Dog Days and Dog Lore

The other day while browsing through The Old Farmer's Almanac, I saw this notation for July 3rd: Dog Days Begin. I experienced the dog days quite viscerally today myself. I was out walking around during my lunch and noticed that it was blindingly bright, unpleasantly hot, and extremely humid. I felt a little stupefied. 

The dog days of summer begin on July 3rd and end on August 11th. They are said to be the hottest days of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and get their name from the star Sirius, which rises in conjunction with the sun during this time. Sirius is part of the constellation Canis Major (Latin for the Greater Dog), which follows Orion through the sky. 

A mosaic of a dog from Pompeii

The ancient Greeks were the first people to call this time of year the dog days. For example, in The Iliad, the poet Homer has the following to say: 

...all radiant as the star which men call Orion's Hound, and whose beams blaze forth in time of harvest more brilliantly than those of any other that shines by night; brightest of them all though he be, he yet bodes ill for mortals, for he brings fire and fever in his train... (Homer, The Iliad, Book 22, translated by Samuel Butler)

Some Greeks tried to appease Sirius the Dog-star (and the heat it brought) with sacrifices, a practice taught to them by Aristaios, the divine son of Apollo. 

The Dog-star Sirius was scorching the Minoan Islands from the sky, and the people could find no permanent cure for the trouble till the Archer-King Apollon put it in their heads to send for Aristaios. So, at his father's command, Aristaios ... left Phthia, and settled in Keos. He raised a great altar to the Rain-god Zeus and made ritual offerings in the hills to the Dog-star and to Zeus himself, the Son of Kronos. In response, Zeus gave his orders - and the Etesian Winds refresh the earth for forty days. The priests of Keos still make yearly sacrifice before the rising of the Dog. (Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica)

The ancient Romans also believed that Sirius rising created the hottest days of summer. Here is what Pliny the Elder wrote on the matter:

Who is there that does not know that the vapour of the sun is kindled by the rising of the Dog-star? The most powerful effects are felt on the earth from this star. When it rises, the seas are troubled, the wines in our cellars ferment, and stagnant waters are set in motion... There is no doubt that dogs, during the whole of this period, are peculiarly disposed to become rabid. (Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Chapter 40)

An interesting side note about Pliny the Elder: he died while trying to save people from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. His Natural History was only published after his death. 

From the Greeks and Romans, the concept of the dog days has been passed down to us. I think most modern Americans are still familiar with the idea, even if they don't know the exact dates that comprise the dog days. They might also know the song by Florence and the Machine, "Dog Days Are Over." Fire, fever, rabid dogs, troubled seas, and stagnant waters. The dog days don't sound like much fun. No wonder Florence is so glad they're over. 

I can hear someone out there saying, "But I love summer! Summer is awesome! The beach! Cookouts! School vacation! Trips to Europe!" Yes, all those things are amazing parts of the summer season. We don't live in the ancient Mediterranean world, where summers were inescapably hot and hellish. We live in a world with ice cream and air-conditioning. Of course, with climate change, people around the world are once again experiencing the sometimes terrifying power of summer - wildfires, heatwaves, and droughts are increasing every year. And not everyone is fortunate enough to have air-conditioning and ice cream.

An interesting side note about trips to Europe: I read today that an American tourist was injured when he tried to retrieve his phone after dropping it into Mount Vesuvius. Happily, the volcano was not erupting at the time.

Thinking about the dog days made me curious to see if I could find some New England lore about dogs. I found a few intriguing tidbits in What They Say in New England (1896), Clifton Johnson's collection of local folklore. Although Johnson notes that it was considered healthier to have dogs than cats as pets, he does include some sinister lore about dogs. For example, he writes about a dog in Hadley, Massachusetts that howled every night when the 9:00 pm church bell rang. The citizens of Hadley assumed this was an omen of something bad, but they weren't quite sure what. 

They probably thought the dog's howling foretold someone's death, because Johnson also writes that it was believed a dog howling under a window foretold a death in the house. 

There was a dog went and howled under the window of a house up near where I lived. He howled and howled; and they drove him off, but no sooner done it than he was right back again. And in two or three days an old lady that lived there died. (Clifton Johnson, What They Say in New England (1896))

Johnson also writes about a related belief. If a dog howls in the yard, the first person who walks through the front door will soon die. Dogs are man's best friend, but also an omen of doom. I suppose they're like the dog days of summer in that respect. Some people think they're lovable and fun, while others look at them with dread. 

Snakes, Children, and the Human Soul: Ancient Folklore in New England

I used to live in a house that had an old cracked cement wall in the front yard. This was a very urban neighborhood - you could hear the subway go by - but the wall was still home to a colony of garter snakes. Every spring I enjoyed seeing them emerge from hibernation to sun themselves on the wall or walkway.

