Charis in the World of Wonders

by Marly Youmans

  sacred bundle—In 2008, a sacred bundle “likely of West or Central African origin in its shape and composition” was found in Annapolis, Maryland. Many other materials related to enslaved Africans have been discovered, but until this discovery of a bundle tucked into the gutter of an early street, “no other evidence of West African religious traditions in seventeenth-century America had ever been found.” Materialities of Rituals in the Black Atlantic, ed. Akinwumi Ogundiran and Paula Saunders (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), p. 206.

  sadd colors—“I believe that our notion of the gloom of Puritan dress, of the dress certainly of the New England colonist, comes to us through it, for the term was certainly much used. A Puritan lover in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1645, wrote to his lass that he had chosen for her a sad-colored gown. Winthrop wrote, ‘Bring the coarsest woolen cloth, so it be not flocks, and of sad colours and some red;’ and he ordered a ‘grave gown’ for his wife, ‘not black, but sad-colour.’ But while sad-colored meant a quiet tint, it did not mean either a dull stone color or a dingy grayish brown—nor even a dark brown. We read distinctly in an English list of dyes of the year 1638 of these tints in these words, ‘Sadd-colours the following; liver colour, De Boys, tawney, russet, purple, French green, ginger-lyne, deere colour, orange colour.’ Of these nine tints, five, namely, ‘De Boys,’ tawny, russet, ginger-lyne, and deer color, were all browns. Other colors in this list of dyes were called ‘light colours’ and ‘graine colours.’ Light colors were named plainly as those which are now termed by shopmen ‘evening shades’; that is, pale blue, pink, lemon, sulphur, lavender, pale green, ecru, and cream color. Grain colors were shades of scarlet, and were worn as much as russet. When dress in sad colors ranged from purple and French green through the various tints of brown to orange, it was certainly not a dull-colored dress.” Alice Morse Earle, Two Centuries of Costume in America, MDCXX-MDCCCXX, Volume 1 (1903), pp. 27-28.

  Many reds were the greyne or “grain colors” derived from female scale insects (genus Kermes.) After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, cochineal from another scale insect became an export. Both scale insects were “formerly supposed to consist of little dried grains and to be of vegetable origin, and this accounts for the fact that in former times it was known as Kermes berries or vegetable vermilion.” Barrington DePuyster, “Use of Organic Dyestuffs for Manufacture”, Color Trade Journal, Vol. IV (January-June, 1919): p. 98.

  Sammodithee—“Same unto thee.” A response to well-wishing or greeting. W. T. Spurdens’ “East Anglia Words” offered this correction to Robert Forby in the English Dialect Society journal, 1879-80. (Forby points out that Sir Thomas Browne lists the word as “of common use in Norfolk, or peculiar to the East Angle Countries,” and glosses the phrase as, “Say me how dost thou.”) VEA.

  sanguine—Hippocrates codified the theory of the four humors or fluids governing human behavior—blood, yellow bile, phlegm, and black bile. Galen described four temperaments dominated by each of these as sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic humors.

  scotch-hopping—Scotch-hops and scotch hoppers are some of the older names for hopscotch. A scotch is a scratch or incised mark. Francis Willoughby’s seventeenth-century manuscript, Book of Games, refers to the game as using “oblong figures” and a bit of tile or stone.

  screak—Screech.

  shalm—“To scream shrilly and vociferously.” VEA.

  sirrah—An address to a man or boy of inferior social class to the speaker.

  skirr—To move with rapidity, often with a whirring sound.

  sneering-match—“The competition of two, or more, clowns endeavoring to surpass each other in making ugly faces for a prize or wager.” VEA.

  snickup—Away, begone! VEA.

  spank—To move swiftly and strongly. VEA.

  spar-dust—“Dust produced in wood by the depredation of boring insects.” VEA.

  spoffle—“To be over busy about little or nothing.” VEA.

  spong-water—A narrow streamlet. VEA.

  stroop—“The gullet, or the wind-pipe.” VEA.

  sup sorrow—Robert Forby defines the phrase as “to taste affliction,” and points out that Shakespeare uses a similar formation when Macbeth says that he has supped on horrors. VEA. (In one of the many variants of the Cinderella tale, the heroine is the similar Sapsorrow.)

  swang-ways—Obliquely. VEA.

  sweetful—Delightful. VEA.

