Foxfire 9

by Foxfire Fund, Inc.

  HARRIET ECHOLS: This was before I was born, but it’s a true story. My dad said one evening he and the children in his community was coming home from school—the whole crowd was together. They all had their lunch boxes and their books in their bags hung across their shoulder. When they separated, going out to different places, different roads, they heard this screaming and hollering. You know, a panther hollers just like a person, and the children answered back. They thought it was some of the other children. It kept hollering and they kept answering it back. He said to one of the other boys, “That’s not nobody hollering at us! Look coming down the fence!”

  The panther was walking the fence coming down to them. So they throwed their books and lunch boxes and everything down and ran to get to the nearest house. It was a mile from where they was at to the Rogers place and they ran out there and told Mr. Rogers that there was a panther after ’em.

  The boys got the dogs and went back but they didn’t get the panther that evening. The dogs kept chasing it and stayed out all night. They went back next morning to hunt the dogs, and the dogs had treed that panther and killed it.

  JENNIE ARROWOOD: They said there was somebody that used to go across to Shooting Creek—across that mountain over there—and play the fiddle and make music for people.

  They said one time a painter got after him and he climbed a tree, and the only way he ever got down was to play the fiddle and scare it away. If he quit playing, it’d go to climbing the tree toward him!

  RUTH HOLCOMB: One time this man was out a-hunting and he see’d this panther coming so he laid down on the ground and covered up with leaves. That panther finished raking some leaves up over him and left. He figured it’d be back to eat him, so as soon as he saw it was gone, he jumped up and got away.

  And then they was telling about this man that had this little shack built and another man was looking for a place to hide out, to keep from having to go to war or something. He had come to this man’s shack while the man was out hunting for something for breakfast, rabbits maybe. So this man that was hiding out crawled up in the top of the house. There was beds built out of poles up near the top of the house. He could peep out from up there. He heard this panther come to the house, and when the man that was out hunting came back to the house the panther jumped him, and this panther tore that man all to pieces. The man up in the rafters on the bed was afraid to come out. ’Fraid that panther would eat him, too.

  HARRIET ECHOLS: My uncle Harv was staying at his house by himself one night. He’d been hunting squirrels in the afternoon and had dressed them and put them in a pan on the stove. Because some of the neighbors had been hearing panthers screaming at night, Uncle Harv had kept his hunting dogs on the porch that night. After he fed the hogs and milked the cow, he fixed his supper and got ready for bed. He called the dogs and told ’em to stay put on the porch. See, they trained the dogs to mind and to stay. Maybe he put something out there of his and told them to take care of it.

  So he went to bed and said along in the night, all at once he heard the awfullest fuss in the kitchen. He said it scared him to death.

  The chimney of his house was built right up against a high bank and the panther had crawled down the chimney and come into the kitchen and found those squirrels. He had pulled the dishpan down into the floor, ate up all his meat, and went back up the chimney.

  Uncle Harv got out and put the dogs out after the panther, but it got away from them. Finally he came back, and next morning the neighbors took some dogs and killed the panther. Of course, he said he couldn’t swear it was the same panther but it was in the area and that’s the one they thought it was.

  ETHEL CORN: I’ve heard tell of ’em a-trying to get in a house where people lived. Back then, half the time, they didn’t have no glass—only hang curtains over their windows. One night Octy McCall heared a panther and happened to look, and it was a-sittin’ in her window.

  Back in them days, they used broom sage—they’d get out and get the broom sage, broomstraw, and make their homemade brooms—and she went to throwing that broomstraw in the fire and that run that panther off. That’s the way they scared ’em off—with fire.

  JENNIE ARROWOOD: Panthers never did come in our house, I don’t reckon, but I’ve heard tell of’em getting into people’s houses. People used to have straw ticks on their beds, and they’d take ’em off and put ’em right at the hearth if they thought panthers were around. If a panther started down that chimney, they’d take so much of that straw at a time and burn it, and not let it get in on ’em. They’d try to come down the chimneys if they couldn’t get through the boards. I’ve heard tell of panthers scratching the boards off the house trying to get in, but now I wasn’t there to see it.

