Ozark Superstitions vJzark Superstitions VANCE RANDOLPH COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK 1947 TO THE MEMORY OF G. STANLEY HALL Preface For obvious reasons it is not practicable to credit every item in this collection to the individual from whom it was obtained, as I have done in Ozark Folksongs and some of my other books. But for the sake of the record, I set down here the names of certain persons who have directly furthered my investigations. Among these must be listed Mrs. Anna Bacon, Galena, Mo. Dr. Charles Hillman Brough, Little Rock, Ark. Miss Nancy Clemens, Springfield, Mo. Dr. George E. Hastings, Fayetteville, Ark. Mr. Charles S. Hiatt, Cassville, Mo. Mrs. Dorn Higgins, Sulphur Springs, Ark. Mr. Earl Keithley, Day, Mo. Mr. Lewis Kelley, Cyclone, Mo. Mr. Maurice Lamberson, Bentonville, Ark. Mr. Cass Little, Anderson, Mo. Mr. Ernest Long, Joplin, Mo. Mrs. May Kennedy McCord, Springfield, Mo. Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey, Mincy, Mo. Mrs. Mabel E. Mueller, Holla, Mo. Mrs. Geraldine Parker, St. Louis, Mo. Miss Rubey Poyner, Southwest City, Mo. Mr. Otto Ernest Rayburn, Eureka Springs, Ark. Dr. Oakley St. John, Pine ville, Mo. Mr. Clyde Sharp, Pack, Mo. Mr. Elbert Short, Crane, Mo. Mrs. Isabel Spradley, Van Buren, Ark. Mr. Fred Starr, Greenland, Ark. Mrs. Olga Trail, Farmington, Ark. Mrs. Ruth H. Tyler, Neosho, Mo. Mr. John Turner White, Jefferson City, Mo. Mrs. Marie Wilbur, Pineville, Mo. and Dr. J. H. Young, Galena, Mo. I wish to acknowledge my indebt edness to these people, but they are in no way responsible for my interpretation of the material, nor for the general character of the book. of the preliminary studies upon which this volume is d were printed as early as 1927, in theJournal of American viii PREFACE Folklore. My books The Ozarks and Ozark Mountain Folks, published by the Vanguard Press in 1931 and 1932, contained accounts of backwoods folk belief. Many supernatural narra tives, and some notes on water witching, first appeared in Ozark Ghost Stories and Tall Tales from the Ozarks, published and copyrighted by E. Haldeman-Julius, of Girard, Kansas. Several yarns about witchcraft were printed in Folk-Say, a regional annual edited by B. A. Botkin and brought out by the University of Oklahoma Press other related items first saw the light in the quarterly University Review, published at the Uni versity of Kansas Citj I am grateful to the owners of these copyrights for permission to reprint the material here. V. R. Galena, Missouri June 10, 1946 Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 3 2. WEATHER SIGNS 10 3. CROPS AND LIVESTOCK 34 4. HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS 53 5. WATER WITCHES 82 6. MOUNTAIN MEDICINE 92 7. THE POWER DOCTORS 121 8. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 162 9. PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH 192 10. GHOST STORIES 211 11. ANIMALS AND PLANTS 240 12. OZARK WITCHCRAFT 264 13. DEATH AND BURIAL 801 14. MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS 328 BIBLIOGRAPHY 343 INDEX 353 Ozark Superstitions

Basic study by renowned folklorist; yarb doctors, charms, spells, witches, ghosts, weather magic, etc.

This is a new release of the original 1924 edition.

This is a new release of the original 1924 edition.

This is a new release of the original 1924 edition.

This is a new release of the original 1926 edition.