Garter snakes are the official state reptile of Massachusetts, and they're also harmless. Perhaps I would have felt differently each spring if they had been rattlesnakes or cobras. Still, you should probably treat snakes with respect, as the following tale shows. It comes from What They Say in New England, Clifton Johnson's 1896 collection of local folklore.

Image from this site.

Many years ago there was a little girl who always liked to eat her supper outside. Her parents humored her in this, but one evening they became curious and followed her when she left the house with her plate.

...She went along out there by a stone wall and set down, and she rapped on her plate, and out there come a big rattlesnake, and went to eatin' off the plate with her. And when the snake got over on to her side of the plate too much, she'd rap him with her spoon, and push him away, and say, "Keep back, Gray-coat, on your own side."

Needless to say, her parents were quite horrified to see their young daughter sharing her food with a poisonous snake. They sent her off to stay with some relatives and while she was gone they killed the rattlesnake. It did not quite have the effect they expected.

...The little girl come home again, and then she found out her snake was killed. Arter that she kind o' pined away and died. I've hearn 'em tell about that a good many times, and I s'pose that's a pretty true story (Clifton Johnson, What They Say in New England, 1896, p. 66)

Johnson collected the folk stories in his book from people in rural western Massachusetts (where there are indeed rattle snakes), so I was surprised to see a very similar piece of folklore in Vance Randolph's 1946 classic Ozark Magic and Folklore. The Ozark Mountains are geographically and culturally very far from Massachusetts, but here's that same story again:

There are several old tales about an odd relationship between snakes and babies. According to one story, well known in many parts of the Ozark country, a small child is seen to carry his cup of bread and milk out into the shrubbery near the cabin. The mother hears the baby prattling but supposes that he is talking to himself. Finally she approaches the child and is horrified to see him playing with a large serpent - usually a rattlesnake or copperhead.

Randolph goes on to say:

The mother's first instinct is to kill the snake, of course, but the old-timers say that this would be a mistake. They believe that the snake's life is somehow linked with that of the child, and if the reptile is killed the baby will pine away and die a few weeks later. I have heard old men and women declare that they had such cases in their own families and knew that the baby did die shortly after the snake's death (Vance Randolph, Ozark Magic and Folklore, 1946, p. 257)

It seems pretty clear from Randolph's book that people took this belief seriously, as several people claimed it had happened in their own families. It wasn't just a fairy tale.

Imagine my surprise then, when I also found a very similar story in Grimm's Fairy Tales, which was first published around 1812. The Brothers Grimm collected their stories in Germany, but here again is that story about killing a snake. In their version of the story the snake brings precious stones and gold to the child when it eats and the child gently hits the snake with a spoon to encourage it to eat more.  Despite these differences the story has the same sad ending:

The mother, who was standing in the kitchen, heard the child talking to some one, and when she saw that she was striking a snake with her spoon, ran out with a log of wood, and killed the good little creature.

From that time forth, a change came over the child. As long as the snake had eaten with her, she had grown tall and strong, but now she lost her pretty rosy cheeks and wasted away. It was not long before the funeral bird began to cry in the night, and the redbreast to collect little branches and leaves for a funeral garland, and soon afterwards the child lay on her bier (Grimm's Fairy Tales, "Stories About Snakes," 1812).

The belief connecting the health of children to snakes actually seems to go way back. It's much older than even the Brothers Grimm. The Swedish writer Olaus Magnus alludes to it in his 1555 book History of the Northern Peoples, which describes life in Sweden in the 16th century. Magnus wrote that:

There are also pet serpents, which in the farthest tracts of the North have the reputation of protective deities. They are reared on cows' or sheep's milk, play with the children indoors, and are regularly seen sleeping in their cradle, like faithful guardians. To harm these creatures is regarded as sacrilege. However, such practices are survivals from ancient superstition, and since the adoption of the Catholic faith are completely forbidden. (Olaus Magnus, History of the Northern Peoples, Book II, Chapter 48, "On the fight waged by shepherds against snakes")

I suspect that this belief is much older than even the 16th century, and Magnus seems to think it is ancient. It certainly seems to allude to some very old beliefs about the human soul. The French academic Claude Lecouteux suggests that by sharing food with a human the snakes in these stories become the human's guardian spirit, or perhaps even the spiritual double of the human. They are a human soul externalized in animal form. When the snake is killed the human soul dies. 

Illustration from History of the Northern People

Of course, I don't think people in 19th century Massachusetts understood it that way, but for some reason the belief still lingered on. Maybe someday I'll figure out exactly how a belief like this traveled from Medieval Europe all the way to Western Massachusetts. But until I do, please be kind to your local snakes. You never know whose soul it might be!

*****

Claude Lecouteux's excellent book Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages has a lot of information on topics similar to this one. 

Cat Folklore, Part I: Do Cats Suffocate Babies?

