Healing With Seventh Sons in Modern Vermont

Earl Fuller of Rochester, Vermont had asthma for much of his life. He tried various medical treatments but nothing ever really worked.

Then one day one of his co-workers suggested he go see Henry Pare. He said that Pare was the seventh son of a seventh son, and had been given the gift of healing after praying to St. Theresa.

Folklorist Jane C. Beck interviewed Earl Fuller in 1980 about his experience with Henry Pare:

He took my shoe off - didn't take my stocking, I had a silk stocking on with my best shoes. He felt the bottom of my foot, pulled my toes, wiggled them. Finally he rubbed up and down on the center of the foot, then he put his hand up on my knee and says, "all right." I asked him how much I owed him and he says a dollar. "Well," I says, "I'll give you five." And he says "no, I won't take but a dollar. That would ruin my strength." So he took just one dollar. I was breathing just as easy as could be and you know, I went home.

Earl's asthma vanished for seven years, but after a minor surgery it came back. He returned to Pare, who without asking any questions said he couldn't help. "You had an operation and they've cut the nerve off that I work on. They've disconnected the the nerve I work on."

Henry Pare died in 1967 at the age of 76, but according to Jane Beck another seventh son carries on a similar tradition. Roger Beliveau of Troy, Vermont also heals people, and has built a large statue to thank the Virgin Mary for his gift. Unlike Pare he charges more than a dollar, and suggests people pay what they can.

The cultural continuity between the 20th century seventh sons and 18th century healer Isaac Calcott is striking. All three are seventh sons of seventh sons, and heal in ways that are outside the boundaries of accepted medical practice. Of course, there are differences. Calcott healed using his saliva, while Pare manipulated his patients' feet. Pare and Beliveau were both practicing Catholics and claimed their powers came from  God or the saints. Calcott didn't derive his powers from God -  it was just enough to be a seventh son.

Personally, I'm the second son of a first son, so I'm not going into the healing business. People are having smaller families these days. I wonder if seventh sons are going to be harder to find?

The information about Henry Pare and Roger Beliveau is from Jane Beck's "Traditional Folk Medicine in Vermont," which appears in Medicine and Healing. Volume 15 of the Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife.

UFOs, Angels, and Demons: The Abduction of Betty Andreasson Luca

Last night Tony and I watched a horror movie called Dark Skies, which I thought was pretty creepy. A young suburban family coping with the Great Recession finds their home has been invaded by some unpleasant aliens.



The aliens in this movie are quite demonic, which is how a lot of real life abductees view the beings who take them. Sleep paralysis, missing time, and of course painful probes - these visitors from outer space seem like bad news.

Surprisingly, not everyone holds that opinion. Some people, like Betty Andreasson Luca of South Ashburnham, Massachusetts, had quite the opposite experience.

In the mid-1970s, Betty answered an ad placed by UFO researcher Allen Hynek, who was looking for people who thought they had been abducted. When placed under hypnosis, she revealed an amazing story.

Betty Andreasson Luca under hypnosis.

On the evening of January 25, 1967, Betty was at home with her seven children and her parents. As she cooked and washed dishes, Betty had an uneasy feeling. At first she attributed it to the fog that a January thaw had brought on, but when a pulsing reddish light filled her yard and house she realized something stranger than warm weather was happening. Soon her father saw five small beings floating through the air towards the house, and Betty gathered her children in the living room for protection.

The five beings floated through the locked kitchen door and approached Betty. They were between four and five feet tall, had large heads and small facial features, and wore overalls. Although she was nervous, the Biblical passage "Entertain strangers for it may be angels unaware" entered her mind.

The beings put Betty's family into a state of suspended animation, but took Betty into a small craft that joined up with a larger mother ship. Betty was frightened of the aliens because they were so strange, but also sensed great love emanating from them. While she was on board the mother ship she was subjected to various examinations, which were painful but led her to have a visionary experience of a being she thought was God.

Quazgaa's spacecraft, from this site.

