FIRST FOOTERS AND DUMB SUPPERS

Since my grandparents were Scot-Irish and products of a farming culture that was saturated with folklore, old traditions and colorful superstition, my childhood was different from that of my classmates at Sylva Elementary. I was raised in a house where people talked about black Irish curses, prophetic dreams and folk medicine. As a consequence, I experienced a culture that was remarkably different from the one that I encountered at school. I drank boneset tea for the croup, wore an “asafetida bag” in the winter and helped my grandfather treat our cow for the “holler-tale” (an ailment that causes a cow to stop giving milk) by splitting her tale with a knife and pouring epson’s salt in the wound. It worked.

When my grandparents visited their kinfolks (my grandfather’s “people” in Macon County and my grandmother’s relatives in Big Ridge, Jackson County), I saw, heard and experienced a world that was already vanishing: family reunions, all-night “sings,” baptizings, hog killings and epic canning events - a kind of life style that my playmates at school knew nothing about. This was especially true of the Christmas season.

The first time I heard of “first-footers” was in Big Ridge. I was told by some elderly Pruitts that Christmas Day could be dangerous. This was especially true of the first visitors to your home on December 25th. The first person who set foot across your threshold would determine the kind of life you had for the rest of the year. Red-headed people must be avoided at all cost since their visit would bring a year filled with discord and bad luck. However, dark-haired visitors would bring happiness and prosperity.

I guess it stands to reason that if so much depends on red-headed or brunette visitor, the best thing to do is to “hedge your bets.” My relatives in Big Ridge always invited several dark-haired friends to an early breakfast. It didn’t matter how many red-heads showed up after the first-footer had come and gone, the future was now assured. You would have good crops, healthy children and domestic bliss. I was told once that this practice probably dated to some ancient, forgotten war in Ireland or Scotland when the red-headed invaders conquered the dark-haired inhabitants and made life miserable for everyone in that region.

I heard references to “dumb suppers” for years before I finally encountered a detailed account of one. Essentially, it is a ritual (the baking of a small cake of cornbread) carried out on New Year’s Eve by young women (usually four in number), and as the name suggests, it is conducted silently. In addition, the participants prepare and bake the bread while walking backwards. All of the ingredients are measured with teaspoons and the baking is concluded on the stroke of midnight. All of this is done in the belief that if the ritual is conducted correctly, the four young women will see the face of the man that they will marry.

In some versions, the husband-to-be’s face appears in the plate in which each young woman is eating her cake. In other versions, the specter of the husband appears in the room or knocks at the door. I once heard a version of a dumb supper in which the husband appeared, picked up the knife that the women had used to cut the cake into four pieces and vanished. Two years later, when one of the young women was married, she was subsequently stabbed by her husband. Of course, he used the knife that vanished at the dumb supper.

There is something a little eerie about many of the old Christmas/New Year’s Day
rituals that deal with foretelling the future. Frequently, there is the suggestion that some knowledge is best left alone. Certainly, that is true of the old belief that
the animals talk to each other at midnight on Christmas Eve. There are many stories about curious farmers who hide in the barn and wait for midnight only to learn that the animals talk to each other ....but any luckless human who hears them speak, runs the risk of hearing them discuss his impending death.

Obviously, many of these superstitions originated in old pagan beliefs that have been inadvertently woven into the fabric of Christmas and New Years. There are hundreds of them that are ancient tales about the Winter Solstice ..... the night in December when the two worlds (the real and the supernatural) are so close together that visitors cross the boundary and“strange events occur.”

I guess I should note that some accounts of dumb suppers are radically different from the one I have described. In Kentucky, there are three young women, not four. Further, the whole affair sounds more like a seance than a Christmas ritual.

SERENADING (IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SINGING!)

TTHERE ARE SOME STRANGE FOLKS THAT ARE OUT AND ABOUT ON CHRISTMAS EVE NIGHT. THESE MERRY PRANKSTERS ARE SOMEWHERE IN AUSTRIA, I THINK. WHEN I WENT "SERENADING" IN A DARK COVE IN MACON COUNTY CIRCA 1950, I GUESS WE LOOKED PRETTY STRANGE, TOO.


SERENADING


Sometime back in the early 80’s when I as teaching an elderhostel in Tiger, Georgia, I read an editorial in the local newspaper about the banning of “ Christmas serenading” in Rabun County. Although the editor regretted the passing of “an honored tradition,” he noted that the law enforcement agents for the county had made a wise decision. He went on to say that in recent years, the “serenaders” had become increasingly reckless, and cited examples that involved “unlawful use of fire arms” and vandalism.

I guess it is obvious that serenading has nothing in common with traditional Christmas caroling. Certainly, the practice of singing of “Good King Wenceslas” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” outside your neighbor’s home on Christmas Eve is not commonly considered “a disturbance of the peace.” Like Bob Dylan’s song says, “The times, they are a-changing.”

