Due to the passive and conservative role of women, luck signs, omens and taboos were her special prerogative, especially the “dassents,” which suggest the utility of superstition for social control, as in the discipline of children, etiquette and industry.
Taboos surrounded virtually every daily activity of the household – sleeping, rising, wearing of stockings and garments, care of the hair and nails, signs at sunrise or before breakfast, eating, drinking; treatment of beds, chairs, tables, sinks, stoves, fires, lamps, clocks, mirrors; baking, washing, sewing, carpentry; carrying edged tools, water ashes into, through out of the house; turning back, walking backwards, clasping the hands behind, planting of trees, killing of animals, etc. And equally numerous and familiar are the omens in things dropped, spilled, or found, sneezing, itching, twitching, burning sensations, features, furniture, apparel, birds, animals, the moon and the elements.
For the farmer weather overshadows world history and makes local history, as it makes crops, conversation and mythology. A drought is a menace, especially to the farmer; to a crop delayed by drought, as always in the mountains, the first killing frost is another hazard, and, in general, wet springs are a boon to the boll weevil and wet falls the bane of the crop buyers. In so far as he watches his smoking tobacco for dampness and observes the sweating of pumps and water pipes, the falling of smoke and soot, heavy dews and a gray sky at sunset, the farmer detects rain scientifically. When he bathes a cat in sulphur water, burns driftwood along the creeks or builds a fire in a stump on a cloud day, hangs a snake on a fence or a bush “belly side up,” sweeps down the cobwebs in the house, sprinkles sale on two crossed matches, or is led by the minister in prayer, he is “making” rain. And when he looks for snake tracks leading to higher ground, chickens oiling their feathers, or ants and dogs banking up earth about the entrance to their hills, counts the stars within the circle around the moon to tell the number of days before the storm, measures the severity of the coming winter by the thickness of corn shucks, a hog’s milt, or a goose’s breastbone, and an extra heavy layer of fat, fur, or feathers in animals and birds or taking warning of cold weather from a hog with a stick in its mouth, he is only guessing
This is the classic, quintessential song about Appalachia and it bears all of the stylistic hallmarks of the Scotch-Irish people who settled in the area. Clingman’s Dome could be the source of the subject matter since it was also known as “Smoky Dome” but the exact location of the mountain may be lost to antiquity. Do you remember all the lyrics, if not, here we go…
“On top of Old Smokey,
All covered with snow,
I lost my true lover,
For courting too slow.
“On top of old smoky
I went there to weep
And a false-hearted lover,
Is worse than a thief.
“A thief will just rob you,
And take what you have,
But a false-hearted lover,
Will lead you to your grave.
“The grave will decay you,
And turn you to dust,
Not one boy in a hundred
A poor girl can trust.
“They’ll hug you and kiss you,
And tell you more lies,
Than crossties on a railroad,
Or stars in the sky.
“So come ye young maidens,
And listen to me,
Never place your affection
In a green willow tree.
“For the leaves they will wither,
The roots they will die,
And you’ll be forsaken,
And never know why.”
The signature of plants (the doctrine that the color, shape, name, or other symbolic suggestion of a plant is a “sign” of a charm or cure for which it is effective) is no more strikingly demonstrated than in the field of love charms. One of the most general of signatures is the ten finger plant, a leaf of which, measured by the middle finger of the left hand, rolled up and kept in the pocket, give one control over people. Heart leaves and Sampson snakeroot are chewed to soften hearts. (The latter will also make a person brave, give him the best of a bargain, give him some control of the person in whose presence it is chewed, and prevent snakes from biting him, while boiled into a strong tonic, it will bring back lost manhood.) Devil’s shoestring, chewed and rubbed on the hands, will give a man control over a woman when he shakes hands with her. Vervain (sometimes called herb-of-the-cross because it is said to have grown on Mount Calvary and so has miraculous power), grown around doorsteps, will attract lovers. Shameweed or the sensitive plant will shame a recalcitrant woman; sprinkle the powdered dry root in the woman’s path and she will close up like a sensitive plant; mix it with snail dust and snail water and she will leave like a snail going into its shell.