  Sybbrit—“The banns of marriage. It is one of Sir Thomas Browne’s words, and in full use at this day. . . a public announcing or proclamation of an intended affinity.” VEA.

  tarriance—An act of tarrying or lingering.

  thornback—The godly regarded the thornback ray or skate with its spiny back and tail as a creature not worth eating. An old maid was also called a thornback.

  The link between the thorny and the devilish appears elsewhere as well. In his Journal, Governor John Winthrop described Mary Dyer’s stillborn “monster” as “full of sharp pricks and scales, like a thornback.”

  tiffany—Thin, sheer gauze.

  tomland—Wasteland, empty land. Tom is Scandinavian and probably fell into the language some time after the Mycel H&pen Here (the great heathen or Norse army) invaded England in 865, landing first in East Anglia.

  trattles—“The small pellets of the dung of sheep, hares, rabbits, &c.” VEA.

  trouble—“A woman’s travail.” VEA.

  the turning of the sieve, sieve-and-scissors—In The Devil’s Dominion, God-beer describes “balancing a sieve on opened scissors or shears and then asking a question; if the sieve trembled or turned, the answer to the question was affirmative” (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 37. This description suggests a horizontal shears with the sieve balanced on top. Other descriptions of the movement of the sieve suggest that the shears gripped the sieve in a downward position and were held lightly by two persons. Perhaps both modes were used in coscinomancy.

  unregenerate—Puritans believed that those who had not experienced God’s grace were unregenerate and divorced from God. Regeneration was a free gift that could not be earned, and the glory of human transformation belonged to Christ. Regeneration could lead to a sanctified life, or the man or woman could backslide, gripped by the human depravity consequent on the Fall.

  Vous avez justement ce que vous meritez.—French. “You have just what you deserve.”

  Wabanaki—“People of the Dawn Land.” The Wabanaki Confederacy was composed of these nations: Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot, unified as speakers of Algonquian languages.

  Wampanoag—Variants: Massasoit, Wopanaak, Pokanoket. Many coastal Wampanoag farming-and-fishing villages were wiped out (1615—1619) by an epidemic now most often thought to be rat-borne lepto-spirosis complicated by Weil’s Syndrome; almost half of the remaining Wampanoag Nation died in King Philip’s War (1675—1676).

  watered cloth—Silk, wool, or cotton fabric with a wavy appearance.

  whisk—A wide collar worn with a gown.

  white mouser—In Europe, cats had been long considered possible spirit familiars. White cats were especially fearsome and devilish creatures to the godly.

  wolter—“To roll and twist about on the ground; as corn laid by the wind and rain; or as one who is rolled in the mire. It is meant to be something stronger than welter” VEA.

  wortes—The category of wortes embraced both greens and onions. Greens ranged through rocket, cress, beet and mustard greens, cabbage, spinach, bugloss, sorrel, and plantain. Wortes also covered herbs—chervil, rosemary, sage, purslane, parsley, borage, mint, and fennel. Onions included chiboles (small onions), leeks, and shallots.

  “Richard's transparent writing style gives us a charming story and a strong theme, with realistic, convincing characters that we care about, who exhibit genuine love and gentleness in a challenging culture. It's a believable story whose characters we know are real from our own experience, even though they are mostly of another
time. This book would make a great movie!”

  - Peter Kreeft, Author, Jacob's Ladder: 10 Steps to Truth

  READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM Tobit’s Dog by Michael N. Richard

  One

  A flood of scent unfolded around Okra. He wanted to follow the interwoven ribbons of odor in a compulsive exploration. There was the smell of food, the smell of other creatures, and the smell of the intriguing unknown.

  In his mind they had as much depth, length, and variation as the sight of smoky tendrils rising from the smoldering piles of rubbish would have in a human mind. Some wove through the landscape, some of them roiled in place, and some of them spread low and wide like a mist.

  He wanted to roll in them. He wanted to find that promise of food. He wanted to give in to this delight of the senses.