As a child, I often accompanied my grandfather to my great grandmother’s home in the Cowee community of Macon County. Going to Aunt Nancy’s was like a journey into the past. My grandfather and I always slept in a feather bed in an attic filled with tin-types,spinning wheels and quilts. On one memorable Christmas Eve, I not only witnessed a serenading, I participated in it.

In the company of my cousins (Lyndon and Fred), Aunt Irene and a collection of relatives (Daltons and Gibsons), we assembled on Aunt Nancy’s porch a little before midnight. I was given one of Aunt Irene’s dresses to wear (in serenading, the males dress like women and the women dress like men) and everybody put soot on their faces. Lyndon and Fred carried a washtub and a hammer. Uncle Pratt carried a shotgun. Aunt Irene led the way with a lantern and we walked along a dark road to a neighbor’s house, the Hasketts. On a signal from Uncle Pratt, who fired the shotgun, we screamed like banshees while Lyndon and Fred beat the washtub. We kept it up until the lights came on in the house.

Later, it occurred to me that the Hasketts woke up, dressed and filed out on the porch in record time. I finally decided that they were not in bed at all. In fact, they had been sitting in the dark waiting for us. They laughed at our costumes and then invited us in the house for stack cake and hot apple cider (which had been prepared in advance). Then, we all went up on the ridge above the Hasketts house and burned a big brush pile which had already been soaked in coal oil. It lit up the whole holler and I could see other fires on other ridges around us.

The next day I told Cousin Irene my suspicious. She reluctantly admitted that I was right and admitted that she had told the Haskett’s to expect us “around midnight.”
“Why did we do it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but it has been going on for a long time.”
“Why the soot and the clothes?” She didn’t know but said that great grandmother, Nancy used to do it.
“Stop asking so many questions, Gary Neil. You had fun, didn’t you?”
I had to admit that I did.

It was many years later when I was teaching in a little mountain college that I finally found a partial answer to why we behaved in such a strange manner that night in Cowee. In a collection of Irish and Scottish folklore called The Silver Bough by F. Marian McNeill, I read about an ancient belief concerning the sun and “the shortest day of the year” (December 21st) In the latter part of December, according to Scot/Irish tradition, the old folks believed that the “sun’s wheel” actually stopped. Each time this happened, it was necessary to perform a ritual that would make the wheel turn again. It was then that villagers would smear their faces with soot and march from house to house making a tremendous noise with drums and bells. Beacon fires burned on the mountain tops, tar barrels were lighted in the streets in the belief that if the noise and light were great enough, the sun’s frozen wheel would turn again and spring would come.

The Silver Bough didn’t solve all of the mysteries. The significance of the soot and the origin of the reversal of roles for men and women came later in an English tradition called “The Lord of Misrule.” However, If you add a few old Scottish and Irish superstitions, the reason for the ritual becomes clear. I suddenly realized that my night of “Serenading” in Cowee was an unwitting attempt to bring the new year. I find it wonderful and strange that such a thousand-year-old ritual could be transplanted to western North Carolina and a cold winter night in Cowee (circa 1950).

Roadside crosses

I've been fascinated by roadside crosses for years. These two are near an athletic field outside Sylva. The more elaborate one is immediately across the road near the railroad tracks. I think what fascinates me the most is the reason for erecting the marker. Obviously, both of these two victims have been buried or cremated and their remains reside in a cemetery. In effect, the dead have two memorials and both are carefully maintained. I often see evidence of this: fresh flowers, often planted and the roadside site is lovingly cared for. Why? I think in the minds of the friends and relatives, this spot has significance because the victim's death occurred on this spot.
There are probably 15 to 20 of these markers within ten miles of my home.

ABNER, THE WILD MONKEY OF THE SMOKIES

On cold mornings like this one when the last leaves of autumn are riding a chill wind through Rhodes Cove, I sometimes think of Abner, the wild monkey of the Smokies. It was mornings like this when I used to hear stories from folks in Deep Creek or Big Cove who claimed that they sometimes heard a knock and opened their doors to find a little shivering monkey on their porch.

“I used to find him out their in December,” said Billy Conseen. “When I’d let him in, he’d climb up in the rafters where it was warm and he usually stayed up there for a day or two. He loved biscuits and doughnuts. He also loved bananas, and sometimes the two of us would ride down to the IGA and buy a bunch.

According to Billy and a half-dozen others who played host to the old monkey, he never stayed long. “If the weather warmed up, he was ready to leave. If you didn’t open the door and let him out, he would turn mean… crap in his paw and throw it at you.”

