Charming and Grim Folklore from Maine

I am working from home today and sitting next to an open window to let in the breeze. It's also letting in the pollen. The table I'm sitting at is covered with fine yellow dust.

I sneezed three times just now. That's not unusual for me. If I sneeze, I usually sneeze three times. That's probably more information than you want to know, but according to some old folklore from Maine, it means I should get ready to encounter a stranger soon.

Gertrude DeCrow, writing in The Journal of American Folklore in 1892, noted "Sneezing three times in succession is a sign of a stranger coming." In the same article she also wrote "To sneeze between eleven and twelve is sign of a stranger." I sneezed well after noon, so I guess only one stranger is coming.

DeCrow's article, simply titled "Folk-Lore from Maine," contains lots of charming tidbits like that. Here are a few more:

If ants build sand up around their holes, it is a sign of rain.  

If you step over a mop-handle it is a sign you will never be married. 

If the palm of the right hand itches, you shake hands with someone that day; if the left hand, you will receive money.  

If a broom, standing beside a door, falls over across the door, it is a sign of a stranger.

DeCrow doesn't explain where in Maine she found this folklore, but it seems like it's from a small town or rural area. In urban areas you meet strangers all the time, but that's not the case in small towns or the country. Meeting a stranger would be a big deal and therefore worthy of an omen.

She also includes a lot of folklore about the weather and about love. This old-fashioned type of folklore is kind of charming. It makes me think about a simpler, slower way of life. I picture myself riding a horse and farming and talking with neighbors at church socials. It's an idyllic image, particularly to a city person like myself. This folklore also makes me feel like people were living in a world filled with meaning and enchantment, something that can be missing from modern life, particularly in 2020. After all, I am working at home today due to a pandemic.

Vintage whippoorwill illustration from Etsy

But my idyllic image is only a fantasy. Rural life can be hard, and was probably really hard in the 19th century. Why else would DeCrow include a section called "Death Signs?"

If a person, carrying a corpse or empty coffin by a house, speaks with a member of the family residing in it, there be death within the year in the house. 

Instance: Mrs. Mary P. stopped a man thus to inquire who was dead, and one of her own children died within a few months. 

If there is a white horse in a funeral procession, it is a sign that another person in the same family will die before the year is out. 

If a tick bug is heard, it is a sign of death.

I'm not sure what she means by a "tick bug" and I don't want to find out. Omens of death also appear among some of the other beliefs she describes. For example, under "Moon Signs" she mentions that seeing the new moon first through a window means you'll hear about someone's death within the week. If you see it through an upper pane, an older person will die; through a lower pane, a younger person. That's grimly specific.

"Folk-lore from Maine" also includes some beliefs about birds: "Bird Signs." Much of this folklore is also focused on death:

If a whippoorwill sings night after night near a door or under a window it is a sure sign of approaching death in the house.  

Instance: A whippoorwill sang at a back door repeatedly; finally the woman's son was brought home dead, and the corpse was brought into the house through the back door. 

Even if you make it through the night without hearing a whippoorwill you still may not be safe. If you see a partridge on the doorstep in the morning you should be afraid - it's another omen of death.

That's a lot of death omens. Let's face it, the good old days weren't really that good. Certainly life was slower-paced and people may have felt more connected to their community (for good or ill), but all these omens show us the truth behind the idyll. Life was hard in 19th century New England, and medical care was primitive by modern standards. Death was a constant worry. 

The fantasy is nice, but the truth actually makes me feel more connected to those Mainers in the past. 

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Those of you who are familiar with the writer H.P. Lovecraft might have perked up when I mentioned whippoorwills above since they appear in some of his stories. I wrote more about whippoorwills in more detail a few years ago.

Ominous Lore About the Whippoorwill

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I'm so lonesome I could cry

Hank Williams Sr., "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" (1949)

I've never heard a lonesome whipporwill, or any whippoorwills at all. I've been a city person all my life and whippoorwills don't like the city. These nocturnal bird prefer to live in the woods, where they nest on the ground during the day. They are quite hard to see due to the camouflaging effect of their feathers.