  MAD DOGS, EAGLES, AND OTHER ANIMAL TALES

  ADA CRONE: One thing that happened back when I was about nineteen or twenty, I guess, was a circus came through town. We didn’t never get to see a circus. We didn’t have the money to go to one. But a wild animal got loose. We really don’t know what it was. Some of ’em say it was a laughin’ hyena, but we really don’t know what it was. I’d went to town one day, an’ comin’ back I had to walk through the mountains a pretty good ways, three or four miles I guess, and this thing started hollerin’ at me. It would start hollerin’ real low and it’d get louder an’ louder. It’d make your hair stand on top of your head, I’m tellin’ you. It skeered the daylights out o’ me. But I was afraid to run. If I’d run goin’ down that mountain, I mighta stumbled an’ fell an’ it [might’ve] jumped on me. This is what I had in my mind. I stopped and I looked around an’ tried to see it, an’ I never could see it. I went on home. When I got home and went in, my mother said, “Did you hear that thing a-hollerin’?”

  I said, “Yes, it followed me down the mountain.”

  She said, “It’s goin’ to get you one of these days if you don’t get in afore dark.”

  I said, “Well, it’s not dark yet.”

  She said, “It’s almost.”

  And I said, “If it does get me it’ll have a good meal, I guess, one time.” And I went somewheres a few days after that. I came back another way. And I heard somethin’ run across in front of me. It went like a horse with iron shoes, made a big racket. I run around some big ol’ rock cliffs down below me. I run around below those rock cliffs an’ I seen it! It was a big old yeller thing that was standin’ there. It looked sort of like a dog but it had a real slim body and long legs. I was a little bit afraid but I wanted to see it. I just wanted to see what it was. It had mange too. It was yeller and it was a pretty thing. I stood there and looked at it long as I wanted to and it looked at me. Never did try to hurt me. I walked off then when I got through lookin’ at it. I told my mama ’bout it and she didn’t believe it. She said I didn’t see it. But I really did, though. I seen that thing and I don’t know what it was.

  Finally it just got gone. I really don’t know what happened to it. My two brothers and some of their friends would take a dog and go and try to catch it at night. And the dogs wouldn’t run it. They wouldn’t even track it. They wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with it. And it would stink. It stunk like a—I guess what y’call a civet cat. It really had a bad smell to it. But it just got gone. I don’t know whatever happened to it.

  RUTH HOLCOMB: There was a place up on the mountain where the men used to come a lot hunting for ’possums and other animals for furs. They took their dogs with them and when they’d get near that place, the dogs would run off and leave the area. Something would spook them and nobody knows what it was. They’ve never found out till today. Still don’t know what it is, but the people that was hunting with the dogs could hear it.

  And one time this woman set her baby out in the yard to play while she was doing her housework. Then there were a lot of eagles—bald eagles, we called ’em. While she was in the house doing her work, this eagle came by and picked this baby up. The folks seen this eagle a-going with it and they went to see what it had done with the baby. It had gone to
a hollow tree and had hid the baby down in there. They said all that saved that baby’s life was that the eagle babies were eating on a lamb’s leg right then. The mother eagle had caught a lamb and the little eagles were eating on that.

  The people had to get up in that tree and get that baby down.

  HARRIET ECHOLS: This neighbor of mine where we used to live told about helping to take care of a little child that had been rabies-bit.

  Said one day the little fellow was out playing, he was four or five years old, and this dog come in the yard and he played with it awhile. After a while the dog bit him and he went in the house crying. He told his mother, “My puppy that come up out there bit me.”

