by Bob Curran
What better place, it was argued, for a spell to be made than in the stitching of a quilt? And what more intimate things could a person have than their coverlet wrapped around them against the chill of an Appalachian night? All the better for the stitched spell to take effect. Thus, the mountain witch could stitch her evil or her curse into the intricate weave of the quilt, perhaps mixing in some evil thing, such as noxious mountain herbs like snake root, pokeweed, or wild parsnip leaves. Only when it was placed on the bed would the curse really take effect.
The Cussing Coverlet worked in one of two ways. First, it could wind itself around the sleeper, choking the person to death. It would then rearrange itself as an ordinary quilt once more, giving no clue as to why the sleeper had died.
It might also act in a vampiric way, drawing the energy from the person sleeping beneath it into itself, like a sponge. In the morning, the person would rise, tired and ill-slept, possibly exhausted by nightmares as well. Eventually, the Cussing Coverlet sucked away all of his or her vitality and left the individual as an empty shell or even dead. And there was no way of detecting the Coverlet unless one had a practiced eye and could see the spells woven into the cloth.
It was further said that certain mountain midwives, healers, and wise women had the “knowing” of making such quilts—what undetectable spells and incantations to sew into the item—and their services could be purchased if need be. One of the most famous in Tennessee was the notorious Granny Bacon in Blount County, an area famous for its patchwork quilting. According to the Tennessee folklorist Dr. Joseph Sobel, she was sought after throughout the state by families seeking to resolve feuds and quarrels through dark and supernatural means. It would appear that she was something of a skilled needlewoman, and acquired “the knowing,” which she adapted into her patchwork in order to make money. She was not a witch per se—there are other references to her as a healer—but she had certain skills that she chose to use for nefarious purposes when her neighbors clandestinely called on her to use them. Her quilts were deadly, vampiric things that could gradually draw the life from anyone who slept below them. And yet they were stunningly beautiful, all incredibly fine examples of mountain artistry and craftwork. But something of the evil intent had gone into them and had made them dangerous. Although most of the “old timey quilts” have long passed into extinction, there are still some of Granny Bacon’s (and those of some other mountain witches) about even today.
NORTH CAROLINA
In the wild, mountainous country near the tiny village of Boho in southwestern County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, tiny roads interconnect, leading across the stony uplands to queer, isolated hollows and fields. Some roads will take you across the uplands to Swanlinbar, others down toward places such as Wheathill or The Five Points near Florencecourt.
If you were to follow one of the narrow earthen lanes that lead upward into the fields, you would eventually come out high up on the side of a steep hill and close to the ruins of what seems to be a prehistoric fort in which lies a well. It is tucked away among large stones, thick brambles, and thorn bushes, and it always appears to be in deep shadow, even on the brightest day. Although the water in it seems clear, few farmers in the area let their livestock drink from it or will drink from it themselves. In Ireland, and in some other parts of the Celtic world, it is known as a Famine Well.
As their name suggests, Famine Wells in Ireland are connected to the great Potato Famine, which ravaged the countryside between 1845 and 1852. Around 1589, the English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh planted the first potatoes in Ireland as a garden crop at his home in Myrtle Gove. From that small planting, potatoes spread across many of the fields in Ireland and became the county’s staple. Potatoes could be grown in very little space—several drills or rows were all the Irish peasantry needed—and with very little effort. They were both filling and nourishing and, even when heated, could still be held in the laborer’s hand and eaten as he worked.
In 1845, the potato crop failed spectacularly. It was coupled with a generally bad wheat and barley harvest in both England and Ireland. In 1847, the famine was at its worst. Almost everyone expected the Famine to pass, but the disease was in the soil, and each time the Irish turned their land, they dug the blight in once more. The effects of the blight would reoccur year after year as late as 1852 (in fact a less virulent form of it still remains in the soil even today). However, even as it began to die away slightly, its consequences for the Irish people were still devastating. Throughout the “Black Years” of 1847 and 1848 many died and many more emigrated. The roads were filled with people traveling between locations, seeking employment, and seeking food. The Irish countryside had become a nightmare of death and disease. It was not only the hunger that killed people, but a whole series of illnesses associated with it. By 1852, more than a third of the Irish population were either dead or fled to other places.
The Famine had an impact on the folklore of Ireland; memories and associations of that terrible time were woven into the tapestry of Irish belief and storytelling. For example, there is the supernatural phenomenon of the Hungry Grass. This is supposedly a lank and sickly grass that often grows on the grave where a Famine victim has been laid to rest. All across the Irish roads and fields, a number of the unfortunate were buried where they died, often without any Rites of the Church.
If one inadvertently steps on a patch of Hungry Grass then one is immediately seized by the Famine Hunger and may very well die from it, just as the victim in his or her grave did. The only remedy is to carry a small piece of bread, which one must insert between the lips as soon as the hunger strikes. Even the smallest morsel will be effective. However, such places could be dangerous, and there is even a place known as Hungry Hill in County Cork that rises above Bear Haven and Bantry Bay. It is said that a number of unfortunates trying to reach Cork Harbour died and were buried there, and that, consequently, large patches of the Hungry Grass are in evidence.