My family had dogs and cats as pets when I was young. I loved them all, but for some reason I always thought of myself as a 'dog person' for many years. Maybe it was because dogs are friendly in such an uncomplicated way, or maybe it was because cats have such sharp claws.

One of our cats was a large Siamese who bit several of my friends and everyone in the family except me. I suppose I should have seen his mercy as a sign that I was actually a 'cat person', but I didn't. I only came to that realization when I finally had a cat as an adult. Unlike a dog, he was clean, quiet, and didn't take up much space. He was like the ideal room mate!

He was also very affectionate. Whenever I would lie on my back, whether napping on a bed or reading on the couch, the cat would crawl on top of my chest. Slowly he would work his way up my torso, purring every inch, until his face was touching my chin and his paws were on my neck. I would scoot him back down, but he would always make his way back up.

I have read that a cat touches your face if they like you. I've also read the theory that cats have scent glands in their paws and by touching your face they mark you as their human. I am not sure if these are theories are true, but they beat the old theory: that cats try to steal your breath, particularly if you are a baby.

This is quite an old piece of folklore, dating back to at least the 16th century England. I suspect it is even older than that. It is also an enduring myth. It was recorded here in New England by several 19th century writers. Although Fanny Bergren doesn't include it in her encyclopedic Current Superstitions, Sarah Bridge Farmer does include it in her short 1894 piece "Folklore of Marblehead, Mass.", stating simply that "Cats sat on the breasts of children and sucked their breath."

Clifton Johnson has more to say about this belief in What They Say in New England (1896):

Many believe that cats will cause the death of babies by sucking their breath. The only reason they suggest for the attraction is that the cats are attracted by the baby's breath because it is sweet. They will tell that cats have been caught in the act, and give much detailed evidence. The story ends with the killing of the cat, and a great commotion to restore the gasping baby's breath. 

I cringe at the thought of the innumerable cats killed due to misunderstanding of their motives. Although his informants, primarily farmers from western Massachusetts, believed cats suffocated babies Johnson explains it is not true:

Physicians do not credit the breath-sucking part of the stories, and I will suggest one or two explanations of the phenomena. Firstly, there might have lingered about the baby's mouth fragments of a recent lunch that the cat was removing when found with it's mouth near the baby's; and secondly, the baby's gasping may have been caused by fear of the cat, or by the alarming commotion on its account among its relatives.

While this myth is obviously not true I still hear people mention it even today. Most of them say it jokingly, but I think the humor hides an uneasiness that many people have around cats. Or who knows, maybe people are acknowledging their own weird and powerful fascination with our feline friends. 

Drought, Snakes, and Rain Magic

I don't know about you, but I actually like a rainy day now and then. My favorite type of weather is a windy and cloudy day. So this long spate of clear, dry (and hot) weather has been nice enough but I am ready for a change.

Much of Massachusetts is in a drought situation, so I think everyone is ready for a change. We had a little rain recently but it hasn't helped. The grass in all the parks near my house yellow and crunchy, and a lot of the flowers that usually bloom this time of year just haven't appeared. I feel like I'm living in California instead of New England. Is this what climate change looks like?

Happily we are supposed to get some more rain this weekend but probably not enough to alleviate our drought. Perhaps a little rain magic is due?

When I was a child in the unenlightened 1970s I always associated rain magic with American Indians, since cartoons often showed them performing dances to bring rain. Some Native American groups do indeed perform rain dances, as do other groups around the world as well. I haven't seen any indication that rain dances were ever performed in this part of the country, though.

Rain magic can be found in New England folklore, but most of it involves predicting when and how long it will rain. There isn't a lot of magic to actually bring rain. I think that might be because this area is usually pretty wet. But perhaps rain magic might be in order if we continue to get more droughts like this one!

Clifton Johnson's book What They Say in New England (1896) contains two techniques to bring rain. Johnson collected his folklore among the farmers in western Massachusetts. I don't think those crusty old farmers used words like 'magic' or 'spell' to describe their practices. They were just things you did. However, they sound like magic spells to me.

They are both violent and I don't recommend them since they involve killing animals, which is not a good thing to do! DO NOT KILL ANIMALS TO BRING RAIN. Anyway, here are the rain spells folkloric weather techniques.

A garter snake in my front yard.

The first is just to kill a beetle. That's it. Just kill a beetle and it will make it rain.

The second is to kill a snake, and then hang up its body. This should produce rain. On the other hand, if you want the weather to be dry you should bury the snake's body.

I'm not sure what the connection is between these animals and rain. Certainly, serpents are associated with water in myths around the world. In China dragons often live in water, and in ancient Babylonian mythology the god Marduk creates the world by killing Tiamat, a primordial water-serpent goddess. In some Algonquian myths the thunderbird fights a watery horned serpent. But would any of these myths really make their way to Yankee farmers in Massachusetts? If you have any insight please share it.

So to wrap up: don't kill animals to make it rain, but maybe try some other magic if you know some. The drought will end at some point I'm sure. What's the old New England saying? "If you don't like the weather just wait a minute."