Whippoorwills are active at dawn and dusk, and on nights when the moon is full. They fly around catching insects (yum!) and making their distinctive cry. If you listen closely it might sound like "Whip poor Will," which is how the bird got its English name.

Whippoorwills are mentioned in quite a few songs, but for people who read this blog they might be most familiar from H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Dunwich Horror", which is set in rural central Massachusetts. According to Dunwich folklore, when a person nears death the birds come to steal their soul:

Then, too, the natives are mortally afraid of the numerous whippoorwills which grow vocal on warm nights. It is vowed that the birds are psychopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eerie cries in unison with the sufferer's struggling breath. If they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemoniac laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence.

These tales, of course, are obsolete and ridiculous; because they come down from very old times...

Dunwich's resident evil wizard Old Whateley sees the whippoorwills as an omen of his own approaching doom:

Old Whateley noticed the growing number of whippoorwills that would come out of Cold Spring Glen to chirp under his window at night. He seemed to regard the circumstance as one of great significance, and told the loungers at Osborn's that he thought his time had almost come.

When Old Whateley is finally on his deathbed, the local doctor witnesses some folklore in action:

He found Old Whateley in a very grave state, with a cardiac action and stertorous breathing that told of an end not far off... The doctor, though, was chiefly disturbed by the chattering night birds outside; a seemingly limitless legion of whippoorwills that cried their endless message in repetitions timed diabolically to the wheezing gasps of the dying man. It was uncanny and unnatural—too much, thought Dr Houghton, like the whole of the region he had entered so reluctantly in response to the urgent call.

Lovecraft often incorporated authentic folklore into his stories, and it seems that he first learned that whippoorwills are omens of death from his friend Edith Miniter, who lived in Wilbraham, Massachusets. Miniter told Lovecraft that people in her town said the birds appeared when someone was close to death and would try to steal the person's soul as it fled their body. She didn't say exactly what they do it they catch it. Whippoorwills do eat moths and other small things that fly, so maybe a human soul is just another snack to them?

Miniter didn't make up this piece of lore. For example, Clifton Johnson heard it from his informants in western Massachusetts when he was writing his book What They Say in New England (1896), decades before Lovecraft and Miniter ever met.

Gertrude Decrow related similar beliefs in her 1892 article "Folk-Lore from Maine" (The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 5, no. 19). Decrow was told that if a whippoorwill sings under a window or near a door for several nights it is sign someone in the house will die. For example, once a whippoorwill sang repeatedly at the back door of a family's house. The family's son died soon after, and his corpse was carried in through the same back door where the bird sang. According to Decrow seeing a partridge on the doorstep in the morning is also an omen of death, so the whippoorwill is not the only spooky bird around.

Going even further back, the Reverend Samuel Peters wrote in his General History of Connecticut (1781) that the whippoorwill is also called the pope:

It is also called the pope, by reason of its darting with great swiftness, from the clouds almost to the ground and bawling out Pope! which alarms young people and the fanatics very much, especially as they know it to be an ominous bird.

Peters claims people were wrong to fear the bird, since it could also predict storms, which was helpful.

All this whippoorwill folklore might be older than even the first English settlers. According to a video on their website, the Mohegan tribe believed that the makiawisug, the magical little people of the forest, could transform into whippoorwills to travel through the woods. Not particularly ominous, but still you don't want to mess with the makiawisug.

Anthropologist William Simmons notes that the Mohegan word for whippoorwill also meant small boy, and suggests that perhaps both whippoorwills and small boys were associated with the liminal realm between life and death. Why would children be associated with death? The death rate for young children was quite high in traditional Mohegan culture. In one Mohegan burying ground that Simmons excavated 35% of the skeletons were of children under nine years of age. (Cautantowwit's House. An Indian Burial Ground on the Island of Conanicut in Narragansett Bay, 1970)

That's a lot of mystery, gloom and doom for one small bird. To end this post on a lighter note, I will mention that the Penobscot of northern New England attributed a different meaning to the whippoorwill. They heard its cry not as "Whip poor Will" but instead as "li puli", which means to ejaculate semen. I suppose your fear or joy at hearing a whippoorwill depends on what mood you're in.