West Virginian Vocabulary: Whistlepig

Ruth Ann Musick- West Virginia's Most Important Folklorist

 

Ruth Ann Musick (retrieved from the West Virginia Encyclopedia)

             Ruth Ann Musick was born on September 17th, 1897 and passed on the day of July 2nd, 1974. Of all the individuals who have specialized in the folklore of West Virginia, it cannot be denied that Musick's impact on the field has been the heaviest and most profound. 

              Originally born to Levi Musick and Zada Musick (Goeghegan) in Kirksville, Missouri, Ruth Ann's venture academia was swift. She received her BS in Education from Truman State University (formerly Kirksville State Teacher's College) in 1919, and went on to teach high school kids in Luana, Iowa until 1921. From there she earned her Master's in Mathematics in the year 1928, teaching in places through Arizona and Wisconsin until 1938 when she moved to Iowa to begin her doctoral studies. She earned her PhD in English in 1943. 

               

              Her dissertation/novel entitled "Hell's Holler" did not receive publication until 2020. The book was based on the folklore of the Missouri Charlton country and can be found in a special issue published the Missouri Folklore Society here .

               For those interested in the writings of Ms. Musick, I urge you to read the following titles, as they are exemplary works of folkloric research on the Mountain State. 

Coffin Hollow and Other Ghost Tales

Green Hills of Magic: West Virginia Folk Tales from Europe

The Telltale Lilac Bush

Thanks for reading

-Dalton Miller 

What Appalachian Folk Call Scorpions

           When my grandmother was still alive (God rest her soul), she used to talk about scorpions being all over the house. I found that a bit odd, given that scorpions are a venomous arachnid not native to West Virginia in the slightest. In fact, all my life I had never seen a scorpion run across the linoleum of the kitchen floor.  
 

             One day, I saw a lizard with a blue tail (later found to be a blue-tailed skink) run across the porch, to which my grandmother pointed and said "there's one of them scorpions again". This puzzled me, because for all I knew, these were lizards, certainly not arachnids. But the truth of this matter is, lots of older folk in WV and elsewhere called these lizards scorpions, because back in the day they believed them to be venomous.  

              The Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English (Montgomery & Heinmiller, 2021), has an entry about scorpions, which I will reproduce here for conveniance. 

scorpion noun

A Variant form scorpon

1942  Hall Phonetics Smoky Mts 65.

B A blue-tailed skink, (Eumecs spp.), mistakenly regarded as venomous. 

              An alternate name for the blue-tailed skink among the Appalachians was fence-scorpion (Montgomery &Heinmiller, 2021). 

An interest bit of Appalachian dialect for y'all. 


Dalton L. Miller 
3/28/2022

References

Montgomery, M., N., H. J. K., Hall, J. H., Hall, J. S., & Montgomery, M. (2021). Dictionary of Southern appalachian English. The University of North Carolina Press. 

Love Divination with Granddaddy Long Legs

            I tend to research folklore rather sporadically and in bursts. Sometimes during my research I come across something so incredibly interesting but too brief to write a full paper about. This is one of those cases but I still thought it needed to be shared with the world and was a perfect fit for my blog. 

Easter Harvestman (L. vitattum) 

            This tale comes from a person by the name of  Avery Gaskins from Big Isaac in Doddridge County, West Virginia. It was 1939 and Avery was spending the weekend with the Claude Davis family on a farm. The children slept in a loft in the farmhouse together used kerosene lamps to light up the loft. The first night Avery stayed there, they saw, according to Avery 'a spider-like insect the other children told me was a grand-daddy long legs' (Gaskins, 1968). The other children then told Avery that if they 'slapped the wall hard next to the insect and asked "Where is my true love?" that it would lift its right front leg and point towards the direction of her house' (Gaskins, 1968). The other boys there insisted that they had found their girlfriends through the help of the grand-daddy long legs and according to Askins, the grand-daddy long legs did indeed lift its leg and point from the vibration of the slap against the wall. 

          The insect in question is the Eastern Harvestman (Leiobunum vitattum), a harmless arachnid (though not a spider!) native to areas like West Virginia. I personally grew up calling them 'grand daddy long legs' and did not call them anything else until I was much older and learned the scientific taxonomy. 

