a first blow you say a name of the father name of the son and name of the holy ghost well you they can write your ticket don't talk to nobody and jesus said unto thee get thee and satan for it is written national worship our lord our god and him only shalt thou serve then he put their name and then your father's son holy ghost take your auger and go to the oak tree and pour a hole in the tree stick your ticket in there and then take you an iron rod and a hammer put that on right in there and hit it and if whoever does it get either fall hurt yourself or get hit or something she had the trees above the house she called her pin tree and she had a black cat she'd send across the hill to her other sister she'd drive pins in that cherry tree whenever whenever she wanted to be with someone she put a pen in that tree he never got mom she never got dead because they always carried a ticket you can doctor somebody say you doctor me here in my home okay and they come in from outside and go to my kitchen get a drink of water renews it they have to do it again so you don't know who it is every time someone comes leaves you have to doctor them because you don't know that whether that and someone's put this fella say say she's got a little baby and the spells on that little baby okay you come in from outside and i've doctored her baby you go and get your drink of water or come in and pick you up just so you pick up something get something i'll help then i've got to go talk to that baby again and don't do no good everybody comes and goes that's the doctor the baby so it keeps you about busy you don't know who it is see people are coming and going you don't know who it is you can accuse them but is that right or is it wrong you never let no one gave even a drink of water for nine days when you wrote that a nice pittsburgh was a great fellow he believed in the witch and stuff like that he just he's a very rough mountaineer he he cussed a lot too and he my father went over one day to visit him a lot about this time of year it was warm and he was in bed he didn't love the matter just help us in bed witch doctor came there in the name of ben mook ben mutz came and uh into him and got talked that nice and pitied him the one said don't gladly what are you doing in bed he said that daniel witchers are riding me he believed this certain women down here the road that did something to him and he got him to believe it he said they're nice set up in bed and they set up in bed said that nice put your shoes on and and he got up and set up and put his shoes on and after holly said a nice pizza burger go out to the horse table and feed the horses and they got up more clear out the horse table for the house out there and tend the horse would come back and it seemed to be all right then she did this magic work witchery they called it so she had a certain stone in the fireplace that she would remove and lay on her hearthstone then she would go through her magic and she wouldn't go to bed that night she would stay up and the next morning there'd be plenty ample amount of corn meal on that clean stone for to make hot cakes for the family for their breakfast her aunt uni's husband had been an officer in the civil minor officer in the civil war and he got he lost his life in the war and some people helped her apply for a pension and it was seven dollars and she had 11 children so she had this magic way of getting her money she would take this little stone from the fireplace above the fireplace and she would lay it in another place on her horse the store keepers and everything knew that she only got seven dollars a month and she'd spend 40 and 50. and someone caught her putting the stone and of course she would lose her magic when she was caught doing her match [Music] you know what hide and seek is we had little ryan would say uh hide and seek a bush of hui bush butcher whoever isn't hidden holler i and here's how we changed it a bushel wheat a bushel votes whoever isn't ready even hidden kolobam moots see how we change it see how the children had in their mind several old-timers like ben moats were widely known as witch doctors they were called on to break spells thought to be put on people by witches one woman had a child that they thought was bewitched they called him and and he told them now be somebody come there that week and won't beat seed and they mustn't let him have none they let uh let him have that beet seed and the patient died and they thought i died from being bewitched well you know when they well then people would lose so many lambs in the spring and they thought it was witchery and they'd go to these little witch doctors well mom has one cow that she went and milked that that evening the milk was all right that evening the next morning she went and took milk and her milk was all blood she took some of that milk and went and dug her a hole in the ground wrote her a ticket and got her some kerosene lamp oil took that milk and that ticket and poured in my home settled in the fire a couple days after that dad's brother's wife come up and let her see she had burns all over her body and mama dig a hole and put that milk down in there and beat with the thorn name of the father son the holy ghost the witch she would well we had one live down over the hill she'd come up and say the needles something's