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Ozark Superstitions vJzark Superstitions VANCE RANDOLPH COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK 1947 TO THE MEMORY OF G. STANLEY HALL Preface For obvious reasons it is not practicable to credit every item in this collection to the individual from whom it was obtained, as I have done in Ozark Folksongs and some of my other books. But for the sake of the record, I set down here the names of certain persons who have directly furthered my investigations. Among these must be listed Mrs. Anna Bacon, Galena, Mo. Dr. Charles Hillman Brough, Little Rock, Ark. Miss Nancy Clemens, Springfield, Mo. Dr. George E. Hastings, Fayetteville, Ark. Mr. Charles S. Hiatt, Cassville, Mo. Mrs. Dorn Higgins, Sulphur Springs, Ark. Mr. Earl Keithley, Day, Mo. Mr. Lewis Kelley, Cyclone, Mo. Mr. Maurice Lamberson, Bentonville, Ark. Mr. Cass Little, Anderson, Mo. Mr. Ernest Long, Joplin, Mo. Mrs. May Kennedy McCord, Springfield, Mo. Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey, Mincy, Mo. Mrs. Mabel E. Mueller, Holla, Mo. Mrs. Geraldine Parker, St. Louis, Mo. Miss Rubey Poyner, Southwest City, Mo. Mr. Otto Ernest Rayburn, Eureka Springs, Ark. Dr. Oakley St. John, Pine ville, Mo. Mr. Clyde Sharp, Pack, Mo. Mr. Elbert Short, Crane, Mo. Mrs. Isabel Spradley, Van Buren, Ark. Mr. Fred Starr, Greenland, Ark. Mrs. Olga Trail, Farmington, Ark. Mrs. Ruth H. Tyler, Neosho, Mo. Mr. John Turner White, Jefferson City, Mo. Mrs. Marie Wilbur, Pineville, Mo. and Dr. J. H. Young, Galena, Mo. I wish to acknowledge my indebt edness to these people, but they are in no way responsible for my interpretation of the material, nor for the general character of the book. of the preliminary studies upon which this volume is d were printed as early as 1927, in theJournal of American viii PREFACE Folklore. My books The Ozarks and Ozark Mountain Folks, published by the Vanguard Press in 1931 and 1932, contained accounts of backwoods folk belief. Many supernatural narra tives, and some notes on water witching, first appeared in Ozark Ghost Stories and Tall Tales from the Ozarks, published and copyrighted by E. Haldeman-Julius, of Girard, Kansas. Several yarns about witchcraft were printed in Folk-Say, a regional annual edited by B. A. Botkin and brought out by the University of Oklahoma Press other related items first saw the light in the quarterly University Review, published at the Uni versity of Kansas Citj I am grateful to the owners of these copyrights for permission to reprint the material here. V. R. Galena, Missouri June 10, 1946 Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 3 2. WEATHER SIGNS 10 3. CROPS AND LIVESTOCK 34 4. HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS 53 5. WATER WITCHES 82 6. MOUNTAIN MEDICINE 92 7. THE POWER DOCTORS 121 8. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 162 9. PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH 192 10. GHOST STORIES 211 11. ANIMALS AND PLANTS 240 12. OZARK WITCHCRAFT 264 13. DEATH AND BURIAL 801 14. MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS 328 BIBLIOGRAPHY 343 INDEX 353 Ozark Superstitions

"A fitting climax to many years of fruitful labor by a man who probably knows more about the Ozarkians than anybody else. . . . Randolph] has perceived and admirably expressed the close connection between a people and the language they speak." American Speech Until World War II the backwoodsmen living in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma were the most deliberately "unprogressive" people in the United States. The descendants of pioneers from the southern Appalachians, they changed their way of life very little during the whole span of the nineteenth century and were able to preserve their customs and traditions in an age of industrialism. When the many attractions of the Ozarks were discovered by "outlanders," the tourists-and television-reached the hinterlands, and the old patterns of speech and life began to fade. In this perceptive book, Vance Randolph, who first visited the Ozarks country in 1899, and his collaborator, George P. Wilson, recapture the speech of the people who lived "down in the holler." Randolph, closely identified with the region for many years, hunted possums with its people, and shared their table at the House of Lords (a "kind of tavern" in Joplin). Through the years his hobby became a profession, and he spent years recording the various aspects of Ozark folk speech. First published in 1953, Down in the Holler is a classic study of Ozark folklore. Vance Randolph (1892-1980) was the author and coauthor of several books, including Pissing in the Snow and Other Ozark Folktales. George P. Wilson was Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and for many years was editor of the Publication of the American Dialect Society.

Vance Randolph has long been an undeniable presence on the American folklore scholarship scene. His Ozark corpus is "the best known single body of regional folklore in the United States," according to Richard Dorson, director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. And Gershon Legman, the world's leading scholar of sexual and scatological humor, has called Randolph "the greatest and most successful field collector and regional folklorist that America ever had." In Legman's estimation, "We have no one else like him. He is a national treasure, like Mark Twain. Randolph's reputation rests on the massive accumulation of folksong, folktale, and ballad materials he collected during forty years of living and working in the Ozarks. Unfortunately, in the 1950s when Randolph published several collection of Ozark tales, the material in this volume was considered unprintable. Pissing in the Snow departs from the academic prudery that until recently has restricted the amount of bawdy folklore available for study. It presents a body of material that for twenty years has circulated only in manuscript or microfilm under its present title. When placed in their rightful context alongside Randolph's other collections of folk material, the bawdy tales help provide evidence of what Ozark hill people think about their own lives and language. As Rayna Green writes in her introduction, "The entire body of material . . . offers a picture of expressive behavior unparalleled by any other American region's or group's study." Hoffmann's annotations draw parallels between the erotic narrative tradition of the Ozarks and that in other parts of the country and the world, especially Europe.