Dalton L. Miller 
September 29th, 2021

REFERENCES

Gaskins, A. F. (1968). A West Virginia Folk Ritual. The Journal of American Folklore, 81(320), 159–159. https://doi.org/10.2307/537665

The Hoop Snake- An American Ouroboros

           

 

              In a previous posts entitled 'The Presence of Snakes in West Virginian Folklore' I wrote a bit about the fabled Hoop Snake, common in Appalachian myth. Through researching Appalachian and more specifically West Virginian folklore, I kept coming across more accounts of Hoop Snake sightings and general Hoop Snake lore transcribed from interviews in various academic journals. Thus, my interest in the phenomenon of the Hoop Snake in Appalachian storytelling grew and I began doing more research on the subject. 

             Hoop Snakes are a mythical animal, which like most mythical animals in folklore, find their origin in a bit of truth. It is thought that the animal the Hoop Snake myth is based upon is Farancia abacura (commonly known as a Mud Snake), a non-venomous snake found in the southeastern United States (Crider, 2012). The Mud Snake is docile and doesn't bite but it does press its tail against the skin of its would be captor, thus giving rise to the idea that the Mud Snake has the ability to sting. This is likely the origin of the Hoop Snake, since in the folklore the Hoop Snake has a poisonous tip on its tail, which it keeps in its mouth until it is ready to strike. When ready to inject its prey with the poison, it rolls quickly and then flings itself into the air and straightens out like an arrow, thus becoming a 'poison dart'. Though in African American folklore in South Carolina, it is said that the coach whip can 'roll itself up like a hoop snake and overtake a swift runner.' although in this tale the snake 'whips its victim to death' instead of poisoning them with a deadly tip (Davis, 1914).

              Despite these slight variations, some common themes persist. The first, the Hoop Snake always holds its tail within its mouth so that it may roll faster in pursuit of prey, and the second, that the Hoop Snake is a deadly foe to anyone and anything it comes in contact with. One informant from Braxton co. recalls that a Hoop Snake would 'use its poison on something and cause it to swell up great big' and told a story of how 'one day a Hoop Snake had a cow in its sights down on the farm, and so it started rollin' real fast towards the cow but when it took off into the air and straightened itself out, it missed the cow and went right into the wood of an outhouse and it swelled up so big it turned into a barn' (W. Miller, personal communication, April 2021).

              The concept of a snake that swallows its own tail is not anything new. In Ancient Egypt and Greece, the Ouroboros was a serpent that swallowed its tail and represented 'the unity of all things, material and spiritual, which never disappear but perpetually change form in an eternal cycle of destruction and re-creation' (Britannica). Although the tales of the Hoop Snake lack the Gnostic symbolism and meaning attributed to the Ouroboros in Greek and Egyptian symbology, it lives on in the traditions of America as the south's answer to the Graeco-Egyptian serpentine mythos.

Dalton L. Miller
July 20th, 2021

REFERENCES

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia . Ouroboros. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ouroboros

Crider, B. (2012) Hoop Snakes: Fact or Fiction? Strange Alabama
https://www.al.com/strange-alabama/2012/04/hoop_snakes_are_no_hula_hoops.html

Davis, H. (1914). Negro Folk-Lore in South Carolina. The Journal of American Folklore, 27(105), 241-254. doi:10.2307/534619

Pike, N. (1889). The Hoop Snake Scientific American, 61(22), 344-344. Retrieved July 20, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/26091141

Smith, G. (1953). Hoop Snakes. Folklore, 64(2), 351-351. Retrieved July 20, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1257424

The Presence of Snakes in West Virginian Folklore

       

    

      

        Ruth Ann Musick, who is undoubtedly the most prolific of folklorists focusing on West Virginia, collected much about the presence of snakes in stories, songs, and superstitions from the Mountain State. Indeed, the presence of snakes in West Virginian folklore is not easily ignored, for it permeates throughout the region's folk culture. Below are a few examples of snakes in West Virginian storytelling, found in Musick's work over the years.