sticking my legs mama beating that milk with that thorn she come up and her her legs would be full of holes she was one checking mom's milk in some aspects of witchery as in burning or beating the milk with a thorn sympathetic magic comes into play the theory is that whatever is done to the milk will put a counterspell into effect some man made her mad about something and she i don't know if she named the needle or how she did it but she heeded it and bent bent a double and he began to bend double and then i think he went to maryland to find out how to break that spell i'm not sure how i found out about that but anyway they told him to get a needle and heat it and bend it back and that'd break the spell whether it was through the action of magical charms like this or through a long-standing female tradition of curing with herbs and plants it seems women were and are most often accused of witchery we dealt with with the green side of life nanny yankee lived there on the south side of petersburg in a little house and it was said that she cured warts and cured people she delivered a lot of babies and cured people of diseases and they called her a witch but see that to me is not the way you should look at it she was a healer maybe some people call that a witch maybe some people don't my old cousin ruth lance she did i mean she delivered a lot of babies that a lot of broken bones mixed up a lot of medicines mary lynch they said she was a good witch in previous centuries in germany the church thought that those who had the power to produce counter spells were as guilty as the witches themselves the debate continues is all magic and sorcery harmful or bad in the old world especially in germanic countries witches were typically women up to 90 of the accused witches in germany during the inquisition were women they were generally thought by men to have entered into pacts with the devil common fantasies included women engaged in erotic behavior with the devil and flying off to the witches gatherings called the sabbath today it is still women who are generally accused of witchcraft accused witches even in olden times were neighbors local people with whom you have daily dealings there is a judeo-christian tradition of misogyny and this along with changing societal roles emphasized the gender distinction the ultimate discrimination came with the published work malius malafikaram or the witches hammer written at the urging of the pope in 1484. this book had wide distribution in switzerland and in germany from which numerous appalachian families immigrated its depictions of women as the evil corrupters of mankind along with the artwork of the period showing women making pacts with the devil sealed their fate down through the years women and to a lesser extent men have paid an awful price it is estimated that 400 000 witches were killed during the inquisition mostly through burning and hanging after being tortured one time is a woman at the rough time of which course a man can be too you know but i believe women are accused more of being witches around here in men [Music] the tide of german immigration to pennsylvania started in the 1680s about the time the european witch hunts ceased people arrived in philadelphia and by the 1730s they were spreading west and south on the great wagon road medieval traditional beliefs were retained by a substantial number of the german pioneer families who early on settled on the frontier of western virginia many were from the rhine and maine valleys where religious fervor was high and witch hunting was rampant there came a procession of reformed lutherans and anabaptists including mennonites and brethren some had lived under religious persecution in switzerland and germany they brought their perfectionist religious doctrines distinctive worldview and cosmology to this new land this supported a belief in the supernatural especially within the mystical teachings and folk spirituality of some factions but in secular thought as well accordingly witches prophetic signs omens divination and malevolent spirits were grounded in their psyche and came with them from the old world well that old care book you know what i told him about the name of the father son the holy ghost well that sounds pretty religious don't it but dr krauss looked out and he claims the work of the devil but it's the work of the devil my grandfather and my great grand great-great-grandfather who must be the worker of the devil well my great-great-grandfather was a lutheran preacher from germany that's why he's persecuted for his religious belief it seems like they're given a religion and uh which kind of kind of mix kind of together makes them you can still be pretty smart but if you've been conditioned a certain way from little up it it stays with you you know what happens when you're young it has a lot of bearing on you later in life [Music] we went to church every sunday and they had a prayer meeting on wednesday we always went to it and up there at the middle of our church is where we'd always go debbie is a person who has kept to the old ways all of her life devi doctors for witches meaning she uses methods she sees as being sanctioned by the bible to remove and reverse spells she feels are put on her and her family by other people she learned it from old people her ancestors including