Before returning her home an alien named Quazgaa told Betty that the aliens loved mankind and were here to watch over them. They also gave her a forty-page book full of diagrams, formulas and poetry that she was allowed to keep but was not supposed to show anyone. When she got back to her house her family was released from suspended animation. No one had any memory of what had happened (except Betty) and everything returned to normal.

Well, almost normal. Betty's youngest daughter had recurring nightmares about the alien experience, so Betty showed her the book as proof the aliens were benevolent. Having broken her promise to keep it secret, the book disappeared. Betty eventually lost most memories of the incident until they were recovered through hypnosis.

What are we supposed to make of this story? The UFO researcher Allen Hynek was at first hesitant to meet with Betty because her story was outside the materialist viewpoint that UFOs are purely physical phenomena. UFOs are supposed to be machines from another planet piloted by biological beings, but Betty's story is basically a religious one. She was taken up into the heavens by angelic beings, met God, and was even given a holy book that disappeared, much like the golden plates from which Joseph Smith transcribed the Book of Mormon. Betty then spread the word of the heavenly beings.

If this were a different era people would probably think Betty was a prophet. Then again, maybe they'd think she was a witch. Dealing with creatures from the Otherworld can be a tricky business. Sometimes they're angels, sometimes they're demons, and sometimes they're something else entirely. I suppose Betty had the best approach: keep an open mind, hold love in your heart, and keep faith that it will all work out.

I found a lot of my information about Betty Andreasson Luca on the web, and found this interview particularly informative. I also used T.M. Gray's book More New England Graveside Tales.

Mountain-ash, the Witch-wood Tree

Here's another interesting factoid from John McNab Currier, the 19th century folklorist and physician.

While he was living in New Hampshire in the mid-1800s he knew a woman who thought all her illnesses, indeed all her troubles in life, were caused by witches. When she was sick the woman would threaten the witches, who although invisible undoubtedly were the source of her suffering.


To keep the witches at bay the woman wore a bead necklace made from mountain-ash (that's pyrus americana or sorbus americana to you botanists out there):

They were cut about three eighths of an inch in length, the bark being left on, and strung on string running through the pith. She was careful to keep them concealed, but sometimes they would work up above her collar and be conspicuous. This species of tree was once quite popular among New England witch-believers as a charm against witches...

Folklorist Fanny Bergen also reports that people in New England carried a piece of mountain-ash, or witch-wood, in their pockets to repeal witches. 

The American mountain-ash is of the same family as the rowan tree, which is well-documented in European folklore. The Norse god Thor was saved from drowning by grasping a rowan tree, while in Scotland householders planted them at their front doors to repel evil. According to Wikipedia, it could also be used to prevent storms at sea, keep the unhappy dead in their graves, and prevent lightning from striking a house. That's a pretty potent tree! It seems likely that the English settlers in New England brought their beliefs about the rowan tree to the New World and transferred them to its American cousin.

Oddly, I've been to Scotland and seen a rowan tree but don't know if I have seen an American mountain-ash. I'll have to take a trip to the Aboretum and track one down!

This week's info is from John McNab Currier, “Contributions to New England Folk-Lore”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 4, No. 14 (Jul – Sep. 1891) and Fanny Bergen, “Some Bits of Plant-Lore”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol 5, No. 16 (Jan – Mar, 1892).  

The Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son

Dr. Isaac Calcott arrived in Providence, Rhode Island in June of 1769. Well-dressed and in his thirties, Dr. Calcott claimed he could treat nearly thirty separate disorders, including "scale heads, St. Anthony's fire, vapors, King's evil, and deafness."

I don't know what most of those ailments are, but apparently they were quite Common in Colonial New England, because Dr. Calcott traveled through the region for the next four years, advertising his "Art of Curing" in all the local newspapers.

Although there were plenty of local physicians in the area in the 1700s, Dr. Calcott was part of a wave of itinerant doctors and healers who appeared in New England at this time. Most were men and came from Europe, although one Native American woman traveled through Essex County claiming to cure cancer through herbal treatments. Like Dr. Calcott, most also advertised through newspaper ads, but some relied just on local word of mouth.