The Devil Builds A Barn

Although Halloween has sadly passed, the nights and weather are only going to get darker and gloomier from here on. It's still the season for spooky stories! Here's one from 19th century Massachusetts about the Devil himself.

*****

A poor farmer living out in the country wanted a barn. He had a house and a couple small sheds, but no barn. Unfortunately he was just too poor to build one.

His desire for a barn must have been very strong, because the Devil caught wind of it. One night when the farmer was alone the Devil came to his house.

"I'll build you a barn", the Evil One said. "All you have to do is give me your soul when you die. Doesn't that sound like a bargain?"

The farmer may have been poor, but he was smart. He had heard tales of bargains made with the Devil. The tales usually didn't end well.

After thinking for a while, the farmer said, "I'll give you my soul... if you can build the barn before the first rooster crows in the morning. Deal?"

"Deal," the Devil said. They shook hands to seal it. The Devil's hand was hot like a frying pan.

The Devil immediately set to work. The farmer could hear him hammering and sawing away in the darkness. It sounded like the barn was going to be a good one.

It was just before sunrise, and the Devil was very nearly done. While the Evil One hammered away to finish the barn on time, the farmer snuck out his back door to the shed where he kept his chickens. He crowed like a rooster. This woke up his actual rooster, which crowed in response.

The Devil hadn't quite completed the barn, so he didn't get the farmer's soul. After he angrily vanished in a cloud of brimstone the farmer finished the last remaining details of the barn. He felt pretty good for outsmarting the Devil.

His satisfaction didn't last long. It turned out the roof leaked, the doors didn't close properly, and the whole structure fell apart within a year. But then what else would you expect from a barn built by the Devil?

*****

I like this story. It's short, sweet, and to the point. It was told to Clifton Johnson in the late 19th century, and he included it in his book What They Say in New England (1896).  The motif of cheating an evil supernatural being who's building something for you is much older than the 19th century, though.

When I read this story I'm reminded of the old Norse myth telling how the gods hired a giant to build the walls around Asgard. They made a bargain with the giant. If he could build the wall in only one winter, with the help only of his horse, the gods would give him the goddess Freya, the sun and the moon. They made this bargain because they assumed even a giant couldn't finish a huge wall in just three months. After all, his only assistant was a horse.

Unfortunately for the gods, it turned out that the giant's horse was magical and was able to lay stones and spread mortar with its hooves. Things looked bad, but the trickster god Loki came up with a plan. Just before the wall was done, and just before winter ended, Loki turned himself into a beautiful mare. The beautiful mare lured the giant's horse off into the woods, and the giant was unable to finish the wall on time. Not only did he not get the sun, moon and the goddess Freya, but Thor smashed his head in with a hammer. Ouch! 

The gods got a 98% completed wall, and many months later Loki returned from the woods carrying the magical eight-legged colt that he had given birth to.

That might have been a little bit of a tangent, but I think you can see how the two stories are related.  New England folklore is just a little more bare bones than Norse mythology!

Snake Lore - 2011 Spring Edition

This morning I was in my backyard when I heard something rustling in the leaves. There are a lot of squirrels in the park next door, so I didn't think much of it. But the noise continued at a slow steady pace, unlike the frenetic scrambling squirrels make.

I went over to investigate, and saw a roiling mass of garter snakes! There were probably six or seven of them in a big tangle, slowly moving their way down a little incline. I got Tony from inside and we watched them for a while. Eventually they stopped churning around and watched us right back.

It seems likely that they were mating. According to Wikipedia, multiple males will mate with females as they emerge from their hibernation, forming big churning masses of snakes. Interestingly, some male snakes emit female pheromones to entice other male snakes to rub over them. Herpetologists say this helps warm up these cold-blooded creatures. Hmm. Maybe we witnessed a bisexual snake orgy in our own backyard?

These were the first garter snakes I saw this year, and they were lucky we aren't living in the 19th century. If we were, I might have been compelled to kill them, as instructed by this little rhyme:

Kill the first snake, And break the first brake, And you will conquer all you undertake.

The word brake here refers to a fern, not part of a car. Happily, these days I think people are more respectful towards both snakes and plants. Love your snakes, don't kill them!

I do wonder how seriously 19th century folks actually took these beliefs about snakes. For example, did anyone really believe in hoop snakes? Supposedly this species of snake grabbed its tail in its mouth, formed a circle, and then rolled rapidly like a hoop after its prey. Once it caught its victim it would stab it with its hard, spike-like tail. The unlikely person or animal would either shrivel up and die, or shatter into pieces. I guess the snake ate the little pieces of flesh? It doesn't seem very efficient, but evolution works in weird ways.

I have some more snake lore here, here, and here. I got today's information and picture from Clifton Johnson's What They Say In New England (1896).