her swiss and german foreparents they always done it ever since i remembered any of them they all done it so they just come down that's how us younger known from our relation back and if you don't believe in this you ain't believing the bible now up in this camp country there's two old witches lived up there mary lynch they said she was a good witch they didn't have enough milk for their dinner one day and she took a dish rag and run milk out of us for their lunch and dad worked way up the rich mountain there and he said there's a woman cooked and they never had no cow but she always had milk there's cracks on the floor and he looked down and she was milking the towel she's getting milk one day come on there and she's sitting out there she's a milk and a a towel like some milk in the cow and said you had a bucket full of milk just around that town so see that that made mr pittsburgh more than ever believe in this switch business and her name was euni connard at that time she was about a hundred years old but she lived to be 114 before she died i remember of seeing that old lady just very dimly and the picture i have of her sitting on a little old porch on the side of their house with a bonnet on her head and her eyes closed is sitting there and she was supposed to be a witch she had two grandsons and they always want to visit the crow's boys their grandson's names was everett and earl and the gross boys names are brooks and arch but the gross boys would never go back because they had heard about aunt junie's witchcraft but this night they did they went home with the boys to stay all night and um they were all sitting around the far talking and juni sitting there in front of the farmer in her rocking chair ethel came in the granddaughter ethel and she said granny we don't have no milk for supper and she said mm-hmm so directly she come back and she said granny we need that milk now she said she gets up and walks out and she goes by the stove she takes a dish rag from the top of the stove throws it over her shoulder there was a hand deck sitting by the door one bit of dax and she picked that up and she also gets a bucket that held about 10 quarts and she goes out around the log cabin to the dark side on the backside and she puts that dishcloth across the end of the log and with a good hefty swing she puts that ax into that dishcloth and after that she twisted the dish cloth and set the bucket down under it squatted down put her knees down on the ground so she was comfortable and sit there and arch crows was watching her he had followed her and he said she milked the ten quart bucket of milk out of the log and picked it up and went in the house and he said we've gone up the hill brooks caught up with me and i told him what i saw and brooke said i saw all that went on in the house and i saw just what you saw in there you just got to see her milk the dishrag more than i got to say but boy i'm glad we didn't stay for supper and they never did go back anymore they stayed away from there a european woodcut from the 16th century shows a witch milking an axe handle like milking a dish towel it stems from an ancient belief that a witch can steal the milk from another person's cow through sorcery there was a woman come from the head of booger hole to buy a handbag sandal and she asked for a drink of water she stood right there and i had a 10 cup sand and water buckets on the table i just lift her up with him full of water arrested to her and i think she drunk it dry and she bought that handle genus was there and she paid genus for this handle and took that handle and just walked off and never said another word me him to nobody and you couldn't make butter with this milk you had the milk them cows that they put their goal dry and it was stuck in young cows but the milk was going someplace else which is i kept this toast hot it was red all over and i put that milk in a uh iron kettle set it on there and it was red hot and i poured and i put a a a 50 cent piece of money in the bottom of that kill and it says in god we trust and i let it get as hot as i thought it could get and i just upended that milk right there in that kettle and that milk just went all over this place but it didn't burn me at all i got come back out and just let it flop and pop till there wasn't a drop of nothing in this skittle or on this stove and that night the cows come in with milk in their sacks the cows was given milk and i had bought a a bread pan down at a store and i was to take butter and pay for that bread pan to bake in there with and she was selling her butter to the same store and some way another they wanted me to finish bringing butter to him after i paid for my pan but now when when that was done the cows come back to given their milk but now i quit selling butter i was afraid to for people was afraid of them they absolutely i believe that they made children sick you know they had the power almost as much power as a heavenly father buttermaking seemed magical before scientific reasoning explained the process a charm was used to help bring about the transformation of the cream saint peter's waiting at the gate for a sweet butter cake come buttercup and they'll sing the old swing turn back [Music] back he said the best thing you do or the witch comes is the custom that that'll do more than anything