The idea that the Famine dead had somehow “polluted” the land became extremely widespread in many parts of Ireland. Indeed, the idea went from simple patches of grass-covered land to wells and springs along roadsides and remote mountain places. It was thought that the unfortunates had drunk at these places and had somehow transmitted the Famine into the waters of the well. Those who drank from it thereafter would become “infected” with the Famine element. In fact, in some tales, the Famine Well takes the goodness from whoever samples its waters, drawing it into itself. In effect, the Well actually drank from its victims in the same way that a vampire might, leaving them weak, hungry, and exhausted. Moreover, it created a craving in the person to drink from it again, and would draw him or her back once more to its waters.
The idea of water, wells, spirits, and blood merged together in an idea that the well was devouring or drinking the sacrifice. Such a notion had an almost vampiric quality about it, as if the well was a living thing and was demanding both blood and life. It was as if the spirit who was worshipped there and the actual well had become one entity.
This idea was all very well in Celtic countries such as Ireland and Scotland, but could such a notion transfer itself to the United States? The answer is that it could and it did, and became prominent in places such as North Carolina.
The English arrived in the late 1580s when Sir Walter Raleigh established the ill-fated but celebrated Roanoake Settlement, which was probably wiped out by local Native Americans. There was little interest in the area until around 1653, when settlers from Virginia began to establish more permanent towns around the Albemarle Sound (which they named after George Monck, Duke of Albemarle) in present-day Stanly County. Albemarle would assume the name North Carolina in 1691 and become a fully-fledged colony in 1712. The settlers who arrived there found themselves largely isolated from each other and from the other colonies throughout the area, for although there were some major towns, the region was mountainous and thickly forested, and did not lend itself readily to integration.
Altho
ugh it was initially an English colony and would remain so for many years, it was Scots-Irish settlers who latterly determined the character and culture of the new state. Most of them were Protestant and large numbers were Presbyterian (many were Fundamentalists), and a good number were also from poor farming stock in their own country. It is estimated that between the years 1710 and 1775, more than 250,000 of them arrived in the colonies and settled throughout the developing states with large concentrations in the south and the Appalachian region. They all brought the culture and traditions of their homeland to the New World.
When these immigrants arrived in North Carolina, they found the English well established there. Much of the prime farming land had been doled out to incoming settlers from England and was occupied by second- or third-generation families of that descent. So, the new arrivals traveled further into the mountain country—into the Great Smokies, a part of the Appalachian chain—where the land was still untamed and had not been claimed by former settlers. They settled in the remote valleys and hollows where they set up isolated and reclusive communities, which still maintained many of the old ways that they’d brought with them from their mother country. Many of these beliefs and customs appeared strange or “quaint” to outsiders, but they embodied the characteristics of what formed the hardy people who had made the mountains their home.
Life in the mountain country was certainly hard; a harsh environment with many natural obstacles such as disease, wild animals, and dangerous Natives often made up the settler’s world. It required a person with a determined character and hardy physique to withstand all the obstacles that the environment threw against those who ventured into the mountain wilds. It also required a resilience that came from deeply held traditions. It was these traditions that invariably shaped the characters of the mountaineers and enabled them to stand against the vicissitudes of their new environment. Old beliefs and perceptions were not all that readily disregarded.
In many ways, the landscape of North Carolina was not terribly far removed from that which they had left in Scotland or Ireland. It was mountainous and covered in forest with hollows and glen-like valleys tucked away in folds in the countryside, through which creeks and rivers ran. It had shadowy hollows with tiny lakes, ponds, and swampy areas. And of course there were wells. Many, like the ponds and minor lakes, were tucked away in remote hollows or on the high, near-inaccessible sides of hills and mountains.
These wells were sometimes perceived by local Native Americans in roughly the same way that they were seen in Ireland and Scotland. Local legends said that they were the abode of capricious spirits, or that they were gateways to another realm from which their waters issued. They were often treated with both reverence and awe.
Scattered throughout the Appalachian Mountains are a number of summits known as “balds.” There are summits or crests that are covered with a thick vegetation of mountain grasses or mossy heath where one would normally expect heavy forest. How and why such summits have occurred is an ecological mystery. However, these mysterious hills were viewed with apprehension by local Native American tribes.