March Weather Folklore

I think most people are familiar with the old saying about March weather, "In like a lion out like a lamb." If you're not, the meaning behind it is that if the month begins with awful weather it will end with good weather.

Clifton Johnson included the proverb in What They Say In New England, his 1890s collection of folklore. Did it spread across the country from New England? It seems possible, since this area used to be the cultural center of the United States. (It's hard to believe now, but New England was like the Hollywood of pre-Industrial America!) The saying itself is of British origin and has been found in printed English works from the early 1600s.

Given the giant snowfall northern New England got earlier this month, I'd say March has indeed come in like a lion. Let's hope it leaves like a lamb - gentle, fuzzy and with lots of little green growing things.

Who's it going to be, the lion or that lamb?

Johnson recorded a corollary statement which is much less well known: "In like a lamb, out like a lion." In other words, if March starts with pleasant weather it will end poorly. When you add these two proverbs together, you get an accurate picture of New England weather as spring approaches. Some of it is going to be lousy, some of it good, but you just don't know what's happening when. Wear layers and carry a good umbrella.

What They Say In New England also contains this bit of wisdom about March: "A peck of March dust is worth a bag of gold." That one is a bit more cryptic for a modern reader. According to Johnson, if dust is blowing around in March it means the wind is drying up all the mud. If the mud is dry farmers can plant their crops early and possibly get a bigger harvest. Hence, dust = gold!

I haven't seen any dust yet, so I'm holding off the planting. I'm not sure how much credence to give to this weather lore anyway. What They Say... also claims that if you kill a beetle if will bring rain. That's definitely not true, so please don't kill your local beetles!

Snake Mania for Spring

A garter snake on top of our hedge this past September. The garter snake is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' official reptile, and serves an important function in the eco-system.

On the night of March 17 I had a very vivid dream. I was walking up the path to our house, and noticed three big garter snakes emerging from the dirt in our yard. This dream made me very happy.

The next day I realized I had dreamed about the snakes on St. Patrick's Day. According to legend, Patrick drove all the serpents out of Ireland. I guess he sent them some to New England, because in addition to the dream snakes I saw my first physical garter snake today in the park. He was very cute! It's been unseasonably warm, so I think he woke up early this year.

I've posted about snake lore a few times in the past, but there's just so much of it. Our cultural ancestor in New England were fascinated by snakes, and obviously feared them and also respected their natural (and supernatural?) power. Here are a few serpentine tidbits to start your spring right:

• New England used to be home to many, many rattlesnakes. I was going to say "infested with rattlesnakes", but that sounds too harsh. In the Boston area, Charlestown was notorious for having a lot of rattlers. For example, in 1630 Governor Winthrop decided to move the colony's capitol from Charlestown to the Shawmut peninsula (now Boston) because it was free from "the three great annoyances of wolves, rattlesnakes and mosquitoes." (We lived in Charlestown in the 1990s in a house with old window screens - the mosquitoes were still there.) John Josselyn reported seeing a rattle snake as thick as a man's leg eat a live chicken outside a tavern in 1674, but this may be an exaggeration.
• By the 1820s, the rattlesnakes had moved to Malden, where a man named John Elisha claimed he could tame them through magical means.
• Some African slaves believed rattlesnake buttons, or pieces of the rattle, could ward off tuberculosis. A slave in Suffield, Connecticut named Titus Kent wore four rattlesnake buttons over his lungs for this purpose. "These he considered a sovereign remedy for consumption, and of course valued them highly, as more of his best friends had died of that dreaded disease." Titus lived a long life, and didn't die of consumption.
  
• There is a reputed connection between snakes and the weather. Nineteenth century Yankee farmers said if you hang up a dead snake, it will rain. If you bury it, the weather will be fair. The Penobscot of northern New England thought that the thunder spirits, who were seen as either giant birds or superhuman warriors, waged a perpetual battle against turtles and snakes, their ancient enemies.
• The Penobscot also advised against telling legends in the summer. The reason? If a snake overheard and was offended by the story, it would bite the story-teller.

On that note, I'll stop telling stories about snakes. Snakes deserve our love and respect, so please don't kill them!

My sources for all this snake mania were Thomas Palmer's fantastic Landscape with Reptile, the Dublin Seminar's Wonders of the Invisible World, 1600- 1900, Johnson's What They Say in New England, and Frank Speck's article "Penobscot Tales and Religious Beliefs."

Why Babies Shouldn't See Mirrors and Vampires Have No Reflection

Okay, here are three interesting folk facts about mirrors:

1. Farmers in 19th century Massachusetts believed that a baby shouldn't look into a mirror until it's at least a year old. If it does, "that means death to it." (From Johnson's What They Say in New England.)


2. Everyone knows that vampires don't have reflections.


3. In parts of Europe, it was traditional to cover all the mirrors in the house when someone had died. (From Lecouteux's Witches, Werewolves and Fairies).