else they had a bed there that they couldn't keep the cover on the bed and come off be up there go in bed and something to come pull the cover off of you [Music] here's something that comes up the steps after a little bit the cover came off the bed and they said pull it under the bed too so jake captains they said that uh come up the stamps and of course he didn't have the light on i don't think and it pulled the cover off he got him but then one night he's up here and he got it they got the uh the hands that had a small hand but he couldn't hold it he had a caught a witch but he couldn't hold it down the creek aways on reeds creek here is the jerry hartman place and there's the old chimney still remains there and this story was told to me by my mother as a child and later on in life i heard the story told by my old medicine woman cousin named ruth lance and me and ruthie was driving by one day and she's telling me um you know the story then i said yeah my mother told me about it when i was little and then she told me the story again that this man named jerry hartman and his wife and his family lived there and that she loved to knit and she told them when she died she would like to have them bury her knitting needles with her and the lady died and nobody buried her needles with her so from then on they couldn't sleep in the house they heard the clicking clicking sound of knitting needles till they couldn't sleep and so they went and dug the woman up and and buried her knitting needles with her and the clicking stopped i've told with the old people that uh if you get a a nail out of a coffin and you had you had great magical powers and it had said that the ali props did that once he claimed the reason he dug his mother up people asked him why he dug his mother up she had been buried for a long time in a coffin and they said her head wasn't laying right he wanted to turn her head that is an excuse for digging her up but everybody thought he wanted to get a a nail out of her a coffin and which which you did they claim you had great powers magical powers or was a snail you could do a lot of a lot of things with that nail and i've been told you could take that nail and put in an orchard kill a number of apple trees they die when they drove into the ground now they had some words to say with them but i don't know what they said they called it a death crown if anybody had them on their death bed when they'd had to die and their head was laying on this pillar why these feathers in there would not up good big big as your fist and just to not just grow together where they've been picked off of the chicken and uh and they open them feather ticks after the funeral was over and take that ball out of there and you couldn't pull it apart for a they said it was a death what crown and they wouldn't put it back in the pillar they burned it up i've seen mam do that yeah the the crown of death was supposedly the way it was formed the feathers and all in the pillow and when that was formed in somebody's pillow they were to die if that was there you pretty sure sure they went to heaven that person that died and if it uh if it wasn't is a doubt doubt in our mind [Music] we had tokens of war long about the 40th when the war broke out and i've seen these big effort tokens floating in the sky they heard this knocking at the spring house and i got the house that was this thing was a wrapping up at the house he said i'll take my gun i'll go up here and i'll shoot it he'd hear it he'd run up the stairs and when he'd get up there it would quit and he can back down he did it several times he'd run up for with a gun it would quit and then that night he passed away and never heard it anymore she died here in the room right the room here we're sitting in right now and alfie props it is along about midnight at that time people come in a rose was bad you know laying here in bed my sister rose she was 12 years old 1936 said as it comes to the steep fields and he hadn't got to the house yet and said said all of a sudden he said he heard the british music said it seemed like it encompassed the sky and said british music ever heard and made him wonder what that meant and he come on here at the house and it's just just not the same time and rosa died and she said when they was walking home from school one evening coming up off of the reeds creek road up the pretty ridge to go home there was a woman in the meadow down there and the old fred mendinger meadow and she was walking and it was like she was floating and almost like she was transparent and she had a long white gown on and she said the gown was just flowing and it looked like a woman she knew and that night that woman died [Music] there is an old belief that a person who put a spell on you may be detected by looking in a mirror taken him out to the rand bar and had him to look down in that rail barrel and then you could see the person that was uh bewitching the other person and i think they had a heck of a time and they keep him from killing the father she saw her face in that mirror she stopped this devil there's no man that come from pym county mom knew him he come there and he took spell off of ice he used to be an old fellow lived down here he believed in that stuff i mean he was i don't know come up here one day and he told me he said uh somebody had