The names of some of these mountains reflect a long and complicated history, and some of them are known by the epithet of “woolly heads,” because their summits are covered with a light gorse. Others take their names from dark tales that are connected to them. For example, Grier’s Bald, about 45 miles from Asheville, North Carolina, is named after a strange, mad, and very sinister hermit, David Grier, who lived there around 1802. He shut himself away from the world after the rejection of his marriage proposal by the daughter of local military man and Grier’s former employer, Colonel David Vance. Grier withdrew into the wilds and, according to rumors, trafficked with dark spirits on the mountain summit in order to win the girl (who had by this time married someone else). He lived up on the Bald in splendid isolation for almost 32 years, subsisting on what he hunted and a portion of the $250 that he had obtained for services when he had worked for Colonel Vance. There seems little doubt that such isolation drove him mad. When others began to encroach on his territory, he responded both angrily and aggressively and eventually killed one of his neighbors, Holland Higgins, who “trespassed” on his mountain. Brought to trial in 1834, he was acquitted on grounds of insanity, but was killed shortly afterward by one of Higgins’s friends. Other versions of the tale say that he was killed by an ironworker whom he’d threatened and who subsequently lay in ambush for him. The killing was dismissed as one of self-defense, so feared and abhorred was the strange hermit within the local community. His unquiet spirit is supposed to haunt the mountaintop as a penance for his dealings with dark powers, and the influence of these forces is still said to linger there.
Although Grier was certainly a strange character, he was not alone. Many such people—whether they were hermits or not—were to be found among the mountains of North Carolina, some of them associated with the balds. The mysterious Moses Fenn (or Fennel) is another strange character who allegedly lived among the hills during the 1840s and who frequented their upper reaches. Fenn was supposedly a wolf hunter who dwelt in a makeshift shack somewhere in the forests around Wayah Bald or Tusquitee Bald, which are both now part of the Nantahala National Forest. Moses Fenn emerges as a vague character about whom little is known, but according to popular lore was more Indian than the Indians themselves. He allegedly took several wives (mostly Cherokee) and was something of a shaman among some of the local tribes. His dealings with white men, however, were very few and far between. At times, he would disappear into the mountains (particularly the balds), and not seen for long periods. He would also sometimes tell wild tales of secret kingdoms lost among the hills or far underground, which he had supposedly visited. However, stories about him are so varied and contradictory (and he also appears to have been slightly crazy) that perhaps little attention should be paid to his claims. They do, however, refer to an interesting perspective on Cherokee folklore.
Many of the legends of local Cherokee tribes have maintained that these balds are hollow inside. Moreover, their interiors contained “countries” in which people, creatures, and forces dwelt. From time to time, these beings would come to the surface world and, though they did not remain here long, they often left evidence of their visit. Late at night, Cherokee hunters would see the flickers of fires along the mountains, suggesting that “people from below” were hunting on the surface of the world, or they might find curious tracks through the forest, which were suggestive of something strange and perhaps inhuman traveling that way—something that had maybe come from the lower worlds beneath the mountains.
The Cherokees, for example, spoke of Judaculla, a great giant that had come to the surface and left mysterious glyphs on a rock near the Devil’s Courthouse on Whiteside Mountain. Similarly, Spearfinger, a creature that was somewhere between a witch and an ogress, emerged under cover of darkness from her underground lair to do harm and to kill as many as she could with her spear-like forefinger. In addition to this, there were the Nunnehi, strange little people who lived under the hills or in the deep forests and only came out to hunt at night. They were so temperamental that to encounter them might be extremely dangerous. They might lead you back to your own camp, or they could just as easily take you back with them into the underworld and you would never be seen again. Closely allied to these Nunnehi were the Moon-Eyed people, who only hunted by the light of the moon. As their name suggested, their eyes were large and round and their sight was weak; they were pale skinned because they lived so far underground and only came to the surface on rare occasions. Unlike the temperamental Nunnehi (who could, on occasion, be very benign), these creatures were extremely dangerous, ferocious, and inimical toward humankind and were to be avoided at all costs.
How had these beings come to the surface world, especially when they lived so far beneath the ground? The answer lies in the water-courses and sink-holes that dotted the region. Such creatures supposedly found their way to the surface by following ancient rivers
and deep water sources, and probably returned to the depths by the same route. Water flowed through the hollow hills, emerging in the surface world. Wells, particularly in the remote hills, were also used and were considered to be a favorite method of entry to our world.
Native American lore also mentioned spirits and invisible forces that lurked at such wells, which could be just as dangerous as the underground folk. Such forces lingered close to springs and deep holes from which they often drank. These were the old spirits of nature or the ghosts of dead warriors, and were usually extremely hostile toward humans. They dwelt in the trees and bushes that grew around the edges of the wells and sometimes even in the water itself. Those who were foolish enough to ignore the warnings around such places and came to drink there might find themselves attacked and even drowned in the well-waters. Others might be induced to drown themselves under the malign influence of the spirit there or be dragged down into the other world, deep inside the balds.
It was, of course, extremely unwise for a brave to sleep anywhere near the well, as the spirits were always on the prowl there. They could drink the energies from the sleeper as he lay close by, just as easily as they could the water in the well. Those who slept by such wells often woke up exhausted and disorientated from the attentions of the spirit. It was not only the invisible spirits who attacked hunters while they slept, for the Moon-Eyed people sometimes chose to drink human blood in order to restore their own energies for a hard night’s hunting on the surface. Thus, for tribes such as the Cherokee, who hunted among the mountains and the balds, such places were extremely dangerous and should be avoided.