  She didn’t think nothing about it, but the next day word got out that there was a mad dog out. They finally found it and killed it, and they knew that was the dog that had bit the little boy. Back then they didn’t have these shots for rabies. There wasn’t anything they could do for him, and the little child went mad. This neighbor of mine was one of the men who took care of him. He said the child would say, “Please, don’t let me bite you. Don’t let me bite you.” He just felt like he wanted to bite somebody.

  They stayed with him two weeks. These two men just took turns sitting by the bed. They wore rubber gloves when they cared for him. He couldn’t eat anything, wouldn’t eat, and sometimes he couldn’t drink water. He’d want water and they’d try to give it to him, but he couldn’t drink it. He said that was the most pathetic thing he ever saw in his life.

  It’d take both of those men to hold that child when he would have those fits. Said he would say, “I’m gonna bite somebody. Please don’t let me bite nobody.”

  He died after about two weeks, they said.

  ETHEL CORN: Oh, yeah, they was afraid of mad dogs! And there used to be a lot of ’em through here. Only at certain times of the year that they would come through. I never had one to get after me, but there was one to come by the house where I used to live. I heard it and I looked out, and just before it got to the house, I knowed by the way it traveled something was wrong. It had took a fit and before I could run in and get the gun and load it and get out, it was too far away for me to shoot it.

  That night it made a lunge at Edward Carpenter’s horses. He’d been loggin’ and he was late coming in.

  Then I heard a fight in the night and it had got my dog. He wouldn’t hardly come out to me when I called him the next morning. I never thought of it being my dog in that fight till he went mad. He went mad in about nine days and I had to have him killed.

  Another time Poppy had two dogs, and they both got bit. I got ’im to build a pen and put ’em in it. We weren’t for sure but we thought the dog was mad that had bit ’em. Poppy put ’em in that pen, and when they did go mad, you never heared such a racket in your life as they was doing. They didn’t go mad, though, for about twenty-one days, and every time they’d make a racket, I’d run down there. I wanted to see how they’d act when they did go mad. I always went down to feed ’em, and the first I detected of ’em going mad was one of’em went to growling at the other ’un when I put in the food. When I scolded him to try to make him hush, he just kept a-growling, and I picked up a stick and stuck it through a little crack like I was going to hit him. When I did that, he lunged at it and I backed off from there. They couldn’t get out, though, for the pen was built out of logs and even logs covered over the top.

  RUTH HOLCOMB: A mad dog can smell you, can really smell you. I was on my way to school. I had to walk by my grandmother’s house and I had just went by the door when I heard somebody holler and tell me to get in the house. A stray dog had stayed at our house all night and was following me to school. It went on up in the settlement and bit some people’s dogs. Well, some people up there killed it before it bit anybody.

  People couldn’t hardly do their work for watching for mad dogs. They’d have to get done before dark. Nobody would hardly go out after dark for the mad dogs would bite ’em. They said if you got bit, you’d go mad in nine days.

  Mr. Holcomb had a cow to go mad. He’d just bought it and milked it, and he and all the children had drunk the milk. It didn’t hurt them, but the cow went mad and climbed the wall.

  BLANCHE HARKINS: My mother told us a story about a boy getting bit [by a mad dog]. They couldn’t do anything with him. They put him off in a building. They kept him in there till he acted like he was wild. They put him in a cage just by himself.

  MARGARET NORTON: They didn’t use to have that vaccine for rabies, and when you saw a dog coming down the road slobbering, all the children got in the house. Your daddy got the gun and shot him.

  LEONA JUSTUS and RUTH HOLCOMB: And back then sometimes you didn’t know which dogs were mad. Lex was tending Daddy’s land and they was out there at the old barn and Daddy was putting up the horse. Lex had a little feist dog and it went mad. It got after Daddy and Daddy run in with the horse in the barn. When he come out, the dog went after him again and he finally jumped up on something and got away until Lex could get the gun and kill it.

  They used to say if you saw your dog’s eyes looking like glass, looking red, right then it was going mad. And a mad dog’ll lay there and then start looking way off. Then they leave home, start running till they come to a branch of water, and then they’ll go mad. They’ll foam at the mouth and run around in circles.