my cowboy witch said she just rolled over down there and there's kind of tumbled and rolled and i said well i said he looks if there's any yellow jacket nesters around there no he said it was a witch and i hear the witch balls hit the cow well now i was in a woman's house one time and she kept hauling these a ball of hair going through the house a bowl of hair don't do that [Music] hair balls can just appear like a i would say kind of like a tumbleweed for some reason to me a hairball to see a hairball is like a curse i don't know what it means to other people but that's the way i grew up believing that there was something there behind that hairball being sent to you because you don't let your hair get out of your possession that's your power and if it hits you it it hurts you but we always got back and got the witch ball and throwing the fire well what's the name mary i'm so bored harry is it well she said you just set scale you'll see it go through the house well she was sitting like over there and i was sitting over here right now a ball of hair went through between us they'd take their own hair and make a ball and if it hits you it just hurts you they talk about these hair balls and i think that's what they're referring to when they talked about a witch bullet the same thing it's actually not a lead bullet it's something that's uh made out of hair red marks on his legs and he said that's where the witches had shot him they had these red like on a welch or whatever on his leg they wasn't accusing him of being with say he was actually saying that the witch actually shot them you didn't uh you didn't cut your baby's fingernails or your baby's hair unless you took it out and buried it in a hole where nobody knew so that the evils couldn't get a hold of it and curse your baby things like that that's how i was raised and i still don't have a problem with it i did the same thing with my grandchildren and my children your hair is something powerful make my throat sore but now then i just go and they'll come and say oh oh yeah yeah yeah these old-timers had terrible times witches i remember old man george meadors had a cow down there and got sick and and they split her tail and put salt and pepper in it and that didn't pepper out they called it the holler tail that they had taylor just hang limp like a hanging them off across the clothes line and the only time it'd be any move but there's when the wind did blow it along or something like that and so uh he got out his almanac and got to reading and and uh called dr pattigo he was a moon doctor and talked to him about it and he told him what to do for the cow and uh so they bored a hole in a log in the barn and filled it full of sulfur and then they drove a white hickory peg in there now and when that peg rotted off and it spilt that sulfur out there it would cause this curse to die and go away [Music] now say you're going to be a witch okay i don't know where you get them but they call them a little black bible you take that little bible and you go to a spring or to run from the sun and i'll pour the sun away from the sun now this and then here's running away from the sun and that and left beyond in the garden hall is running direct towards the sun take that little black bible and go to that stream strip off and wash in there take a bath now on and tell god you're free from him as the water on your body and then you turn out to be you go according to the black bible with the bible i had a first cousin that had one of them and i'ma tell you i wish you could read one of them it explains in there what to do when to do while these practices come from old family sources the basis for this belief as to how to become a witch is found in the witch bible a book commonly known as the black book or the black bible is attributed to king solomon through the first century writings of flavius [Music] josephus [Music] uh about 1200 egg about even as salonist now while there are quits are there from this dutch uh guns look for the lard dome uh see is galva in this texas about this is evil cover from germany hex or witch signs are powerful occult symbols in use since at least the 12th century after 300 years of use in this country they are seen as decorative ornamental objects the hex signs on barnes were once thought by some to protect against witchcraft [Music] today even though their value is tied to their decorative effect they remain a mystery other charms and occult symbols show up in the material culture of german people along their route to and in west virginia peck signs and reversed hearts on gravestones most likely had occult purposes through the mid-19th century when occult belief systems from germany were strong [Music] hex signs hearts various birds and pears the tree of life religious icons [Music] heavenly bodies [Music] and still to be explained symbols reflect their ethnic and religious [Music] makeup remember youth as you pass by as you are now so once was i as i am now so you must be prepare for death and follow me barnes exhibit decorative artistic expression on the outside but superstitious people also used to cult symbols on the inside of barns and in houses to dispel witchery barn didn't have any windows or anything in uh you just had your doors where you went in it was always a dark a very dark barn and i put these windows