  He did not. There was the master to consider. Okra glanced at the master. He knew the master did not want him wandering in this alluring place. Okra did not understand why this might be. It frustrated him. It made him quiver with restless yearning.

  Finally he just sighed and reluctantly moved away from the sensory promise, closer to the master. Okra was often torn between what he wanted and what the master wanted. While Okra certainly feared the anger of the master, he was pulled more by some innate desire to please the master. Fear he could work around, but this desire to please the master was even more relentless than the compulsion of the senses.

  Also, there were the treats.

  The dog trotted up to the man and tilted his head inquisitively. A slight smile was returned to him, and just as importantly the hand went into the pocket of the overalls.

  “That’s a good boy”, said the man as he pulled out a small piece of beef jerky and gave it to the dog. “I know this place is like a paradise to you, but it isn’t. Not at all; there are dangers all around here, even snakes. Stay with me.”

  Tobit considered the dog as it considered him. Old folk called this sort of dog an Indian dog. They claimed the animals had been here and about for longer than white men or black men. Many of them were feral or half feral. Even when attached to a man or his family they could be anxious, hardheaded, and easily distracted.

  He had found Okra as one of four puppies in a burlap sack along the banks of Ridge Creek. Someone had put the puppies in a sack with a brick and tossed it over the edge of the bank. Coursing between two low ridges, the creek had steeper banks than most creeks in the area, and to the great fortune of the puppies, the sack had snagged on the root of a tree. Only the brick was submerged in the water.

  Tobit could not imagine why the culprit had just left them there; perhaps whoever it was simply did not think it worth the effort to climb down the bank and complete the job. The second stroke of luck for the puppies was that Tobit, hearing their plaintive squeals, climbed down the bank and rescued them before a rising tide finished what their erstwhile executioner had not.

  Okra was the most contemplative of these puppies, and he was more intent on being with Tobit than the others. He had a very faint melanistic mask, beginning slightly black around his nose and long, dark whiskers, then fading quickly to a pale tan mixed with white. His body was mostly a golden tan, long legged, with a tightly curled tail, and with a rump seeming slightly higher than his shoulders, which was something Tobit noticed as common with what he called jumpy dogs. It was, however, the ears that were first noticed—long, tall, and erect ears.

  After those extraordinary ears, the eyes were his most distinctive trait. They were so dark as to be nearly black, but with dark brown fur marking a thin line around them, almost the way a woman might apply makeup. Tobit had thought of them as “Egyptian” eyes because of the resemblance to the stylized eyes of ancient Egyptian art.

  Those eyes were why Okra ended up staying with Tobit, who was not at all sure what he was going to do with these puppies. Times were difficult, but he could not bring himself to complete the grim task another had failed to do. A solution presented itself when, through a peculiar string of coincidences, a white professor from the Agricultural and Mechanical College in Raleigh turned up with an interest in the dogs.

  The man explained that he was intrigued by the phenomenon of feral dogs across the world, and the way they seemed to be of similar size, build, and coloration. He brought pictures of dingoes, Canaan dogs, and pariah dogs from other parts of the world.

  He also showed Tobit photos of the kennels and runs where the dogs would be kept, and made assurances that they would be well kept and suffer no harm, as he was most interested in their personalities and their nature. As it turned out, he was least interested in Okra of the four because he was larger and had those peculiar eyes. The professor suspected that maybe Okra had a different father than the others, as sometimes happened with dogs. He doubted that Okra was of as primal stock as his siblings.

  This worked for Tobit. Those eyes that set Okra apart from the other puppies were what attracted Tobit to him. Tobit himself was known for his own extraordinary eyes, and he felt an immediate kinship to the dog. So the other three went off with the rich, white professor and Okra stayed with the poor, black, jobless man.

  Tobit smiled and looked down as Okra sniffed his master’s fingers with a pointy wet nose to make certain no more treats were forthcoming. That black nose, those dark eyes, and those tall ears all seemed focused tightly upon wherever the dog’s interest might rest at any given time.

  Tobit chuckled to himself. Okra was not a big dog, maybe forty pounds or so, but he was tough. Not fearless, he could be quite uncertain and nervous, but there was always a point beyond which he would not be pushed.

