Kentucky Folktales

by Mary Hamilton

  I did not memorize the words Lewis wrote, but retell the story in my own words. Given the change in time periods between her telling and mine, I felt the need to say a little more about why people would have been weavers, and specify the use of the wagon to move Flannel Mouth from place to place. I mostly stay with the same plot and images, but use somewhat different wording. Here’s how Nora M. Lewis wrote the story down:

  Flannel Mouth4

  Once there was a woman so mean she did not like anyone, not even her own baby. She said so many mean things and cuss words people called her Flannel Mouth, and by that name and no other was she known.

  Old Flannel Mouth worked for the folks around her to support herself and her baby. At that time everyone wove their own cloth to make their clothes. Flannel Mouth was a wonderful hand to weave so she wove day in and day out never caring for her baby.

  One day as the snow lay deep, real deep on the ground, she had been weaving and let her fire die out. The baby became cold and began to cry. This made her angry, so she killed her baby and hid it in a big snow bank.

  Every night she could hear crying under her pillow, so she could not sleep at all. She left her home and went to hire to a woman. The woman asked her where her baby was. She said, “I gave it to a kind woman who wanted a baby very much.”

  Her job with this family was weaving. She wove and wove of a day but as soon as she went to bed something began to cry. She got up and wove all night by candle light for she could not bear to hear that crying any longer. She cussed the crying and cussed everything, but cussing did not do any good, the family got tired of her working all night and sleeping all day.

  One day the mistress of the house told her she could not keep her because she stayed up all night, but that they had a cabin up a branch and that she could stay there. Flannel Mouth was glad to get by herself again.

  For a few nights everything was so quiet, she sat down by her fire and fell asleep. Something woke her and in the door stood one big hairy leg. She cried out, “What are you here for?”

  But it answered and said, “I am just one big leg. I am just one big leg.”

  In come a little white leg and stood by the large leg.

  “Why did you come here? Oh! Why did you come here?”

  The little leg said, “I was cold in the snow, Mother, I was cold in the snow.”

  In came another big hairy leg, and stood by the other one. All she could say was, “Why have you come here? Oh! Why have you come here?”

  The answer was the same, “I am just two big legs. I am just two big legs.”

  In came another little leg and sat by the other leg.

  “Oh! Why did you come here?”

  “I was so cold in the snow, Mother, I was cold in the snow.”

  By this time the door was full of legs and she could not pass them. In came a large hairy body and got up on those legs.

  “Why did you come here?” she said.

  The answer was the same, “I am one big body, I am one big body.”

  In came a little body, and got on the little legs. By this time Flannel Mouth could not speak, but the body said, “I was cold in the snow, Mother, I was cold in the snow.”

  In came a big head with red eyes and arms so long with claws so sharp, and two horns on its head. In came two small arms and the small head and got on its body. The mean woman tried to pass by, but the big hairy body with the horny head grabbed her and said, “To mile [mete] out your punishment. You owe me a debt that has to be paid.”

  And the baby said, “I am not cold in the snow, Mother, I am not cold in the snow any longer.”

  The baby smiled, but the hairy head only grinned and took her away so fast he left his tracks smoking.

  I can attest the story has staying power for audiences today, just as it did for the children and nieces and nephews of Nora Morgan Lewis. Several years ago eighth graders at St. Romuald Interparochial School in Hardinsburg, Kentucky, used the story to humorously complain—and lucky me, one of their teachers told me about it! I had told stories there early in the school year. One day in winter, the heat went out. Teachers kept the classroom doors closed and space heaters were brought in to provide heat. That left no heat in the halls. While younger students spent most of their day in the same classroom, older students changed rooms each class period. The teacher reported eighth graders entering her classroom moaning, “It’s cold in the hall, teacher, so cold in the hall,” duplicating the tone and timing from the refrain in “Flannel Mouth.” More than once I’ve been speaking in a different context, only to have someone say, “Oh, I know you. You’re the ‘It’s cold in the snow, Mama’ [imitating the plaintive way I say this during the telling] person, aren’t you?” I love it when that happens, and it is a special treat when the person tells me how long it has been since they heard the story! Yep! It’s a tale with staying power.

  THE BLUE LIGHT

  Near the edge of a large forest lived a woodcutter and his three beautiful daughters, Emily, Ella, and Lisa. All three girls had hair like their mother’s, as fine and pale as the tender silks on the corn that grew in the family garden.

