I’ve long suspected that the lot of us go looking for folks as bad or worse off than we are. We seek out the imperfect and the flawed, the wild and the mad. They make us feel more free somehow, maybe even more significant, and just maybe, more alive. We’d rather ride the dark horse than the fancy carriage. Perfect folks are boring. Bland. They blend into the wallpaper and are forgotten by history and dog-eared novels. But don’t let them fool you none. They have secrets behind their plain white doors. They have empty pretty smiles and empty pretty heads. And sometimes, the longer and better you know them, the uglier they get. You know it’s the truth.
There used to be an old woman up toward Jewell Ridge, back when Granny was still a girl, and she wandered around with a burlap sack thrown over her shoulder, putting spells on any stray cat she could find. She’d hunker down all slow and make odd hand gestures to those feral creatures and breathe cryptic sounds in their direction. The enchanted cats would ball up in the crook of the woman’s arm and she’d roll it into her sack with the others and go on her way. To this day I still wonder whatever in the world she needed with all those ol’ cats. Granny didn’t know, and I suspect she didn’t want to.
Now this is the truth: I ain’t got any need for lies or tall tales when there are cat women roaming the hills and hollers. Ain’t got any use for perfect fancy folks neither. But that didn’t stop Granny and Mama from trying to raise me to suit for one.
Despite the family tales of specters and cat women and rogue panthers roaming the hills, I was not allowed to watch scary movies for fear that the very devil and his company would come straight out of the screen and possess my mind or cause havoc on the happy contentment of our home (and Lord knows we had enough havoc already). Now you must keep in mind that I had been worn out a few times by the Bible Belt early on, never minding that my daddy was a wild man and Granny had seen the cat woman and had specters running around her house that she didn’t mind a bit telling folks about. Granny wasn’t one of those fancy girls. And we all have sense enough to know that pretty strawberries don’t fall off a crab apple tree.
So I reckon we too come from those wild and mad folks, those riders of dark horses and believers of witches and things with no answers or explanations. I suppose I’m one of them, too.
And the music we grew up with, that rock and metal and all that hair, it was full of devils too, or so we were told, and to let it in our ears would corrupt our goodness and lead to nothing but a bad end. I recollect the time I beat the daylights out of Bon Jovi cassette tape with a hammer, and I’m telling you, not a single devil came out of its innards. And yet it was no secret that Granny was in the family way by the time she was not even sixteen, and that was back when nothing but sorrowful dirges and back porch guitar picking fueled the budding imaginations of our namesakes, much less the sinful sounds of Bon Jovi and Aerosmith and rotten boys like them.
I figure the devil gets too much credit.
The truth of it is, we’re all mad already. Born that way, I suspect. That’s what they all implied, Granny and Mama and the rest of them. They tried their best to turn us into those pretty folks, and you know it’s the truth. But what they said and what they did was much to the contrary.
They told us to knock on wood and not to open the umbrella in the house and that rosemary planted around the porch will keep the witches away. And never burden your children with names that have thirteen letters or they’ll turn out like Charles Manson or Theodore Bundy or Jack The Ripper. And never take an expecting mama to a funeral or her baby will be born with turpitude looming over its head.
And if you bite your tongue at supper, you must’ve told a lie and had it coming.
Well I do declare, whatever wits we had left after our upbringing surely wouldn’t be spooked the rest of the way out by Angus Young or ol’ Fred Krueger. Granny and the tales of the cat woman and those old warnings had done enough spooking all by themselves. I figure we were ruined from the get go, doomed to never ride a fancy carriage for the rest of our days. And I figure it was all by design, whether they meant to do it or not. We ain’t strawberries, after all.
And we might not have cats in a sack, but Lord no, we ain’t one of those boring perfect people. And we like it that way just fine, thank you. We saddled up that dark horse long ago, and we’re still riding on and telling our tales. Folks go looking for those as bad or worse off than they are, you know.
Well, I figure they found us.
|
|
Anna and Granny, l just found you today. I have been reading as much as I can since. I feel like I found more of my soul family. I have lived in WV most of my life. I knew how to use herbs all my life. When I was a teenager, people would ask me how I knew how to use herbs. My answer was always ” I just have always known”. I discovered, when I was close to forty, my Great-grandmother was a Blackfoot medicine woman. She guided and blessed me with her loving gift.
I would see an herb and known what it healed. When I got ” formal education” to be a certified herbalist I then would know the name of the herb but I couldn’t remember what it was for.
SORRY GRANDMOTHER!!!! It was quite a lesson! We are Wild Women using our Wild Crafts! Thank you Anna and Granny. I promise to honor and listen to my Elders. In love and light,
Dana 💚
Enjoy your writing! Some things I have just done all my life just because. I refused to go to a funeral when I was pregnant with my youngest son. I could not go and I knew it. I can never cross a black cat”s path without wiping out the danger. The list goes on. I have North Carolina and Cherokee heritage.
All familiar and real. My Granny could tell the best stories. Sure miss my Granny and Granddaddy.
Reblogged this on suzyvickgmail and commented:
…this stuff is way too familiar.