in and lo and behold i happened to be looking around i looked up on the back side of this the center beam that runs through the barn was this uh piece of paper that was tacked up to the backside of the beam we had different magical phrases and i believe a magical square this symbol also found in a local farmhouse is said to have been used by early german mystics in pennsylvania to protect their mud and stick chimneys from fire this type of chimney construction is found in this west virginia neighborhood as well the symbol itself may be traced back to the methodic religion common to first century romans a recent example was discovered at pompeii in mithraic iconography perseus is depicted slaying a bull recent interpretation proves this to be symbolic of the passing of the age of taurus in the cosmic world of astrology the square spells five words in both horizontal and vertical directions it has been used for occult purposes by many groups over the last two thousand years but interpretations vary it came to this neighborhood with johnny arvin's great great grandfather in the 18th century but was also known to pennsylvania germans through an early 19th century publication what does it use for they they believe these magic squares and they have to use those other words those letters whatever they want to stand for and you have to believe it often and that'll do the trick and that's what i have about extinguishing afar to extinguish afar and smoke without water write the following letters on both sides of a plate and throw it into the fire thus it will extinguish itself slowly four five words are sator as a young man with a keen inquisitive mind johnny arvind wrote down these cures from old family sources they descend from a handwritten book his great great grandfather brought from germany the numerous examples include a magical number square that is used to control rabid dogs another square exists in the barn that is just over the hill from johnny's farm the numbers add to the same sum in any direction including diagonally these squares and other number formations common in a branch of magic called numerology are thought to have exceptional magical power the word abracadabra in this barn when found in its triangular forms has been used for magical purposes for over 2 000 years talk is widespread about curious superstitions in this neighborhood yeah which couldn't step over the broom uh-huh that's the way wasn't it yeah and it that's why there's someone to come and they could tell when they're coming uh after the witch or not there was brooms over the door he would leave a broom lay across the door laid the room down across the door and she always claimed if that was a witch when they come in and pick the broom up well harry had that with his house all that stuff hanging around it burned that sulfur and you could smell it when you get on the roof there's widespread mention of sulfur the biblical brimstone when dealing with the occult in medieval europe people were struggling with old belief systems trying to mesh them with emerging scientific awareness at this time the field of alchemy developed out of ancient islamic belief alchemists favored use of the divining rod with a long history in germany it was utilized in america by religious mystics in attempts to locate buried treasure and precious metals rods are still commonly used today for a kind of divination often called water witching most communities have a water witch and scientists continue to debate their usefulness religious leaders of old thought that water witches unmasked were incarnations of the devil himself witches represent the other that is the opposite of what is deemed normal or good medieval art depicts which is actively portrayed doing things in reverse this concept is still known today but mom always wrote a ticket and put it up over the front door and she said now there she said you watch everybody comes said the witch will not come in forward he'll have to back in and i don't know how many people come there they opened the door just back then they didn't come in forward like me or you did these witches doing things backwards are very much like a local figure known as the bellsnickel who also did things in reverse this old bell's nickel illustration shows his witch-like behavior historically there has always been a time when this oppositeness or otherness was openly celebrated and acted out european countries observed this phenomenon near the beginning of the winter solstice in germanic countries a midwinter character known as the bellsnickel was present children were warned be good or the bell snickle will get you masking revelry and drunkenness was the rule of the day even after this period of the year was converted to a religious holiday anglo-celtic mumming traditions involving masquerade mingled with the bell snickel figure in pennsylvania and newer forms of the old celebration live onto the present in west virginia belsnickels shanghai and carnival participants and the many versions of santa claus have been accused of representing both roman and norse gods when martin luther disavowed the catholic saint nicholas in the 16th century the german people responded by directing attention to the christ kent or the christ child this name eventually evolved into kris kringle and he then reverted back to a