These are all connected by an old belief that a person's reflection, or even their shadow, is their soul. Given this, here are the reasons for these three:

1. You shouldn't let your baby look into a mirror, because its young soul is more loosely connected to its body than an adult's, and could get stuck in the mirror.


2. Vampires have no reflection because they don't have souls anymore.


3. You should cover the mirrors when someone dies so their soul doesn't get stuck in the mirror, rather than moving on to the next world. (Many modern Jews still cover the mirrors when someone dies, but they have other reasons for the practice.)

According to Roger Williams, the local Narragansett had two words for the soul. One of them was michachunck, which was similar to their word for mirror. Maybe the connection between reflections and souls was found in many different cultures?

Have a Merry Christmas - and check your hay!

Currier and Ives image from Hay in Art. There's a site for everything!

Here's a tidbit of Christmas folklore from Clifton Johnson's What They Say in New England.

There's an old British saying that's also found in New England: "Half the wood and half the hay you should have on Candlemas Day." Candlemas is celebrated on February 1, which is halfway between Halloween and May Day. You're only half way through the fallow part of the year on February 1, so you better have enough supplies to get you through the rest of the winter. (Groundhog Day is celebrated at the same time as Candlemas, and expresses this same theme).

Clifton Johnson also found this variation of the saying among Massachusetts farmers in the 19th century:

Half the pork and half the hay
On Christmas Day

I think a 19th century farmer would want more than half his supplies left on Christmas, but what do I know? It's still a long way to go until spring.

Johnson goes on to say: "It is related that there was a time when the men would occupy a part of their leisure on Christmas Day in making a tour of the neighbors to see how their hay was holding out." It sounds like a very relaxed way to spend the holiday.

I hope you have a good Christmas and have enough supplies to get through the winter!

White Horse Magic!

Feeling lucky?

My last post I noted Ethan Allen wanted to reincarnate as a white stallion (and may have done so). It's no accident he selected a white horse for his next body, because they loom large in the folklore of New England.

Here are some examples of lore about white horses:

• A person should count the horses that walk by them, but only those that are white. After three white horses have gone by, the wisher should shake hands with the first person they see, and make a wish. The wish will come true.
• To bring yourself riches, spit over your pinky when you see a white horse.
• It is said that dreaming about a white horse is a sign of trouble. This is an example of the well-known oneiric principle that dreaming of something positive (for example a marriage, a birth, or a lucky white horse) often foretells its opposite (spinsterhood, death, or misfortune). However...
  
• Some 19th century Yankees claimed instead that dreaming about a white horse foretold riches for the dreamer.

Clearly, these all made a lot more sense when New England was rural, agricultural, and horses were the transportation of choice. I think it would take me a lifetime to see three white horses go by in my neighborhood today.

(All horsey magic courtesy of Clifton Johnson.)

Whippoorwills

The other day I saw three wild turkeys while walking to work. Pretty exciting, but I crossed the street because those things can be mean! I enjoyed seeing the turkeys, but the bird I would really like to see (but haven't) is a whippoorwill.

Whippoorwills get their name because of their call, which sounds like "Whip poor Will." They tend to nest in open fields near woods, so my chances of seeing one in Boston are low.

Some good spooky folklore has developed about these little birds over time. According to Rev. Samuel Peters 1781 book General History of Connecticut, whippoorwills were able to predict storms, but by the 19th century Clifton Johnson also recorded the eerie belief that if a whippoorwill sings near a house, it is a sign of impending death (although some of his informants claimed it is only a sign of trouble.)

The bird's sinister reputation was cemented by the famed horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, who drew heavily on New England folklore when writing his stories of cosmic terror. In the early 20th century, Lovecraft discussed whip-poor-wills with his friend Edith Miniter, a resident of Wilbraham, Massachussetts, who told him:

"It is whispered that they linger and flutter around houses where death is approaching, hoping to catch the soul of the departed as it leaves. If the soul eludes them, they disperse in quiet disappointment; but sometimes they set up a chorused clamour which makes the watchers turn pale and mutter - with that air of hushed, awestruck portentousness which only a backwoods Yankee can assume - "They got 'im!" (quoted in Lovecraft's The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, ed. by S.T. Joshi. New York, Penguin Books, 2001)

Lovecraft incorporated this piece of lore into his popular story The Dunwich Horror, which spread the belief in the whippoorwill's soul snatching abilities and has kept it alive into the 21st century.

It's possible that these beliefs about whippoorwills originated with the local Indians. For example, a video available on the Mohegan tribe Web site mentions the belief that makiwasug, or magical little people, would travel through the forest at night in the shape of whipppoorwills. It looks like the whippoorwills reputation became more sinister over time and as it moved across cultures.

The First Snakes of Spring

I was walking in one of my neighborhood's parks on Sunday and saw two garter snakes sunning themselves. It wasn't particularly warm, but I guess they were tired of hibernating. For me, seeing snakes is a sure sign it's finally spring.

