Mountain Superstitions
I come from rural Appalachia. People who are hard working, but never had a lot.
I was the first child born in the family after one set of grandparents got an indoor bathroom.
Mountain people from them hollers believe all kinds of things. Even the religious believers still have some odd superstitious ways. I'm a woman of science. I'm a Christian and very charismatic, but
there is one superstition I've never had much luck overcoming. We believe a bird in the house was a death omen. One bashing into the windows of a house or getting indoors was a thing to be dreaded and avoided. My cousin Jim Conner told me I ought to know better that being a Christian I knew the Lord was in control and put that foolishness out of my mind. I know on an intellectual level he is right. Getting the rest of me to cooperate is a different matter.
1963 Vesuvius, Virginia
My great grandmother Mamie Cash-Brooks passed away about a year before I was born.
I have been told by my grandmother and many aunts and uncles the story of how a bird got in the house months before she passed away. She died at home of cancer and it was really horrible. It made an impression on me. The room she died in was closed off and it was seldom if ever anyone went in there.
Below is a photo of my great grandparents house in Vesuvius where they raised eleven children! This little house had running water in the kitchen, but the bathroom was an outhouse!
They heated with a wood stove, but they did have electricity. They did not have a phone.
Grandma Brooks died in this little house in the room you can see has a window on the side of the house.
Below is a photo of my great grandmother Mamie Brooks in the center with the glasses.
Left to right I think the baby is my cousin George, Aunt Ellen, Uncle Kennan, Grandma Brooks, and my grandmother Edna.
2023 Blount Beach, Tennessee
One night Kenny fell asleep on the couch. I was downstairs doing something on the computer.
I was typing away and kept hearing the cats knocking and beating around in the family room.
They were annoying me mildly, but they just sounded like they do when they get into the cat nip.
I believed they were just being frisky. When the noise continued I turned around and saw them leaping into the air! I was bewildered, but before I could do or think anything else something flew past my head. It scared me. I went to swatting and I know my eyes were big as saucers.
Whatever it was flew back into the family room where the cats resumed their leaping and snatching at it. I had the lights on at this point and could better see what was up. It was a bird! A bird in the house! I screamed and ran upstairs. I slammed the door at the top so at least it was trapped down there. I didn't want it coming up with me. I was freaking out. I woke Kenny from his sleep on the sofa and insisted he need to help me! He could tell I was seriously distressed, but as he got up he went to hollering and groaning. Down in the floor he went. Rolling around holding onto his leg saying he had a charley horse. I was in disbelief and disgust.
I was now angry. If you want a job done right you gotta do it yourself. Much like the rat catching thing I was left to deal with varmints on my own. I went downstairs and found a net in the garage. I brought it in and stood in the family room calm and quiet while the bird fluttered from one spot to the next. Finally it lit on the back of the recliner. It was a scared little sparrow. I dropped the net down over him. I used a throw pillow to scoot under the net to contain him. I took him outdoors and released him into the night. I put the net away and cleaned up all the feathers I could find. I had made a big leap forward in overcoming my fear of birds in the house. My mother in law passed away about a month later.
Many in my family were suspicious of doctors, hospitals, nurses, and sometimes even modern conveniences. It is a hold over from the old days. Just like I still don't have a complete handle on the bird in the house death omen. Some of them mistrusted other things or were superstitious.
My dad's parents got a telephone. It was one of those old timey hand crank types. One Summer evening they had a bad thunderstorm. They had a loud clap of thunder and ball lightning rolled out of the phone and across the floor! All four family members, Papaw, Mamaw, my aunt Mary Ann and my dad slept in the same bed that night! They were scared silly. Poorly understood devices is one reason, but ball lightning in the house is reason to be afraid. It is no joke!
Below is a photo of my great, great grandmother's house Maw Cash. By the time I was a kid my great great maiden aunts lived here. Aunt Ethel and Aunt Marie were Grandma Mamie's sisters and were old maids.
Mountain Medicine and Cures
More superstition and odd beliefs came in the form of how ailments were sometimes treated. Some of those old timey remedies really do work though. Below I'll share some of them I can remember.
Foreign Body in the Eye-- if you get a speck of something in your eye that doesn't want to flush out... another way of drawing it out is to put an eye stone in your eye. A tiny flat, smooth pebble out of the creek for example or a button is laid on the eye. The physical property of surface tension will cause the speck to gravitate toward the eye stone and then you can find and remove it.
Splinter or Foreign Object Embedded in the flesh -- to draw out a splinter that is deep you can lay a slab of bacon or salt pork, fat back over the area and wear it to bed. Usually in the morning it has pulled the splinter to the surface where it can be easily removed. I got a chunk of dried chicory weed embedded in my leg near my shin. It was deep. I wore fat meat bound to my lower leg for four or five days. I even wore it every day to school. One day the bandage came loose while I was playing. I sat down to check it and re-secure it. The little wooden stobs were poking out of my leg. I easily removed them with my fingers. This is a cure that usually worked.