I read several of these stories to my cat. He seemed to like them very much, the way the words flowed. He liked them more than bits of my stories I read on Wattpad! (:
Just found your blog. You are a very talented writer. I sincerely hope you get your work published. As far as the granny witches go…. let’s just say, my family aren’t Appalachian, or even Southerners, but my Momma’s folk are from Ireland and Wales, do I know thing, or two about the Old Ways of which you speak.
I have already shared your blog and Facebook page with my oldest and closest friend. Now she is a Southener! Her Mom’s folk hailed from Charlotte, NC.
Keep writing, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
I can’t describe how glad I feel that you are sharing your stories. I know those stories. They are my life.
I made a fresh commitment to fully expressing my witchy (crab apple) self yesterday, and today I wandered across you. One of my grans was Appalachian born and raised, and I can hear her gravelly raspberry voice chiming in with agreement as I read your words. So glad to have found you!
I am loving your writing. Reading about Granny & Mama & the cat woman reminds me of the night my soon to be daughter-in-law and I sat out on the porch of a cabin in Lost Creek (Reliance, TN) and told ghost stories and about the ‘painters’ that roamed the woods. We scared ourselves silly and had to go inside. I hadn’t though about that in quite some time. I think that was in 2002. Keep on writing, girlfriend, and we’ll keep on reading it.
This is so new to me.Ive never heard of granny witches. Its really interesting. I will read everything I find about them.I love the superstitions that they have. My grandma was very superstitious. Thanks for the great read.!!!
i have the eerie ability to know when someone is dying . I dream dreams of deaths and the next day that person, or animal has died. Also I have a strong sense of perception. I can literally read people s minds. My daughter also has this some ability . The gifts have been passed down from my Cherokee blood line.
A friend of mine shared your blog with me, and I’m so glad she did. I would so love to be able to sit on your porch for awhile! I’m from the swampy flatland of rural S GA. My people, on both sides, migrated here from more mountainous regions “up north.” My paternal Grandmother was a Christian woman, but she certainly learned a lot of old ways from someone in her family. She was a herbalist and midwife. I have been fortunate to meet people she delivered. The folks of Dixie Union called her Dr Mary. And the saying was if she told you that you needed the City Dr, you were BBBBAADDDD sick. LOL. She even prepared the dead for burial until she married my Grandfather… he was for some reason freaked out by that. I would give almost anything to be able to travel back in time and learn all she knew about plants/trees/herbs, midwifery, etc. As far as I know, all that she knew died with her. BUT… as Anna Wess wrote on her blog, “crazy is in my blood.” So, I’m still learning how to tap into all that knowledge in my blood and bones. When I asked Music Funeral Home permission to come and bathe my Dad before they prepared him for his funeral, I felt his Mama, my Granny, smile real big. My two sisters surprised me, and I think even themselves, when they decided to come with me and participate. With bluegrass music playing, and memories being shared, we bathed our Father’s body…. we shaved his face… and shampooed his hair. It was the last thank you we could give his earthly form. It was a beautiful thing. Yes… there’s crazy in my blood, and I’m so thankful.
Just found you. You have a beautiful, clear voice that made me laugh! New to this part of the country, so I’m glad to be getting an inside look at your culture.
Anna, I am a graphic designer newly enamored in your writing and I see that you are plotting a book out of this…so if you’d need someone to design it then, and maybe even illustrate, I volunteer as a tribute 🙂 My portfolio is at http://www.misul-do.com, you can take a look! In the meantime, please keep on writing, it’s sooo goood. Aaahh.
You make me miss my Mommaw who was a mountain woman and loved to tell spook tales and legends! Thank You!
Excellent! I love the flavor of the mountains in your writing. I was there!
I enjoy your writings! I am a granny from generations of them. It runs through the bloodlines of the mountain women, and we embrace it, all in our ways. I look forward to your writings in the future. Bless your young heart!
Love it!
Really excited to read about my ancestors! Lol. Love your writing. I want the book. Not ebook. Really looking forward to it!
Good job Ms. Anna! Your voice is crystal clear in your writing. I love reading it and don’t want it to end.
Absolutely love your writings!
I am glad I found YOU!
So grateful I found Appalachian Ink! I’m a westerner who refers to her aging self (78) as Granny Gerry. I have a very pretty cousin, a strawberry, who is shocked that I use that term. Very important to her to be prefect and “stay young.” I embrace the old woman I’ve become and YOU have made the term, “Granny” even more fascinating!!
“Look upon the face of death, never feel your baby’s breath.” I’m Appalachian raised, and first heard this when I was hugely pregnant and asked to play “pee-anna” for a funeral. Unnerving!
Great story! I cannot get enough.
LOVE IT..
Witches run in my wife’s family, so I am always looking’ over my shoulder and running’ scared, Thanks for clearin’ all that up for me.
I love these little stories I wondered upon you on FB my question is are there books?? if so can you tell me the titles and where to find them I love this and they would be awesome presents for friends as well
thanks diane
No book just yet, but hopefully soon. Thank you!
Delightful! Perfectly wicked!
You are truly one of the best Appalachian writers out there. I so relate to this. My upbringing was very similar, and I have to say— I love those old superstitions. I don’t believe all of them, but I sure do hold them dear. Remind me of my grandma. haha
I know I have found ‘us’/