Happy is the miller boy who lives by the mill;
The mill turns ’round with a free goodwill.
One hand in the hopper and the other in a sack;
Ladies step forward and the gents fall back.
The old water mills are passing rapidly due to modern methods of milling, but the taste of burr-mill bread made from water-ground meal lingers in the memory of every old-time Ozarker. Old-timers claim that such meal escapes being heated during the slow grinding process and is more palatable when made into bread. Add to it a few cracklings and bake in a Dutch oven, and no other corn bread on earth can compare with it in flavor and goodness.
The water-mill epoch of the Ozarks is marked by the principles of individualism, with liberty and justice for all. It is a period that should adorn history’s pages as a golden age of democracy.
Special Days
Folk life is embellished with practices connected with red-letter days on the calendar. The observance of long-established customs dispels the rigid monotony of everyday life. Hillfolks like to give play to the imagination on special days: to visualize George Washington cutting the cherry tree, Abraham Lincoln splitting rails, men in powdered wigs and knee breeches signing the Declaration of Independence, rabbits miraculously laying eggs at Easter time, oxen kneeling at midnight on the eve of Old Christmas, St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland. There are love charms for St. Valentine’s Day, devilish pranks on Hallowe’en, the groundhog running from his shadow on February 2, signs and omens on May Day, and the usual Yuletide fancies on Christmas. The majority of these practices are old Anglo-Saxon traditions transplanted in the Ozarks by the early settlers.
May Day has an ominous setting in the backhills. Activities begin on the last night of April when lovelorn maidens hang handkerchiefs on bushes or clotheslines with romantic purpose. Every girl knows the superstition, whether she believes it or not, that when the handkerchief is dried of dew by morning sun on May 1, it will have on it the initials of the man she is to marry.
Another romantic experiment may be tried on the first morning of May. Without a word to anyone, the girl goes to the well or spring before the sun is up. She takes a glass or bottle, fills it with water, and lets the sun’s first rays shine through it. In the water, she expects to see the image of her husband-to-be. But according to the old wives’ tales, she may see a coffin instead. In the old days that meant an early death.
Or perhaps the young woman goes to the spring at sunrise, breaks an egg into a glass, and pours water over it. In it she may behold not only her future mate, but the number of children to be born to the union.
If these charms do not work, the romantically inclined maiden may bake a salt cake on May Day and eat a generous portion of it just before retiring. The man who gives her a drink of water in her dreams is to be her Romeo. Or she may look into a deep well at high noon and view the image of her intended through the reflection of a mirror.
“There isn’t a blame thing to those old signs,” the older folks say, but the younger generation continues to look for them just the same. Perhaps there is a subconscious feeling that they might after all prove true.
Early in May is the proper time to set a “dumb supper.” At least it was considered so in grandmother’s day. On the day set for this romantic event a group of girls would get together and follow the old, old tradition taught to them by their mothers. The table was set with dishes but no food was placed in them. An apparition was not supposed to partake of food. It was his business to come out of the night and occupy the place laid for him by his prospective bride. Each girl fixed the place for her lover and then stood behind the chair to await his coming. Of course, he never showed up in ghostly form but the event caused much merriment for the girls.
It is recorded that on one occasion a prospective groom did appear in flesh and blood to astonish the girls. It happened in this way. Two boys overheard the planning of the dumb supper and decided to have a little fun at the girls’ expense. No sooner had the girls taken their places behind the chairs than a noise was heard outside the house. They were frightened but made no outcry. The door opened slowly and into the dimly lighted room walked a man. With hat pulled over his eyes, he walked straight to the chair at the head of the table and calmly seated himself. The girl gave her prospect careful scrutiny and then screamed, for the young swain was none other than a boy she had recently spurned. He made no move to leave, but sat there undisturbed by the girl’s wails. But when she fainted and fell to the floor, her lover came to life. From that time on the despised admirer met with more favor. In fact, they were soon married and settled in a home of their own. The dumb supper wasn’t such a dumb affair after all.