  Their tongue swells out of their mouth. I know that for I saw one in town. It was one they kept penned up till it went mad, and they was showing it in town. That thing would run up to anything and shove its head up against anything. Its tongue was out of its mouth and was swelled out till it couldn’t bite. They killed it.

  You don’t have to get bit to go mad. If you get some of that foam in a cut or a sore place, you’ll go mad.

  Some people in the mountains believe that a madstone—a stone taken from the paunch or stomach of a deer—can draw poison from the bite of a snake or mad animal. The first one we ever saw was brought to school by one of our students. It was smooth and flat—about the diameter of a silver dollar and one-third of an inch thick. His father had found it in the stomach of a whitetail deer he had just killed and field-dressed, and it was one of his most prized possessions. We asked several of our contacts about these:

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  HARRIET ECHOLS: There was an old doctor I’ve heard about. He didn’t live in our community and I can’t remember just where he was. A lot of people just thought he was a quack, you know, but they said he had a stone of some kind that he put on the place where these dogs would bite you and that would draw that poison out. Several people went to him and then our neighbor’s wife was bit by a mad dog and he took her to him.

  JAKE WALDROOP: Well, I’ve heard of ’em. And ol’ man Vance Dills had one. There was an old fellow who lived in the cove over from us, Bill Daniels, and he was plowing his steer up in his mountain pasture, and a copperhead snake bit his steer. He went and got Vance to come with his madstone. Bill said that when he stuck the madstone to where them snakebite holes were, it just stuck there. When the stone finally fell loose, he said the steer was all right. It cured the snakebite.

  They said they could get them madstones out of a deer or out of a wild turkey gobbler. They were the ones who carried the madstones in their stomach. Vance Dills killed a white deer and got that one out of his stomach. That one of Vance’s was the only one I ever seen. It was the size of a guinea egg, like a small hen egg. It was a little slick grayish-looking rock.

  Jake knew of two more instances where that madstone worked. A girl bitten on the breast by a mad cat was cured by the madstone. And a man bitten on the ankle by a snake was cured. The madstone works by being soaked in milk about fifteen minutes. Then it’s applied to the snakebite or bite of the rabid animal. It will cling to the bite and fall loose when the poison is all out.

  HAINT TALES

  LOLA CANNON: My mother’s people, the Godfreys, were one of the first three white families to settle here in the Chechero district. Where the ceme
tery down there is now was where they built their first cabins. A little girl made her a playhouse and played under a tree there. She died and they buried her there.

  Later they built their house down the road a little ways. The mother said that on moonlight nights she could see that little girl in her playhouse. Whether that was just her mother’s idea or not I don’t know, but there was another old building right down there where queer things were said to happen. Back in those days, when people died neighbors came in and prepared and dressed them for burial. Usually they had to keep the dead person in the home overnight, and then people would come in next day to dig the grave. The neighbors would stay and sit up all night to keep watch over the body. They always said when they set up with anybody at that old place, they would hear things. They would hear doors opening and closing, but they couldn’t see anything. There were fireplaces on opposite ends of the house and they would hear something like the fireprongs and shovel falling on the hearth. Some of the brave people would go look and they would be lying there but nobody was in there. Noises like that. People said they could hear footsteps on the porch.

  PLATE 376

  I don’t believe in things like that, but older people repeated the stories and it built up in younger people’s minds and made them think these things happen. I don’t think dead people ever come back. It’s just in our minds that they come back. They may. Our minds may bring them back to us.

  JENNIE ARROWOOD: My grandmother Ferguson told me about this house where somebody was killed and put in the chimney under the hearth, and the ghost of that person would knock four times, knock on every corner of the house. Nobody wouldn’t live in that place very long. Yeah—knock on every corner of the house and then leave out. They said they found his arm bones after that—from his elbows down—everything. I reckon it’d knock and scare away the one that’d killed him, lived, you know.