These traveling healers were denounced by the more established doctors and often advocated highly unorthodox treatments. In addition to herbal treatments and elixirs, electrical devices were frequently used, often in front of a paying audience. These electrical demonstrations were part medicine and part entertainment.

Dr. Calcott didn't perform in front of an audience, but he did use a particularly strange technique. Here is an account of how he cured six year old Elizur Belden of blindness:

"Mrs. Belden holding the Child in his Lap, Dr. Calcott ... Licked the eyes, first putting his Tongue into one Eye and then into the other Eye of the Child - it was soon done, - and instantly the Child saw, and ever after continued to see well."

That account was written by Ezra Stiles, the President of Yale, after talking with Elizur Belden's parents many years after the cure. The testimony is reliable. The licking seemed to be effective, but why?

The modern scientific mindset would probably chalk it all up to psychosomatic illness, but Isaac Calcott claimed he had special healing powers because he was the seventh son of a seventh son. In many parts of Europe it was (and still is) believed that the seventh son of a seventh son has special abilities. Often these were healing powers, but in some places seventh sons could also predict the future and find lost objects. Wikipedia has a short but interesting article on this belief. In contemporary America, the seventh son motif is still popular in genre fiction.

The licking was also probably considered effective because spit was known to be a fluid highly charged with personal power. The average person's spit was often used in simple folk magic, but as the seventh son of a seventh son Dr. Calcott's saliva was obviously quite powerful. Jesus spit in a blind man's ear to make him hear; Dr. Calcott licked a blind boy's eyes to make him see.

Unfortunately the old adage "Physician, heal thyself" seems to apply to Dr. Calcott. Despite, or perhaps because of, his amazing powers Calcott was an alcoholic. Once, in Middletown, Connecticut, the good doctor was so drunk that two young boys were able to tar and feather him. He was last seen practicing his medical magic in 1773 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire before disappearing from the historical record.

I found this information in Peter Benes's article "Itinerant Physicians, Healers, and Surgeon-Dentists" in Medicine and Healing. Volume 15 of the Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife.

A Travelling Woman, Coarsely Dressed: Another Witch, Another Footprint

Here's a little story from John McNab Currier, a 19th century physician and folklorist:

In the summer of 1852 I was at a farmhouse in a rural town in Grafton County, New Hampshire, when a travelling woman, coarsely dressed, called to get a glass of water to drink, and inquire the distance to the next village. She drank the water and started on her journey. Scarcely had she gone thirty rods when the woman of the house said she believed the traveller was a witch, and she was going to try her. She immediately took a knitting needle from her work, found one of the traveller's tracks in the path, and stuck the needle into it. Almost immediately the traveller stopped, stood still, and gazed towards us, who were watching the trial. The woman of the house said she would not remove the needle from the track, even if the traveller should never move again; but she turned soon, and went on without stopping. The woman with the needle believed the steel had the power to fasten a witch in her tracks so she could not move, and shen she saw that the woman went on her way, she believed the power was lost by her speaking; so she tried another track with the needle, but without effect. 

It's interesting to compare McNab's story with a similar one I wrote about in March, which had two small children trying to test a witch with a needle, and was recorded in the 1920s or 1930s. McNab's story is a first-hand account of adults trying this form of folk magic 70 or 80 years earlier. In the 19th century witchcraft was not child's play.

Both stories involve women, seemingly poor, walking by houses. Is it their poverty and their mobility that causes such concern? I'm sure there's some sociological reason why these women were suspected of witchcraft.

The magic of steel seems to work in McNab's story, unless you want to be a skeptic and claim the travelling woman just stopped because she was amazed someone was sticking a needle in her footprint.

Even when it doesn't work there's an explanation consistent with the magic: the woman of the house spoke, and broke the spell. Maybe if she had never spoken a word the witch would still be standing in the road today. Silence is a key ingredient in some types of folk magic. Bittersweet root is best harvested in total silence, and a witch can be controlled with her own witch bridle only if you remain silent.

McNab's story appeared in the The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 4, No. 14, in 1891.