Echoes: Folklore and Folklife in Missouri

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in this edition of Echoes we'll tell you about mayday the oldest folk festival we know of and we will begin our discussion of folklore perhaps we we should let Rrobert Smith a folklorist at university of kansas (K-Who?) define our terms for us once again again. Folk life then is generally considered to the broad study of all the aspects of the traditional life of a people from the material culture and festivals to riddles, proverbs folklore is generally nowadays considered to be the more limited term. Limited to, as I said, oral tradition. To this point in our series, we've emphasized folklife. In our fourth program however, We'll begin our presentation of folklore. We'll tell you about folk beliefs that were held by people in our area

area years ago and are still held today by many. But one festival from our past is so ancient that it seems to be describable as both folklore and folk life. Nowadays in our country May first is just another day, but May Day is probably the most venerable festival of them all. Robert Smith told us about the origins of May Day. May Day of course seems to be to go back to year one, to the rites of Spring in the Northern European countries when people would go out and gather flowers and participating in rites in which they seem to feel were, would uh help bring about a good crop in the summer and a good harvest finally. And in the whole period between the equinox in the Summer solstice there were all kinds of rituals in one place or another for going out and gathering flowers defining the future figuring out who your wedding was going to be.All kinds of

things that seem to be associated with fertility, of course the biggest rite of this time of year is marriage. Here's where you get the coming together of the two kinds of rituals that I was talking about. People get married in June, you know and this idea that at the time when the flowers are blooming and so forth, people are blooming also. And this is the natural time for these positive rites of filling as some people have called them. in earlier days May Day it was a festival in Northwest Missouri. It was for one thing a fun time for children, They made brightly colored little baskets with flowers in them and give them to friends and neighbors. Juanita Clift of Bethany remembers her experiences. Well when i was growing up uh living out in our old home place, May baskets May baskets on the first of May was almost a must. What did you put in the may basket? Flowers. apple blossoms, mostly violets, sometimes kitten

britches, cows slips, any kind of flower that you could could find actually around, and uh the May baskets were made at that time, out of wall paper. And my mother used to have a pattern that she would weave. It was a beautiful thing and then of course later on after i started teaching at even in nineteen um, lets see i came to Bethany in nineteen forty-four and uh we made May baskets up until, oh i suspect maybe ten years then uh but i think theyre almost a thing of the past now. Yes they are. But some of the May baskets are lacy and, oh they were beautiful and then of course, uh, right at the last they began putting candies and cakes and cookies. Who do you give them to, just everybody? Really your neighbors. Of course, people just don't neighbor like they used to but we would usually give them to the neighbors, uh knock on the door and then run. and uh oh it was uh alot of times you would get

six, eight May baskets. And after I started teaching school, I expect there's times that I got twelve, fifteen May baskets. Sometimes the May basket could have a little romantic meaning too. Alfreda Tullock of Maryville remembered such an incident some seventy years ago. I remember one basket that was given to me by a young man. I wasn't very old and my Daddy really objected to it, but he brought me a lovely May basket full of fruit and it was the first time we'd ever done anything like that and of course I was quite proud of that and didn't want to give it up. Daddy finally succumbed, and said you may keep it but you must thank the young man and tell him I would prefer that he would not do it again. But May Day was also a community festival in Northwest Missouri. Folklorists trace the May Day celebration to the very beginnings of recorded time and the basic part of this festival as the May pole. Now

ancient times before Christianity in Europe the May pole was a sort of alter to the pagan gods, a symbol of male sexuality and the dance around the May pole was a prayer for fertility and good crops. The celebration continued after Christianity was introduced in europe however, and our forefathers brought it with them to this country as part of the oral tradition. The May Day customs have been lost now, but we found that people our area remember them. Alfreda Tullock recalled May Day in Barnard many years ago. Everybody dressed, really, in something new for springtime and uh, then they would have a dance, a May Day, May pole dance. Ah you had a May pole dance? May pole dance. Was that for everybody or just for children? both the children, perhaps first, and then the older people What did they do, uh how did you dance around the May pole? Well