Stomach ulcers -- Back in the old days around the time of WW II and even earlier they did not have these new fangled medicines like Prilosec, Nexium, Pepcid. They put you on a bland diet. Cut out cigarettes, coffee, tea, sodas and alcohol. They gave you goats milk to drink which was a coating for the stomach and soothed the pain and actually helped heal the ulcer.
Taking the Fire from a Burn -- My family believed in this and so did a lot of other people in the community of Vesuvius. My great grandfather Charlie Bradley was a gifted healer of burns.
It is a prayer that is passed from man to woman and woman to man, but is not passed between the same genders. A woman is not to teach a woman the spell and a man doesn't teach a man.
You pick one person of the opposite gender to pass the gift on to. I was always told that a man who had never seen the face of his father was a powerful healer.
I was taught the spell by my grandfather, but I never took much stock in it. I cannot argue with the results he got though. He healed more people than I realized.
I know my aunt Mary Ann fell in a tub of scalding hot wash water as a child. Poppy treated her and she stopped hurting and the area healed up just as pretty as you please. She had no scarring from it.
I heard from friend Bobby Berkstresser just months before he passed away that my great grandfather treated him for a severe burn on his arm when he was a grade school kid. He fixed himself french fries in hot grease at home alone. He thought he'd set the grease down in the kitchen sink which was a disastrous idea. The grease exploded all over his arm! He plunged it in cold water and kept it there until his parents got home. Helen took him straight to my grandfather to heal. Poppy did the spell over him .. it is a prayer actually and he said the pain left him. He healed up just fine! I think Poppy had a gift for sure, but I also think the power of mind over matter and belief is part of the reason it worked.
Cure Warts -- There were spells to do for removing warts. My dad had them on his hands when he was very small. Only certain people had the ability to do this so my Papaw took Daddy out to Brownsburg to see Gundy Moran. He was a rough old man living there in the village. Daddy said he was about half scared of him. He made an X over each wart with a finger nail as black as coal. He got down and mumbled some words over Daddy's hands. They paid the old man and went home. The warts went away very quickly. I think again mind over matter, but perhaps he had a gift of healing. It is also possible some people possess a natural immunity to the virus that causes warts and their manipulations pass that virus killing agent on to the patient.
Below: a photo of my daddy as an adult
Cure for the Croup - I was a baby and my Mamaw kept me. I was sick with croup. She said I was pitifully coughing. She sliced an onion real thick and put it in the cast iron skillet. She heated it until the onion juice rose to the top of the onion slice. She scooped it out in a spoon and fed it to me.
She said a little while later I vomited out a lot of phlegm and the spasms of croup and the cough went right away. There is some evidence this really works even today. Onions have a powerful expectorant property and contain phytonutrients that reduce inflammation.
Cure for Thrush -- My great grandmother and grandmother told this story. They had a man traveling through the area who they took in to feed and lodge for the night. My aunt Mary Margaret was the eldest child, but was still a baby. She had thrush.. a yeast overgrowth in the mouth that makes you very sore and miserable. She cried continually. The man told Granny he could fix her. They put the sole of a leather shoe in the oven and burnt it up to ash. They smeared the ashes in Mary Margaret's mouth. She drooled profusely, but quit crying and the thrush went away!
Cure Your Dog from Running Away from Home--- This was told to me by grandpa Painter.
Paw said if you want to keep your dog from running off put a piece of meat in the toe of your boot and leave it over night. Feed it to the dog first thing the next morning and he won't run away anymore. It must not have worked or he did not take his own advice for his own elk hound Mike was forever running off! He didn't like it when I brought that to his attention!
Below: Grandpaw Painter sitting and Granny Painter behind him. It was Paw's birthday.
Water Witching -- If you wanted to find where to dig a good well you wanted to have someone come water witch it. It was not something everyone could do. Some were very sensitive and good at it. When were preparing to get married and go to house keeping we needed a well dug.
We called a man from Brownsburg to come water witch it. He did it with a green peach branch.
He walked the property over and very quickly found streams flowing underground. He indicated you've got a stream running here in this direction. You've got another running here in this direction and this is where you want to dig. Here is where they come together and the stream is strongest! He let me walk with the peach branch and you could indeed feel a little something.
There must be something to it for it worked wonderfully! We hit water at only eighty feet! It was a gusher too! It was bored through solid rock. They went down 180 feet to be sure to not have it dry up later, but only 80 feet had to be cased so our well didn't cost much. Investing in the water witch and paying him saved us a lot of money.
Our friend Kenny Gordon decided to have a well put in at his home on nearby Little North Mountain. He saw how good we got along and figured it would be a breeze. He did not have it water witched. They dug and nothing. dug and nothing. Finally dug and got some water. continued digging and hit a cave. Dug deeper and hit sulphur and brimstone! They finally got a good well and clean water but at a depth of FIVE HUNDRED FEET! That was one costly water well.
Those are some of the mountain superstitions I know of. I'm sure there are more, but those all the only ones I am familiar with. There is something to a few of them, but the bird in the house thing is probably all in my crazy head.
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