The garter snake is the official reptile of Massachusetts, according to a bill passed by the state Senate and House a couple years ago. This pro-snake attitude is a big change from the state's past. Early settlers in Massachusetts really hated snakes, but also attributed them lots of supernatural power. As a result there is a lot of particularly crazy snake folklore. The following story, which is one of my favorites, was recorded by Clifton Johnson in the late 1800's.

A farmer and his wife had a young daughter with a strange habit. Every evening, she refused to eat dinner with her family, but instead took her plate and ate alone outside. Since she was young, her parents at first humored her odd request. But after the little girl did this for several weeks, her father became curious and secretly followed her outside one evening.

He was surprised to see his daughter sitting by an old stone wall, calmly sharing her dinner with a large rattlesnake that she addressed as Graycoat. Fearing for her life, the farmer rushed from his hiding place and killed the rattlesnake with a shovel, despite his daughter's pleas. Shortly thereafter, the little girl began to sicken. Despite their best efforts, the farmer and his wife watched helplessly as their daughter wasted away and died from an unknown ailment.

Although the girl's parents were puzzled at her death, we shouldn't be. Ancient European legends teach that snakes are often more than simple reptiles. They may really be fetches or fylgias - human souls in animal form. When the father killed the snake, he destroyed his daughter's soul. Medieval legends from Europe teach similar lessons. For example, a legend from Silesia tells how a man found a large dead snake in front of the house after his mother died, while Olaus Magnus wrote in 1555 that a snake will become imbued with the soul of a child whose bowl it shares. If the snake is killed, the child will die. (I found that piece of lore in Claude LeCouteux's excellent book, Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages.)

It's pretty amazing that a belief from medieval Europe could still be found in Massachusetts in the 1800s! Please avoid killing snakes, in case it is true.

Two Superstitions for Easter

Will their eggs rot? Not if it's Easter.

In celebration of Easter, here are a couple 19th century superstitions from Clifton Johnson's What They Say in New England.

1. An egg laid on Easter will never rot. It may dry out, but it will never actually decay. The same is apparently true of eggs laid on Good Friday.

2. If you wear three new things on Easter, you'll have good luck for the entire year.

You may want to try wearing three new things today to see if it brings luck. I don't know anyone who raises chickens, so I can't ascertain the truth of superstition #1.

It's Official - Six More Weeks of Winter

It's official - we have six more weeks until spring starts. Miss G, Massachusetts' very own prognosticating groundhog, saw her shadow this morning, letting us know that we have more winter weather coming. (Of course, skeptics point out that spring always starts around March 20, which is always six weeks from Groundhog Day). National celebrity groundhog Punxsutawney Phil also made the same prediction from his home in Pennsylvania.

Clifton Johnson recorded folklore about weather predicting groundhogs in Western Massachusetts way back in the 1890s. It's generally believed that Groundhog Day originated with German settlers in Pennsylvania, so I wonder if the local Yankees picked up the tradition from newspapers and magazines.

Twelve Days of Weather Predictions

Here's a way to predict the weather for the upcoming year.

According to one of Clifton Johnson's 19th century informants, the weather on each of the twelve days of Christmas predicts what the weather will be for the coming twelve months. I'm assuming they mean only in terms of sunshine, precipitation and cloud cover. Otherwise, for this system to work January 1st would have to be hot and humid to accurately predict August weather. Even with global warming that's not going to happen (yet)!

Christmas in the past, according to Stephen Nissenbaum, used to be an amorphous season that sometimes lasted for months. I'm not sure where the concept of twelve days of Christmas first originated, but there are lots of significant twelves in the world: twelve months, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve apostles, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Olympian gods, twelve imams., etc. I recall learning that there was once a numerical system based on the number twelve, from which we get twelve inches in a foot, twelve items in a dozen, and twelve dozen in a gross. Wikipedia (of course) has an article about the number twelve.

Weather predictions for Thanksgiving

Here, from 19th century Massachusetts, are some ways on Thanksgiving to predict what the weather will be in the upcoming winter:

Method #1 - Examine the feathers of your chickens. Do they seem particularly thick? If so, a hard winter is on its way.

Method #2 - Examine the breastbones of your chickens (after you have cooked and eaten them). Do they seem particularly light in color? If so, you can expect a lot of snow. If they are dark, you won't get much snow at all.

Method #3 - Look at the breastbone of your goose (again, after you have cooked and eaten him). Is it particularly dark? Yes? You can expect more rain than snow.

Method #1 seems to be the most "scientific" - the chickens will grow heavier feathers if a cold winter is coming, although this assumes that chickens somehow know a cold winter is coming. (Maybe they can sense what color their breastbones are). Method #2 seems more magical, and relies on similarity in color - white breastbone = white snow. Method #3 also relies on magical color similarity, but can't tell you if heavy snow is coming, only the proportion of rain to snow. I guess this is because of the goose's affinity for water!

