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