just a skip, a sort of a skip, as you went around, you know. know you would go around to music, and Barnard nearly always had a band and we would have uh. They had roomers, one, in the band. We would have a band, many as to keep playing to have culture of a people oral tradition and folklore. We'll be passing on beliefs from this oral tradition. Moon signs, water witching, spirits of the dead, home cures and fabulous

animals. Now some people might say these beliefs are just superstitions, a world of make believe. Well maybe. Water witching or dousing is an ancient practice that's rooted in a basic need- the necessity of finding water. To do it one needs a forked or y-shaped branch. Apple, peach or willow, depending on who tells the story and the end of the branch bends when the person holding it passes over water pretty unlikely that's what Perry Eckleberger, my partner and producing echoes thought. After all, this all sounds a lot like a magician's wand or a wizard's staff Well, folklorists tell us that dousing comes from this ancient branch of folk magic Perry visited Gus Risher, a member the NWMSU psychology department Gus owns a farm near Maryville and he has some experience with water witching Perry was definitely skeptical. In our own case, first time I was introduced to it water-witching was, well we wanted to have our own well dug and fellow got out of the truck and said, do you believe in water-witching and I didn't even know what he was talking about

I said well I guess. Uh what is it, and then he explained it to me and I said well if that's the way ya do it and he said well that's the way I do it some people don't believe in that. And he said if you didn't believe in it he said why then you're out of luck because I can dig your well for you that's the way I do it. And uh, I got interested in it, watching him we found some veins of water according to his witching processes on our place Hey let me try that. He says well ya know it doesn't work for everybody. and I said no, I didn't know that. And uh, I grabbed a hold of the branch branch then he showed me how to grab and twist it and uh he set me out walking where I guess there was a water a water vein and sure enough that darn thing just about twisted out of my hands i had a hold so tight that when it turned, uh the nubs on the branches in my hand and i couldn't do anything to keep that branch from turning. There's nothing i could do to keep that thing from turning Gus gave Perry a demonstration of water-witching on his farm. Now, what are ya doin?

a um, the positioning of your hands so the wye parts of this stick, the tail parts of this stick are, so that the palms of my hands are facing out and my knuckles of my hands are facing each other and I would grab the stick as tightly as I can in my hands and make a fist, so that it goes through the middle of my fist, and then twist so that the palms of my hands are facing each other and the knuckles on the outside, putting a lot of tension on that particular piece of wood you can see branch are digging in to my hand now it does look like it has a lot of tension. It does have a lot of tension on it and the stub part of your pole is up in the air pointing oh like up to the sun, at about a forty five degree angle with the earth and while the pole is under, a lot of the branch is under under tension, then you start to walk slowly, and supposedly as you

discover a water vein, the end that's pointing up to the sky will take a dip and where it points the ground that's somewhere underneath there's water of some kind either a pool, a stream, a water line. Ya know, there's water there apparently. Gus gave Perry a demonstration of water-witching on his farm. Gus is holding the wand. Ok and i'm trying to keep that thing from turning the other way pull it up and it goes down. See I'll be darned it goes right back up to the sky. I'm not moving my hand as you can see. That thing is moving in my hand closer and it just Well somewhere in here. And you're trying and

That, that's amazing, right down to the ground. If it's a real strong vein it'll break this branch. Ok, still down. Now Perry saw but he didn't really believe it, so he tried it himself. I have never believed in this stuff. I'm holding on to it and twisting as tight as I can Point it up in the sky. It's pointed up. Alright, and now I can begin to feel that tension, and i'm trying to hold it up, and that crazy thing is just pulling down. That's unbelievable i can't keep it from going down, it's really strong there down and it's everything I do, you know without literally changing my hands hands, and now i can, you know, it's just letting off a little bit.