The principle of similarity and contact also operates in the liberal use of hair, nails, blood, and tracks in love charms. A woman may win a man by laying hands secretly on the back of his head, by giving him whisky in which her fingernail trimmings have been soaked, by putting his tracks under the bed or into an ant bed (to make it hot for him), by sprinkling his coat with alcohol into which has been squeezed juice from a piece of beef worn under her arm for two days. A man may win a woman by putting some of his blood on candy and giving it to her to eat, by putting her tracks in his sock or wearing some of her hair in his shoe, and then burying it under his doorstep, by mixing red onion juice with tracks (previously worn in his shoe) of her foot and his, and wearing the mixture, wrapped in red flannel, in his left breast pocket (in some areas, a wasp nest in the breast pocket will “make the girls fall”).
To bring a man and a woman together put some of the hair of each into a split made with an ax in the fork of a young sapling, and when the wood grows back of the hairs the two will be eternally united. To break up a home, roll the damp tracks of a man and his wife with cat and dog whiskers in a brown paper sack, tie up the sack and let it stand until the earth is dry, then throw it into the fire; or simply put the dog’s hair in the man’s tracks and the cat’s hair in the woman’s. To make running men – to drive a person away or make him crazy – throw his tracks into running water, put his hair in the gill of a fish and return it to the stream, spit in the river if the current is running opposite to the direction in which he lives, or tie one of his socks to a freight train. And by a variety of charms involving a person’s tracks you may make him stagger or paralyze him, make him your or leave.
John Sevier, on the leading spirits in the King’s mountain affairs and commander of the transmontane militia, was a brilliant, daring, dashing character; the idol and leader of bold frontiersman, who nicknamed him “Nollichucky Jack”. The whole of Tennessee then belonged to North Carolina, but the settlers on the Holston were so far removed from the seat of government that, practically, they were without government. Sevier and his friends conceived the idea of organizing a new state, which, being in the nature of a measure for self-protection, was unquestioned west of the mountains as a just and proper proceeding, but by the home government denounced as an insurrection. The new state was named Franklin, in honor of the Philadelphia philosopher and patriot. For four years there was civil contention, which, in one instance, resulted in contact of arms and bloodshed. After this the parent state adopted a radical policy for the restraint of her premature liberty seeking child. “Nollichucky Jack,” the governor of the insurrectionary state, was arrested for “high treason against the state of North Carolina and taken to Morganton for trial.
The prisoner’s chivalric character and gallant military services, on the one hand, and the extraordinary nature of the indictment on the other, gave the trial momentous interest. The village streets were crowded with hold soldiers and settlers from far and near, eager to catch a glimpse of the court. There were others there with different purposes. The chivalry of frontier life and savage warfare, who had fought under him to establish their country’s freedom, and who loved him as a brother, armed to the teeth, had followed the captive across the mountains, determined to “rescue him or leave their bones.” Their plan was to rescue him by stratagem, but if that failed, to fire the town and in the excitement of the conflagration make their escape.
On the day of trial, two of the “Franks,” as they were called, leaving their companions concealed near the town, and hiding reliable side-arms under their hunting shirts, rode up before the courthouse, one of the them on “Governor” Sevier’s fine race mare. He dismounted, and with the rein carelessly thrown over her neck, stood with the manner of an indifferent spectator. The companion, having tied his horse, went into the courtroom. Sevier’s attention, by a slight gesture, was directed to the man outside. During a pause in the trail, the bold “Frank” stepped into the bar, and with decided manner and tone, addressed the judge: “Are you done with that there man?” The scene was so unusual, the manner and tone of the speaker so firm and dramatic, that both officers and audience were thrown into confusion The “Governor” sprang like a fox from his cage, one leap took him to the door, and two more on his racer’s back. The quick clash of hoofs gave notice of his escape. The silence bewildered court was broken by the exclamation of a waggish bystander: “Yes, I’ll be damned if you aren’t done with him!”
Sevier was joined by his neighbors with a wild shout, and they bore him safely to his home. No attempt was made to re-arrest him. The State of Franklin died from various causes and a few year later the new State of Tennessee honored “Nollichucky Jack” with the first governorship, and later, by an election to the United States Senate.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has been a major factor in these mountains for eighty years. It is a federally owned company that was created by a congressional charter in 1933. The TVA provided flood control and electricity to an area that was particularly harshly affected by the Great Depression. The plan was for the TVA to generate regional economic development using federal resources and quickly modernize the area’s economy.
This ballad was sung throughout the mountain towns and it was composed and set to tune by a Preston of the Big Sandy country. Mountain singers were apt in substituting the names of their own vicinity for those of the villages and creeks and coves of their home.
Due to the passive and conservative role of women, luck signs, omens and taboos were her special prerogative, especially the “dassents,” which suggest the utility of superstition for social control, as in the discipline of children, etiquette and industry.