        According to a story told by one of Musick's students from her folk literature class. A fellow by the name of Joe Helton went out flower picking one evening and while hiking through the hills of West Virginia, came upon a cliff. It was then that Joe and his companions came across an atypically giant snake. The boys who were with Joe had claimed the snake had been at least 10 feet long. Once Joe and his students had got some distance from the snake on a neighboring bridge, they pelted rocks at the creature until they had killed it. According to accounts, the snake had bled "poison" (Here is surely meant venom, but it is not uncommon for the two to be conflated) and turned the water yellow-green and killed all the grass where it had been. The boys then told their parents about the giant snake they had seen, but of course, no one believed them. When the boys took their folks to the scene, the snake was nowhere to be found, but the grass was still dead, and the creek was still that yellow-green. 

 

     Another brief story collected originally from a May Stutler in Fairmont, West Virginia, speaks about the mythical hoop snake. A boy and girl were traveling down a road one day when they had seen the hoop snake traveling at swift speed towards them. They climbed a nearby apple tree to gain safety and when the hoop snake arrived at the tree, it kept its speed and continued to go around the tree in circles, keeping the children up in its branches. At one point, the children became hungry and decided to grab apples to eat. Unfortunately, after taking just one bite from the apples they died, for the snake had poisoned the tree.

 

         In other stories collected by Musick, a man went berry picking and climbed up on a log, only to realize later on that the log had been a large black snake and had been moving the entire time. In Jacksonburg, WV, a man by the name of Cliff Mansfield was well known for wearing leggings. He traveled far into the hills one day and noticed he was standing in a nest of rattlesnakes. They were biting at his leggings viciously, and he then killed them all. When he returned home from his voyage, his dog joyfully met him and began licking his legs only to become then poisoned and die. 

         The prevalent theme in the snake folklore of WV is death, evil, and the destruction of the environment. It is only natural for the snake to be viewed in this way since West Virginia is historically a very Christian state, particularly on the protestant side. The snake is often seen as one of the many guises the Devil can take, and thus the animal is often given the same superstitious treatment as the Devil himself. It is not uncommon to see themes of hypnosis throughout stories of serpents. One tale describes how a young girl was having a tea party by herself in a barn when her parents went to check on her. They saw a black snake partaking in sandwiches with the young girl and seemingly keeping her under its spell. The father immediately killed the snake only to have his daughter die instantaneously as well. 

 

        It is clear that snakes were held in great fear and greeted with hostility by the people of West Virginia. However, this hostility seems to never play out well for those involved, as stories of individuals killing snakes usually always amounts to their death or the deaths of their loved ones. The snake has always been viewed superstitiously, and much of this superstition continues into the present day.

Dalton Miller
June 6th, 2021

REFERENCES:

MUSICK, R. (1948). West Virginia Folklore. Hoosier Folklore, 7(1), 1-14. Retrieved May 31, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27649920

MUSICK, R. (1974). Witchcraft and the Devil in West Virginia. Appalachian Journal, 1(4), 271-276. Retrieved June 6, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40931993 

 

MUSICK, R. (1995) Traditions: A Journal of West Virginia Folk Culture and Educational Awareness Vol.1

Redhorses in the Shoals- A Handful of West Virginian Folk Beliefs

 Disclaimer: I realise that these beliefs are not exclusive to West Virginia but they are a big part of life in the Mountain State. I personally grew up with them as they were passed down to me by my mother and to her by her mother, so on and so forth. 

 

A redhorse in the Georgia aquarium. I can remember seeing these fish in the shallow waters of the Elk River as a small child.

If you go in one door and out the other its bad luck.

Raising an umbrella indoors is bad luck.

Don’t pay salt back that’s borrowed. Bad luck.

If your hand itches you are going to receive money.

If your nose itches you’re getting company.

If your feet itch you’re going to travel.

If your butt itches, butter is getting cheap.

A whistling woman and a crowing hen both will come to no good end.

Fools’ names and fools’ faces will always be seen in public places.

Birds of a feather flock together.

Seventh child of a seventh child can blow into a baby’s mouth to cure the flux.

 

If you dream of a white horse it means death.

If you dream of muddy water it means death.

If a bird pecks at your window it means death.

If a bird gets into your house it means whatever troubles you’re going through at the time will be gone.

If you peel an apple and the peel remains whole, you toss the peeling behind your back and whatever letter it resembles is the initial of the person you’ll marry.

When the leaves on a dogwood are the size of a mouse’s ear that means its time to plant beans and corn. Also means the redhorse (Moxostoma carinatum) will be in the shoals.