it's like a heavy magnetic force or something Perry found out that there were more things under heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy he also found himself to be a really bewitching fellow area of folklore is folk medicine, like water-witching it comes from a basic need. The need to be healed from sickness and injury folklorists divide folk medicine into two areas, herblore and charms many stories about herblore. Harv Cushman of Bethany told us about cures for burns. You scrape potatoes for a burn yeah, and uh my younger brother pulled a, she'd been, she'd made a batch of and she had a breadpan about so big, and about that deep full of lard for which she was cuttin the donuts. And he pulled that off on the side of his face

and over his shoulder. There's an old Indian lady that lived on the corner from us and she heard the boy screamin and came right over and he was in a heckofalottuv misery. And that was from the lard? and uh this old lady told my mother mother, says get your potatoes out here and we'll scrape potatoes and put em car, so they potatoes, so I'd leave em just til they started turning blue peel em off, throw em away, and scrape, put on a fresh batch. And he come out of it with just one little scar on his shoulder, about that long face down we found hundreds of home cures, most of them based on ingredients that were

easily available turpentine, lard, coal oil and even more exotic things like goose grease and skunk oil. Neva Rhodes has written a little book in which she lists a great many of these cures. It's called folk medicine of yesteryear nineteen- as a common disease, and the recipe for, or the remedy for that rather, was take spirits of turpentine and sugar. That was the tasty midwest, uh and give it doses of a house ounce, followed by the same quantity of castor oil makes for a busy evening for constipation, a pill of your rhubarb and it and castile soap as an enema earache, blow into the ear and smoke from a pipe earache, burn a piece of paper on an old plate, I like this one especially. Let the paper burn until black and put the residue in your ear

for a head cold one teaspoon of sugar and a and a drop of turpentine before bedtime. Turpentine seems to have been an all purpose remedy? Yes it surely was. Aright, for a snakebite, how would you like this? Apply Apply a large juicy, chewed piece of tobacco on snakebite, or take a drink of whiskey but not too much. Neva also wrote some poems for her book that lists the cures and she put them in the form of the abcs. We'll give you just A through C. Alright for asafetida, a bag of acifidity tied around your neck to keep the germs away. It had a most unpleasant smell and you had no friends that day. What was the purpose of the asafetida bag? To ward off the germs. To keep you from taking the disease. You just wore a little bag around your neck with the asafitida in it? You notice in the picture it was made just about like that. It was a little powder. Mother put it in a little bag of course and on a little string, it was under the neck of the dress or the shirt if it were a boy that needed the prevention

B, if boils came on your face, it made you feel quite ill, but an ice cold poultice of bread and milk was better than swallowing a pill, and I know that that is commonly used by some of the old people that was around. C for colds mother made some catnip tea. That was a common remedy you remember Perhaps you don't remember? I don't either but I heard people talk about it. Never cold but always hot and she put you to bed and covered you up, certain cure she thought. These were herbal cures and they seemed to be the staple medicine of the early days, but there were also charms. The most common type was for warts Neva has one in her book. A sure cure remedy for warts stick the wart until it bleeds. Rub some of the blood on the dish gag, then hide the rag. rag. That's sort of a form of charming, isn't it? That must be what we'd call superstition. And there was a difference i think between

superstitions and the oldtime remedies, don't you? Well, we're just not sure about that Arbrey Cushman told us about having a wart charm and he thought it worked. I had a great big rose wart an the back of my hand one time quarter yeah. Talked a little bit. He said I believe I'd give ya a dime for that wart. He gave me a dime and he rubbed his hand, just rubbed his head with that wart oh it was as big a round as, you know what a rose wart is? Yeah. a big one, stood up there but you know