father christmas figure they looked really like a clown's outfit it would be just like a loose-fitting clothes around the neck and then elastic around the arms and the legs like that and then something over your face so they couldn't tell who it was and we would just go from house to house like that just maybe all night long some of the neighbors had to crank telephone and if you got houses and they would figure out which way you were going well one neighbor would try to call the next one and say that i had on so and so well the big thing was we would switch outfits between the houses not too long ago in our church while they uh they got the pastor and they went bell sniffling they would come to our door and they would holler you want to see a pretty man tonight it was between christmas new year wasn't it at the bells nickel everybody bell snickled it was uh something to do when you had all your crops in your side are made and the louder you could get to and the more cider you got the louder you go dress up in their false faces and the rag the old ugly clothes these long john underwear they cut them off and tie the top shut and then cut holes in them and paint them all up he didn't guess who it was they didn't have to take the fold's face off so they might get away with some mischievous little things that you can change your voice pretty well could you oh yeah we'd uh take some candy along and we'd throw that on the floor and you know the kids would be down there grabbing that candy and we had a switch we'd switch their fingers well we'd still go in daylight and we'd call that shanghaine robert mentions an old mid-winter tradition called shanghai [Music] no one seems to know its origin but the spirit of inversion or otherness is present in the masquerading and cross-dressing that takes place some people are in it almost every year some people just decide to come out and walk down the street dressed up and go down the street after christmas and so on that's about all i know about it some of the words that i know is that these roster used to be bigger than williamsburg so they go down there and party all night monsters [Music] [Music] although the origin of the word shanghai used in this sense is a mystery the word belsnickel is better understood it's a corruption of the german term nicholas which means saint nicholas and fur the last time that i was out of bell's nickel i told her tell him he's gonna fool him this uh this time and of course we had her made out if she couldn't guess it then we'd take her faces off and uh and she he gave up he just couldn't get us and she said how did pull your face off i can see him yet he's sitting on his chair and jumped up and showed that dawson dawson and was a hard time then and they killed the beef their own beef and hauled it to ivy dale on a sled and two horses and they got down there and it was an awful cold day now i can remember this that was driving them and the horses stopped and threw their heads up and went to snorting and these men just stood there and waited they looked out before these horses and they seen a great big object bigger than any horse or anything like that but looked like one and this object kinda appeared and on its side was the devil the devil the devil well they stood there and their horses wouldn't move and just kept us snorting and they digging and after wildlife object left and them horses quieted down and went on to their barn now there's some pretty high power done that and them was good people too they worked and they paid their debts hellbound parties he called him at night you know he's a lutheran preacher he didn't believe in that stuff and at that house of the having a great big time that night way late tonight i don't know what is it doing you know you have to guess must be not not nice and uh and all of a sudden there's uh what's all been up the door opened and the devil walked in said he had to he had chains wrestling chains and had horns so he didn't do anything he just looked in the walk then looked at him and uh walked and went back out oh it scared him powerful into and they did it he sulfur burning too smell sulfur burn my mother always said now when you're little your parents don't always tell you everything you think you should be told but ask the child she talked about the witch war that went on up in towards uh on in back sugar grove that area back in there and everybody talked about the witch war how they cursed themselves out cursed and counter cursed and okay i took it all in but my mama said those people had carried it too far and then they got pretty far wasn't it they tried to thought of a cave over the witch that and they tried to props told me more about that today otherwise they're trying to burn a camp alive trying to burn fly they want to get the witch they got the opinion i'd get the witch you see your birth burn the witch what do you miss the most from the old time days that you don't have to a cow [Music] i was born and raised with a cow and i've lived with a cow all alive up to about five years ago i miss my butter my milk the cows well i miss worse [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College

Views: 4,767

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: NwaUcSRsQPQ

Length: 57min 56sec (3476 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020