  When Lisa, the youngest, was just a toddler, her mother died. Nevertheless, she and her father and sisters managed to live well. Every day, the father and daughters ate breakfast together. On weekdays, the father took up his axe and walked into the forest to work. The daughters worked around the house and in the garden, and they fixed dinner. Then Emily, the oldest, carried her father’s food into the forest. Emily never knew exactly where her father would be working, so she followed the sound of his axe. At the end of the day she helped him carry wood home. On weekends, the father and daughters carted the wood to the nearby town and sold it in the marketplace.

  One day, the woodcutter returned from the forest alone. “Why didn’t Emily bring my food?”

  “She did,” said Ella. “She left hours ago.”

  The woodcutter hurried back into the forest to look for Emily. He searched and searched, but could not find her. When he returned home it was dark.

  The next morning the woodcutter told Ella and Lisa, “I’m going to keep looking for Emily today. Both of you stay home. I’ll find her and be back before dark.”

  Ella and Lisa completed their usual chores. By the time they ate their dinner, they could hear the faint sound of their father’s axe. “Oh,” said Ella, “Daddy must have found Emily. I hear him working. She must be hungry. I’m going to take them food.” She packed a pail of food and left.

  Late in the afternoon the woodcutter returned home alone. When Lisa saw him coming, she ran from the house calling, “Where are Emily and Ella?”

  “I couldn’t find Emily,” her father answered, “and what do you mean where is Ella?”

  “We heard your axe, so we knew you’d found Emily,” Lisa explained. “Ella took you food.” Again the woodcutter searched the forest until dark. Again he returned home alone.

  The next morning the woodcutter said, “Lisa, stay home.” He left without eating breakfast. Now Lisa was a good girl. She really tried to stay home. She cooked and ate breakfast. She washed the dishes. She swept the floor. She pulled weeds in the garden. She tried to keep herself busy, but she had never been home alone all day before. By noon, she was bored. She cooked her dinner. As she sat on the porch eating, she heard the sound of an axe in the woods. She thought: “That’s Daddy working. I know he told me to stay home, but he must be hungry. He didn’t even eat breakfast. I’m not a baby; I know I’m big enough to take him food, and Ella and Emily will be hungry too.” She packed food in a sack and walked into the forest.

  Carefully, she followed the sound of the axe. When the axe stopped, she stopped walking and waited. When she heard the axe again, it seemed to come from a slightly different direction. She walked toward the sound. Again it stopped, and again she stopped. Each time the axe began again, Lisa changed her direction ever so slightly to walk toward the sound. Eventually she began to fear she would never reach her father and
sisters, for the sound always seemed the same distance away. Again the axe stopped. Lisa waited and waited, but the sound of the axe did not return. Only then did Lisa realize the forest was growing dark. She had walked all afternoon.

  She started walking again, hoping to find shelter as the forest darkened around her. Finding nothing, she sat with her back against a large tree trunk and hungrily ate the food she had packed. She feared wild animals would find her, but she didn’t know what to do.

  When the forest grew fully dark, Lisa could see a faint blue light shining through the trees. “Good,” she thought, “a light means people.” She carefully walked through the darkness toward the blue light. Eventually she reached a clearing. A house stood in the clearing, and from a window a blue light shown. Lisa hurried to the door and knocked. When a man opened the door, she said, “Hi, my name’s Lisa. I was lost in the woods, and I saw your blue light.”

  “Come in,” the man said as he opened the door wide. He motioned Lisa over to his kitchen table. He placed a steaming bowl of soup in front of her. “I was just about to eat,” he said. “Please, join me.” As they ate, he said, “Hmm, I believe I recognize you. Aren’t you one of the woodcutter’s daughters?” Lisa acknowledged she was. “Well, I know where you live,” the man added. “You aren’t too lost, but it’s way too dark to travel now. Tomorrow, I’ll show you the way home.”

  After supper the man took quilts from a cedar chest and made a sleeping pallet near the fire in the kitchen for Lisa. Then he went to another room for the night.

  The next morning the man cooked Lisa a fine breakfast. Then he said, “I’ve got some errands I need to get done before I take you home. While I’m gone you just stay around the house. You can go out on the porch if you want to, but don’t go in my storage sheds.” Then he left.