I suppose someone could try to test the accuracy of these methods, but most people eat turkey now for Thanksgiving, so there aren't too many goose bones lying around. I'm vegetarian and am having seitan loaf, so I'm completely out of the game.

All of this is from Clifton Johnson's What They Say in New England.

Black Cat Lore for Halloween

House cats are not native to the Americas. The Europeans who colonized New England brought their cats with them, and also brought their feline folklore. Cats, particularly black cats, are associated with witchcraft. They are one of the favorite forms that a witch's soul takes when outside her or his body.

During the 17th century New England witch trials, victims of witchcraft would often see their tormentors in the form of cats. Here's and example from Richard Godbeer's Escaping Salem. Katherine Branch, a servant in Stamford, Connecticut, claimed in 1692 that she was bewitched. A cat appeared and spoke to her, asking Katherine to come away to a place where there were "fine folks and fine things." Soon, more and more cats appeared, until she saw a table with ten cats seated around it, eating meat. The cats briefly turned into women, before turning back into cats again. Unfortunately, the court records don't indicate what color the cats were, but doubtless several of them were black.

Beliefs about cats and witches persisted well into the 19th century, as Clifton Johnson records in What They Say in New England. In Western Massachusetts, a man named Jones had a saw mill that kept him very busy, and an attractive wife whom he neglected. One dark night Jones decided he had to work at the mill. His wife used all her wiles to convince him to stay at home with her, but without effect - Jones trudged off to the mill. After he had been at work for a while, a friendly black cat appeared inside the mill. It frisked around the mill, and rubbed up against Jones as he worked. The cat got too close to the saw, though, and lost a claw. With a howl, it ran off. When Mr. Jones got home later that night, he noticed that his wife was looking pale and was hiding one hand from his sight. When he finally got a glimpse of her hand, he saw that she had lost one finger.

In the early 1800's, the Wilbur family was afflicted with poltergeist activity, and it was believed that a witch was causing it. Clothing would be cut and slashed while hanging in the closets, and small items would go missing. Granny Bates, a member of the family, was suspected of being the witch to blame. A large black cat, with facial features similar to Granny, was once found inside a closed bin, and during a prayer meeting this same cat walked through an unopened glass window. The cause of the trouble was never found.

In the 19th century it was also thought that a black cat will bring its owner good luck, in spite of its connections with witchcraft (or perhaps because of its occult power).

Black cats continue to have supernatural connotations in the 21st century. The bad luck that results from a black cat crossing one's path is well-known, but the black cat has other, more surprising connections with the supernatural as well. Large black cats, similar to panthers, are often seen near the Hockomock Swamp in southeastern Massachusetts, an area also inhabited by large hairy humanoids, giant birds, and unusual balls of light. Author Joseph Citro feels that the Hockomock Swamp may be a gateway area, similar to the Bermuda Triangle, and the large cats could be guests from an unknown world.

Spooky! Happy Halloween!

How Do Ya Like Them Apples?

I'm a big fan of the farmer's market in my neighborhood, particularly at this time of year. Apples, squash and potatoes - yum!

The other day I was eating an apple (it was a Red Free), when I noticed that the skin was kind of thick. Not inedible, and still tasty, but thick.

"That's funny," I thought.

Then I noticed all the other apples I bought had thick skins.

Something about thick apple skins rang a bell in my mind. I looked through some of my books, and saw an explanation in Clifton Johnson's What They Say In New England:

Thick apple skins mean a cold winter is coming.

The squirrels with extra bushy tails! The unusually chilly September! It all made sense.

I like snow and cold winters, so I'm glad signs are pointing that way. If you don't want to think about winter, peel your apples before you eat them.

A rhyme about crows

This morning when I woke up, I heard a crow cawing loudly outside my window. This little rhyme came into my head:

One crow sorrow
Two crows mirth
Three crows wedding
Four crows birth

I read this years ago in Clifton Johnson's 1896 book, What They Say in New England, a Book of Signs, Sayings, and Superstitions. Johnson traveled around western Massachusetts collecting bits of lore from his neighbors, and compiled them by topic (weather, plants, etc.) in one book.

I've never tested the validity of this rhyme by seeing what befalls me immediately after hearing or seeing a crow. I was sad this morning that I had to wake up, so maybe the rhyme was correct about "one crow=sorrow." This rhyme is contradicted by another bit of lore Johnson collected claiming "An even number of crows flying overhead is a sign of bad luck", but is verified by another that "To have a crow fly over the house is a sign of death."

Scientific validity probably isn't the point. Instead, these rhymes and sayings point to the ominous (omenous!) reputation crows have had in American and European folklore for thousands of years.

The rhyme is definitely catchy - it's been stuck in my head since I read it years ago.