|
Boyhood Halloween in Rhodes Cove
Sylva Storyteller Gary Carden
The Halloween night that I crawled through kudzu thickets and saw-briars with Kenny Cope and Jimmy Parker in order to let Charlie Ridley's mules out of his pasture in Rhodes Cove, I never dreamed that I was participating in an "ancient ritual." The same goes for tipping over a half-dozen outhouses, banging a shovel on a washtub, firing a shotgun and making torches out of brooms wrapped in kerosene-soaked tow sacks. No, as we ran like demented heathen through Willie Painter's cornfield and John B. Ensley's pasture, screaming like banshees, we thought we were merely being annoying delinquents. When we carried our torches to the top of the hill and set fire to a brush pile that could be seen burning as far away as Beta, we snickered with glee and waited for our friends in Dills Cove and Fisher Creek to respond with a fire of their own. Twenty years later, I was amazed to learn that we were observing an ancient tradition.
As it turns out, the people who settled western North Carolina have been behaving badly on Halloween (as well as Christmas and New Year's) for hundreds of years. They, too, banged tin tubs, made loud noises and carried torches to mountaintops. As it turns out, all of this unruly behavior was part of an ancient observance that occurred annually in England, Scotland, Ireland and Germany. As I understand it, much of this nighttime revelry had to do with the short days and the loss of sunlight. In ancient traditions, as the sunlight retreated, the forces of darkness and evil advanced. The custom of creating loud noises and lighting up the darkness with torches were methods of routing demons and evil.
According to folklorists, the people in Appalachia have kept some of these customs, but have forgotten the reasons for observing them. That is good, I guess. I'm not sure that Kenny, Jimmy and I would have enjoyed the mischief as much if we had known about the old traditions. Given our ignorance, we spent the night being a minor irritation to our neighbors. As for Charlie Ridley's mules, well, they were old and didn't wander very far. The outhouses were easily returned to their former places, too. I also remember that when we arrived at some houses, we were expected. We sometimes found ourselves surrounded by howling people in bed sheets who drummed washtubs and fired shotguns of their own. After the noise subsided and we had been sufficiently frightened, they invited us into the house for stack-cake and coffee.
There are a lot of variations, too. Down in north Georgia, people sometimes blackened their faces with soot and called the loud noises "serenading." Some of my relatives in Macon County compared "serenading" with the "shevaree" tradition that was perverse way of celebrating weddings. Over in Cowee, some of my relatives told me of a dozen superstitions and customs associated with Christmas and New Year's Day that I had never heard of. I'm curious about the possibility that Jackson County may still have residents who remember some of the most colorful ones.
How about letting me know if you have information about some of the old customs. I am especially interested in details about Old Christmas, "first-footers," Yule logs and "dumb suppers." I'll share the information with Herald readers during coming weeks. Contact me at GCarden498@aol.com. Readers can also write me at 236 Cherry Street, Sylva, NC 28779.
|