  Lisa appreciated the man’s kindness, so she washed their breakfast dishes. She found a broom in a closet, so she swept his floor. She sat on his couch and waited for his return. She grew bored, very bored.

  She carried the broom outside and swept the back porch. She noticed a line of storage sheds in the back yard. “I wonder what he keeps in those,” she thought. She finished sweeping, sat on the porch steps, and stared at the sheds. The longer she looked at them, the more curious she grew. Then she remembered: “He told me not to go in the sheds. He didn’t say I couldn’t look in.”

  She walked over to the sheds. Locked—they were all padlocked. “I don’t know why he told me not to go in them,” she thought. “I can’t go in anyway.” She returned to the porch, picked up the broom, walked inside, and placed the broom back in the closet. She was just about to close the closet door when she saw a large silver ring hanging from a nail on the closet wall. From the ring hung a single key. She grabbed the silver ring and headed for the storage sheds. Again and again the key slipped into the padlock, but would not turn. At the last shed, the key turned and the lock popped open. Quickly Lisa removed the lock and placed it in her pocket. She opened the shed door a crack and peeked inside.

  The shed was so dark, she could see very little. The floor looked damp. Near the door was a basket. Lisa could see corn silk glinting in the faint light. “Now, why would anyone store a basket of corn silk,” she wondered. But as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she could see that beside the corn silk was something else. Skin? She opened the door wide to let in more light, and stepped inside. She saw her sisters’ heads resting side by side in the bottom of the basket. She gasped and looked away. In the dim light she could see her sisters’ headless bodies fastened to the back wall of the shed.

  Lisa stepped back from the shed. She was trembling, but she managed to close the door and fasten the lock. Then she ran back to the house and returned the silver key ring to the closet.

  She paced. She did not know what to do. She worried: “I don’t know the way home. Besides, if I leave and he finds me in the woods, he will know something is wrong because I didn’t wait for him. I locked the shed. If I don’t say anything he’ll never know I looked.” She was still pacing when she heard footsteps on the front porch. Quickly, Lisa sat down on the couch.

  When the man opened his door, he asked, “Well now, have you been a good girl?”

  “I sure have,” Lisa replied, keeping her voice strong and steady, “I even did the dishes and swept the floor for you.”

  “Did you go in my sheds?” he asked.

  “You told me not to,” she said.

  “But did you?” he persisted.

  “I told you, I did the dishes and swept the floor. I even swept your porch too. You told me not to go in the sheds.”

  “So, you are a good girl.” He smiled; then he walked over to her and stood before her. “Hold out your hands,” he demanded.

  Lisa held out her hands. He inspected them, and smiled again. Then he pulled over a chair and sat in front of her, “Now, hold out your feet,” he ordered.

  Lisa lifted her feet. When the man saw her feet, he muttered. “There’s a bloodstain on your right foot. You are not a good girl. You were in my storage shed.” He rose from the chair and walked toward the kitchen saying, “Now I need my knife.”

  Lisa jumped up and ran from the house. The man called after her, “Come back here, bad girl. You’re just like the others, a bad, bad girl.” Lisa could hear him running after her. He knew the forest; she didn’t. She ran this way and that trying to stay ahead of him. She tripped on a tree root. She scrambled to her feet, but he caught her.

  He dragged her back to his house and out to the last storage shed. There he killed her. He placed her head in the basket and fastened her body to the back wall beside her sisters.

  By now it was near dark. He returned to his house, cleaned himself up, and washed his knife. Then he took vegetables from his storage bin and chopped them for soup. By the time the soup began to cook, it was fully dark. He lit the blue light and placed it in his window.

  The soup was almost ready to eat when he heard a knock on his door. He opened it, and there stood a girl. Her short hair, black as a crow’s wing, curled over her head. “Hi,” she said. “My name is Susan. I was lost in the woods, and I saw your blue light.”

  COMMENTARY

  ATU Tale Type 312 Maiden-Killer (Bluebeard)

  My retelling comes from “The Blue Light,” collected by Leonard Roberts from either Mrs. Dicie Hurley of Majestic, Pike County, Kentucky, or Mrs. E. McClanahan of Freeburn, Pike County, Kentucky.1 What most attracted me to the story is the ending. In most tale type 312 Maiden-Killer (Bluebeard) variants, the girl survives and the man is punished. In this ending he is still out there, making it a much more chilling tale than most. Listeners who enjoy returning movie characters, such as Jason in the Halloween movies and Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street films, also appreciate the open-ended close of “The Blue Light.” I have encountered a storytelling colleague or two who protest, “You can’t kill off the third sister.” Oh, but you can, and the story chills.