How did Abner end up in the Smokies? Well, according to Carl Lambert, a noted storyteller (and former director of the Cherokee CETA Program), Abner came to the Qualla Boundary one October with the Indian Fair. “There was a bunch of monkeys in one of them side-shows, and I noticed this one that was laying in the corner of his cage whimpering. The guy that ran the side-show said the poor critter had diarrhea and was probably going to die. Well, I bought him for five bucks, wrapped him in an old towel, put him in the bib of my overalls and took him home. Fed him fatback, cornbread and bananas. In two days, that monkey was swinging in the rafters. I named him Abner.”
Lambert said that for a while, they got along fine. “He used to set on my shoulder at night while I read or played My guitar. He would check my head for fleas and lice, and then, I’d do the same for him. I read a lot of westerns, you know … Max Brand and Zane Grey, and it was nice setting by the fire, listening to the wind whistle around the eaves. Sometimes, Abner would set in the window and watch the snow fall outside and that was sort of unnerving. I mean he looked like he was thinking - like he was pondering what it meant to be a monkey ... alone and in the Great Smoky Mountains.”

Of course, the good times didn’t last. When spring came, Abner took to leaving. “He’d be gone for a couple of days, but he always came back. I don’t know what he done out there, but mostly, I think he ran squirrels and ate berries. I bought him a little Rebel cap in one of the craft shops, and he was real partial to it. Folks sometimes seen him up in Smokemont Camp Ground where he stole stuff. Hot dogs and beer, mostly.”

Lambert said that in the summer he got accustomed getting up around midnight to open the door when Abner rattled it. “Sometimes, he would bring me a beer,” said Lambert. Word got around that Carl had a monkey and people would drop by to watch Abner swing in the rafters. Then, a few years back, the trouble started. He took to tormenting hunting dogs down in Deep Creek. They would be hot on the trail of something ... a coon, a fox or maybe a bear ... and Abner would come swinging through the trees. The dogs would start tracking Abner. They'd end up treeing that Monkey! Then, Abner'd drop down on the back of a big redbone or a blue tick hound just like a jockey. He'd wrap his legs around that dog's belly. Make that dog run by biting his ears. He'd ride that dog til it was half-dead and then he'd get another one. A bunch of angry hunters come up her one night looking for Abner, but he wasn't home. Hell, they acted like it was my fault. They said they intended to shoot him the next time he showed up.

Abner played dog jockey all summer. Then, as if things wasn't bad enough, he paid a midnight visit to Willard Hoskit's Chicken Farm. He didn't kill a single chicken, but he plucked them. Spent all night catching 500 white leghorns and pulling all of their feathers out. Willard said that he went to feed them the next morning, the woods around his big chicken house looked like there had been a snow storm. Big clouds of feathers blowing and drifting. He said he got there in time to see Abner setting on a rafter in the chicken house pulling the tail feathers out of a rooster. Acted like I owed him money. Wanted to know how he was going to keep all them naked chickens warm.

"A few nights later, a hunter in Hazel Creek claimed he shot Abner. Maybe he did, and then, maybe he didn't. Now, that leaves two facts: Nobody brought in a dead monkey, but Abner never came back either. I miss the little devil. He was good company."

Carl Lambert once told me that he saw Abner one last time. He claimed that he got lost in the Smokies while he was fishing and while he was blundering about in dark coves and laurel hells, he came on the "Gall Place." That is the name of a magic lake that is sometimes sighted on the Tennessee Side of the Smokies, and then it shows up on the North Carolina side. Carl said it moves. People who blunder on it usually see it in the morning. It is a great foggy lake with purple-tinged waters and it is encircled by huge water oaks. It is here that old and injured creatures come to be healed. Bear and deer wade into the water where they are "restored." Wounds heal and youthful vigor returns. Carl claims he saw animals coming and going to the Gall Place. Great hawks and eagles nested in the towering oaks ... and yes, Carl said in the lofty heights of one of those trees, he saw a little capering figure wearing a Rebel hat. Now, for what it is worth, that is what Carl Lambert, the Cherokee storyteller, said.

HOLLER NOTES IS SHUTTING DOWN (TEMPORARILY, I HOPE)

For some reason, I have had only one post on my blog in the last month. Yeah, I know that most people read and do not post, but I feel that the life's blood of any blog is the "comments" where people actually respond to the topics posted. If no one is commenting, that indicates that something is seriously wrong. Either I have lost my readers who talk to me, or my computer problems are worse than I thought. I would prefer that it is my computer which has become ... I guess the word is whimsical. The cursor freezes and it refuses to send email messages (or dispatches twelve copies of the same email). My iMac suddenly shuts itself down, highlights everything on the desktop and refuses all commands. Sometimes, it will function for a few moments if I cut it off and restart it. Whatever the problem. I am in the process of buying another one. I will have to borrow the money and that makes me want to crawl under my bed and bite my leg. Anyway, I am going to hang it up. I will go back to this blog if (1) I get a lot of posts; (2) I get a new computer (which will take a while) or (3) there is an impressive display of disappointment that I'm not running this blog anymore. I'll check by in a week or two to see if anyone has noticed that I am gone.
If I continue to get zero responses, I'm gonna hang it up and spend more time writing.
Losing Holler Notes would be a painful thing for me, but maybe it needs to go away.
Gary Carden

P. S. Please click on the photo of my Nance Dude flyer which i am currently marketing.

LESSIE SINGS FOR THE NEW LIBRARY.