  He winked at the dog, “Enough of all that now. Just stay close by. I’ve got to get on with some work.”

  Tobit turned his gaze now to the dump around them. This was the source of Okra’s fascination. Tobit found it less intriguing, especially on a hot day such as this. The smell of rotting food and stale ash permeated the air. He had dabbed some Mentholatum Ointment between his nostrils to offset the stench until he was acclimated. He had work to do.

  A large chest of drawers had caught his attention. First it had to be dragged up and over less promising garbage. He removed the drawers first, stacking them near the cart where his mule, Joe-boy, stood patiently waiting. Then he heaved the chest itself up and over.

  With that bit of exertion done, Tobit stood up and removed his straw hat so that he could wipe away the sweat from his brow with a broad handkerchief. As he replaced the hat and stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket, he heard from behind him a series of clipped snaps.

  “That’s a good boy”, he chuckled, as he watched Okra leaping and snapping at the flies attracted to the stoic mule. It was entertainment for the dog and relief for Joe-boy.

  “Make yourself useful.”

  He returned his attention to the dresser. It would need refinishing, to be sure. One of the squat legs was missing. A few of the drawers had loose joints, but all in all it was a good find, and something within his ability to repair.

  Tobit straightened up from his inspection and surveyed the hellish scene around him. The county had only recently burned and bulldozed the garbage heap. There were still small coils of smoke wisping up from the ash. Pickings were always slim following a burn.

  The dresser was a good find because there was naught else to be found today, he thought. The dresser meant the short trip from his home had not been a waste.

  He moved the stack of drawers onto the mule cart, and then hefted the dresser up behind them on its back so that it would not tip over. Then he clambered up onto the wooden bench and patted it. Okra sprang onto the seat beside Tobit, and his focus of nose, eyes, and ears burned forward as Joe-boy responded to a light slap of the reins and began pulling them homeward.

  The graveled road curved through an expanse of second-growth pine before intersecting a cracked and worn asphalt road. The older, tar-bound macadam shone in patches beneath the neglected asphalt surface. Once this had been one of the main roads winding t
hrough the county, but the building of a bridge over Rush-Knott Creek had rendered this loop of the road redundant.

  The cart and its load creaked as the wheels rolled through the rutted end of the gravel road and up onto the raised pavement. As man, mule, and dog turned their gaze southward along the road, Tobit sighed at the sight of a white car rolling toward them through the heat shimmering off the pavement.

  The pot-light on top of the car flashed red. Lord, that man loved to play with those lights, thought Tobit. Tobit knew what was next, and he heard the truncated wail of the siren. Okra tilted his head quizzically at the sound of it.

  Tobit coaxed Joe-boy to a halt. The curve of Okra’s tail thumped against the back of the wooden seat until Tobit’s shush told him they would not be dismounting. The white car coasted with a slight squeal of brakes until it came to a stop, and the pale, sweat-glistened, white face of the driver was opposite Tobit.

  “Toby.”

  “Sheriff”, replied Tobit, with a polite tip of two fingers to the brim of his hat. The young sheriffs patronizing greeting grated, but Tobit’s expression remained unreadable. The sheriffs grandfather, Judge Oliver, would have at least used a man’s proper name, even if he was a black man. The judge would have included a “mister” if the man was significantly older than himself. No “Toby” for the judge. “Mister Tobit” was what it would have been.

  “What you got back there?” asked young sheriff Oliver.

  “Just an ol’ chest-o-drawer I found at the dump. Looks like I can fix it up for selling. Reckon times are improving that folk can throw away something that’s not beyond use.”

  Oliver nodded amiably enough, though his eyes remained cold, dark, and calculating. “I’m right glad you’ve found a way to make a living, Toby. Had you played straight with me it wouldn’t have come to this.”

  Tobit sighed and shifted his gaze to the nearby shallow ditch so as not to betray his anger. He gathered himself to look back at the sheriff, even as he brushed one of his large, worn hands along Okra’s back to ease some of the tension the dog had picked up from his master’s brief moment of irritation. Okra did not care much for the sheriff to begin with.