  Roberts collected another Bluebeard variant, “The Three Girls and an Old Man,”2 from Chrisley Day of Polls Creek, Leslie County, Kentucky. It includes checking the girls’ feet for bloodstains. I deliberately incorporated this image in my retelling, especially after hearing an audible gasp from a listener during a WOW Storytelling Weekend3 when I included the bloodstained foot for the first time.

  Other changes I’m aware of between the collected version of “The Blue Light” and the version as I retell it include reducing the number of sisters from four to three, sending the father out to search for the lost daughters, using the sound of the axe as the method the girls typically use to locate their father at work, having the man feed the girl and treat her with kindness the evening she arrives, changing the prohibition to “don’t go in” instead of “not to look into,” which then makes the bloodstain on the foot more chilling, since she seems to have gotten away with her actions until the man inspects her feet. In the typical Bluebeard story, as in the Roberts-collected text, the keys are dropped
into the blood. By describing the sisters’ hair, I’ve managed to weave in their mother and use the desire for a closer look at the corn silk in the basket as the reason for the third sister to step into the shed, thus acquiring the bloodstain. Describing their hair also helps distinguish the dead girls from the girl who arrives at the end of the story. In some early retellings, a few audience members interpreted the last girl as a sister returned to life or as a ghost of one of the dead sisters.

  My retelling developed through my working on this tale at a WOW Storytelling Weekend, telling it to many different audiences, making subtle changes, and then intentionally keeping what seemed to work best. In short, I’ve done what I was taught to do as a storyteller: I’ve reimagined the story and retold it from the images I created in my imagination.

  Here is the Roberts-collected text, as I found it in the archives, including the paragraphing and the inserted paragraph symbols:

  The Blue Light4

  Once upon a time there was a woodsman who had four daughters. Each day this man went far into the forest to cut wood and the eldest daughter took him his noonday meal. One day the eldest daughter prepared her father’s lunch and started on the long journey into the woods. As evening turned to night the father came home. He was very angry because no one had brought his lunch to him. His daughters told him that his eldest child had went off into the woods with his lunch early that morning and had not returned.

  The next day the next oldest daughter went into the forest to take her father’s lunch. That evening the father came home and wanted to know what had happened to his lunch and they told him that it was sent to him by the next eldest daughter. ¶The same thing happened the next day. ¶The man had only one daughter left and he didn’t want her to go into the forest. The man went back to work and left his daughter to tend the house. The daughter became lonely there by herself and she decided to take her father’s lunch to him even though her father had told her not to go into the forest. She set out through the woods to find her father and as she walked, she didn’t notice how thick and dark the forest had become. When she did she had lost her way and it was getting late. She had traveled some distance when she saw a blue light shining through the forest. When she had gotten to the source of the light and she saw a small cabin in a clearing. She knocked on the door and a huge man opened the door and let her in. She told him that she was lost and could not find her way home. He told her she was not to look into any of the locked rooms or outside buildings. ¶She agreed and the next morning she decided to clean the house while the man worked in the forest. She had clean[ed] most of the house when she spied a set of keys on a chain hanging on the wall of the cabin. She remembered what the man had said about not looking in the locked rooms but her curiosity got the best of her so she took the keys from the wall. She tried all the doors but the keys wouldn’t fit so she went outside and tried the buildings. When she came to the last one she tried the keys and the lock snapped open and the girl almost screamed for there was three headless girls. ¶She stepped inside and saw the rings on the fingers of the dead girls and she knew that they were her sisters. As she turned around she dropped the keys on the floor in the blood. She picked them up and wiped them hastily. When the man returned he noticed the keys and he told her that she had disobeyed him and for that reason she must die too. ¶He started toward her with a long sharp knife and as he came closer she ran out of the door and through the woods. As she ran blindly she tripped and fell. Before she could get up the man had found her. He dragged the screaming, crying girl back to the cabin where she received the same fate as her three sisters. ¶When he had cleaned up the blood and locked the door of the outside building he heard a knock at the door. It was a girl who had lost her way and was attracted by the blue light.