LESSIE WILLIAMS, WHO IS BOTH A MINISTER AND A GOSPEL SINGER, SANG AT THE JACKSON COUNTY COMMUNITY BUILDING LAST FRIDAY. THE CONCERT WAS A FUND RAISER FOR THE NEW JACKSON COUNTY LIBRARY. IF YOU MISSED THIS ONE, YOU MISSED A REMARKABLE EVENT. RUMOR HAS IT THAT SHE MAY BE BACK! THE ROOM BECAME ALIVE AS LESSIE DEMONSTRATED THAT "IF JAMES BROWN IS THE GODFATHER OF SOUL, LESSIE WILLIAMS IS THE GODMOTHER OF GOSPEL." THE AUDIENCE CLAPPED AND MOVED IN RHYTHM AS LESSIE MOVED THROUGH HEER AUDIENCE SINGING A WONDERFUL SERIES OF SONGS THAT SHE WROTE HERSELF.

LESSIE HAS FOUR CD'S THAT ARE NOW AVAILABLE. SHE CAN BE REACHED AT LESSIE.COM

ELI THE GOOD BY SILAS HOUSE

Eli the Good by Silas House
Somerville, Mass: Candlewick Press
$16.99 – 295 pages

I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy
- Thomas Hood

Eli Book, the ten-year-old narrator/protagonist of Silas House’ new novel, Eli the Good, dreams of being a writer. As he secretly records the pains and joys of living in a small town called Refuge during the Bicentennial summer (1976), he quickly learns that both his family and the world are plagued by uncertainty and trouble.

“There was the atom bomb, the Rapture, the possibility
that I might be possessed by the Devil, the threat that
my parents might one day not love each other, or me.”

So, when Eli hears the word “cancer” for the first time, he ponders the way people look when they say it and he intuitively understands that cancer “must be a very bad thing.”He also learns that his beloved Aunt Nell has it.

It soon becomes obvious that Eli “overhears” a lot. He has learned the craft of lurking and moves like a ghost through the Book household taking notes, (he even lies under the porch) listening to his parents’ conversations, eavesdropping on his sister and her boy friend and spying on Edie, his “best friend” (a girl). In his determination to understand his father’s nightmares, he even steals a collection of letters that his father had written to his mother from Vietnam – letters that were hidden in his parents’ bedroom.

As a result, he gradually unearths a tangled knot of family secrets, disappointments and resentments including: the reason for his father’s nightmares; his mother’s secrets regarding her own life and the revelation that his sister Jodie is really his “half-sister;” also there are the consequences of the increasingly bitter family disputes provoked by the Vietnam war and his father’s role in it.

At times, even the weather seems to reflect the changeable emotional climate in the Book household. As languid summer nights are replaced by a series of violent thunderstorms, tempers flare. The simmering conflict between mother and daughter explodes; Eli’s father becomes a “walking time bomb,” as he broods on a day in Boston when two anti-war demonstrators called him a “baby killer” – a condemnation he hears echoed in the opinions voiced by his own family. Even Eli begins to taunts Edie whose parents are divorcing. But, the storms pass, temperate weather returns and Eli continues to record the mounting evidence that his family has the strength to endure all things.


It would be an oversimplification to characterize Eli the Good as simply a “rites of passage” novel since it contains
a number of other significant themes. Not only does Eli change from a callow, self-centered youth; he also develops a growing sense of the intricate web that binds him to both his family and the physical world. There is something of a paradox here since the violent and emotional encounters that threaten to tear Eli’s world apart are also responsible for revealing (and affirming) the family members’ love for each other.

In addition, Eli the Good is a celebration of a time and place – America’s Bicentennial year in a small Southern town. Eli and his family are wrapped in the warmth and security of a decade that is still full of hope and promise. As Eli consumes Zagnuts, drinks Pepsi Cola, and watches “Happy Days” and “The Waltons,” listens to Nina Simone and the Beatles on Aunt Nell’s phonograph, he is increasingly aware that he is living in a magical world where even the trees are sentient spirits (especially willow and beech). As he rides his bike to a communal swimming hole, dances with his mother in the kitchen and reads The Diary of Anne Frank, he becomes the embodiment of a nostalgic dream; he is also the best of what America once was, and hopefully, can be again.