Huh? How long do you think it was before it left. Oh it was ten days, maybe two weeks What, he just rubbed his hand over it? Yeah. Did he have anything in his hand? No He had to give you a dime? Roger Welch is a folklorist at the University of Nebraska and a consultant for the Smithsonian Institute and he's careful about doubting the effectiveness of folk medicine. I still hear on television every once in awhile someone poopooing the idea of a copper bracelet to ward off arthritis. Of course that's ridiculous. How could that possibly help? Well the question is, let's look and see if it does. You can't just reject things out of hand, that's not a scientific approach. There now have been been sufficient studies done that suggest there is an interaction between the skin, sweat of the skin, and the copper that produces a very minor

quantity of a gas that reduces pain in the in the joints. Now one has to be cautious when you look at folk medicine to decide what it is that works in it a large part of it is the phenomenon of placebos but most sophisticated doctors will also say that a large part of their medication is placebo, even though they may give a real medicine to cure something, it's more the idea that someone has gone to a doctor, they know they're being helped, the doctor's wearing all the mystic garb of a wizard white things and tools that make him a wizard and so they know that the right magic's being done. And when the right magic has been done, then they're gonna get well no matter what the medicine does one way or the other. Well that's also true of some folk medicines, but in that case it doesn't really matter, it still works. Dealing with the everyday problems of life, people tried to find ways to cope with

their environment and passed those methods along by word of mouth, but there are many other areas of folk belief. And in an agricultural economy for instance, weather is of vital importance. We have sophisticated ways of predicting meteorological sometimes they even work three of the people we talked to told about predicting the weather by observing animals in nature used to watch watch for sun dogs, and uh, it generally was that generally was colder weather. In the wintertime, you'd catch a hog carrying sticks, building you can pretty near bank there's gonna be straw, trash, anything they can get a hold of, small boards or anything else and pile pile it up, and spread it out and lay i it

I used to raise hogs and used to watch em pretty close. A sign that my father used to watch it pretty close. He said nine times out of ten ten, when a hog built her nest in the afternoon, there'd be a sudden change that night. And they built it in the morning could be that they was ready to farrow, or could be a change in the weather. Animals, hogs is especially notable for preparing themselves for change Cattle and all kinds of stockmen know more about the weather than we do What do they do? Well, if there's gonna be a storm soon in the uh early winter, they'll run and play Just have a big time. They run around, makes em excited? yeah, yeah. They always said that a squirrel's fur was heavier time, then also caterpillars, their fur was heavier and there's another story that my grandfather told me

when I was young. he said if you had a heavy crop of maple seeds you had a good corn crop, and if you didn't have a heavy crop of maple seeds you had a poor corn crop it was an indian course when he was young why there could have been indians around weather forecasting whether by willy worms or whether fronts is an attempt to cope with future in transit my brain well another way to deal with the future is observing the moon almost everyone we talked to believed in moon signs once again ours was and is an aggri- cultural area crops and gardens were of vital importance and people planted by moon sign thursday dollars gave us the basic principles root cropped thats the time to plant tomatoes cabbage and lettuce and such grows on top of the ground but people used moon sign for many other purposes aubrey cushman told us about using the moon for hunting

each hang up your gun and stay in and when it was on its back you could get wet hmm what do they mean by on its edge when its tipped up the water all runs out of it- oh i see i see- and when its laying on its back holding the water others told us about moon signs for fishing and lots of other activities but we thought one the most interesting uses of moon sign was for pulling teeth both thursday and judge davis told us stories about that well it was ?one that wasn't thinner? but he's dead now and that was doctor Robertson he was a regular doctor but he pulled teeth for people but he wouldn't pull dark of the moon so that the place wouldn't bleed and it wouldn't uh gettin on make you wash your mouth out with salt water that's all day salt water lady down the hall here Pauline Kemper was a little girl and she tells me the story that her father brought her to doc cling

as either pull her tooth or her sister's tooth and her father said no not today why and she said he said my sign told her to bleed so he said well when is the time and he told him the made an appointment and he pulled the tooth and it didn't bleed and doc cling started from there and he wouldn't pull teeth except when the sign was right whenever that was i think there's something to that i think we got away from some knowledge that came through the hard knox and experience and we got too sophisticated to listen to moon sign water witching home cures and charms weather prediction all echoes from the early days of northwest missouri living in a world of make believe well maybe echoes is

for the are yet [harmonica] [rewind noise]