The Fourth of July is a day for fun and festivity in the Ozarks and hillsmen know how to make the eagle scream in the good old-fashioned way. Suppose we select the village of Buffalo, in Baxter County, Arkansas, as the site of our patriotic funfest. It is well to arrive early on this holiday for parking space is limited in the little White River town and everyone for miles around will be there. Cars, wagons, buggies, “horse-backers,” and folks on foot will line every road leading to the picnic grounds.
We crowd into the community schoolhouse to hear the reading of the Declaration of Independence by a local boy who attends college at Batesville, and to listen to the patriotic oratory of the county judge and other regional celebrities. Buffalo takes pride in this annual celebration and it has a right to do so. The community is steeped in history and tradition of long standing. This scenic spot was a pioneer trading post and the head of navigation on White River in territorial days. It is a fitting place to celebrate the birth of the nation in the good old American way.
Contests follow the speaking and we shake with laughter as a squad of hillbillies give the greased pig a run for the money. Perspiring boys take turns at the greased pole with covetous eyes on the top where a silver dollar is anchored. We cheer heartily when a freckle-faced urchin reaches the goal and pockets the dollar. Grizzled hillsmen call hogs in true hillbilly fashion and housewives give exhibitions of husband calling and rolling-pin maneuvers that lift the hair on one’s head. Chips as large as cowcumber leaves fly in all directions as husky men swing axes in the log-cutting contest. There is keen rivalry in horseshoe pitching and a lanky hillsman from Big Flat takes the honors. Contests in shooting, swimming, boating, foot-racing, and pie eating give young and old a chance to prove their skills and carry away prizes. The grand climax is the tug-of-war between the fats and the leans. The heavyweights puff their way to victory much to the chagrin of their lanky opponents.
There is barely time to slip over to a stand for a hot dog and a bottle of pop before the afternoon program begins. Everything runs as scheduled. Fiddlers vie with one another in scraping mountain melodies from vibrant strings. There is competition in singing old ballads and shape-note ditties. Sacred Harp singers from downstate give an exhibition of their singing technique. Square dancing occupies much of the afternoon with two sets going at the same time. Prizes are awarded to the women for proficiency in canning, baking, and sewing and the men get awards for woodcarving and leather work. The largest family present receives a sack of flour, the tallest man gets a brand-new ax, and the most recently wedded couple takes home a pair of bedsheets.
The big night attraction, of course, is the traditional free fireworks display, sponsored by the chamber of commerce. Then fiddles croon and guitars strum and the dance is on till the wee small hours of the morning. Nothing modern or streamlined in Buffalo’s Independence Day celebration.
Christmas is a day of expectancy to young and old in the mountains. The Yuletide season in the backhills may lack the colorful, artificial pageantry of the town, but it is Christmas just the same and sentiment tugs at the heart even in the midst of poverty and isolation. Let us, for the moment, turn back the clock of time one hundred years, setting the hands on December 25, 1841.
The Ozark region in 1841 was a wilderness mecca for the hunter, trapper
, and trader, but its agricultural epoch had not yet begun. Although the land had belonged to the United States thirty-eight years, settlers had trekked in rather slowly. The first ones came, so the records show, during the first decade of the century, pushing their way over rough mountain trails or moving in keelboats up the White, Black, North Fork, and Current Rivers. Most of the Indians had been moved westward before 1830, but a large portion of the country remained an untrodden wilderness with no roads and few social opportunities. Subscription schools of three months’ duration provided the formal education for the youth. Law courts were few and far between. The religious needs of the people were cared for by circuit riders who traveled the mountain trails on horseback to shepherd their flocks. Trading posts were sometimes fifty miles apart and the roads, especially in winter, were practically impassable. One would naturally conclude that Christmas in such an isolated region would be a dismal affair. Of course, there was no exchange of fancy gifts, no packages coming by parcel post from mail-order houses, no radios to wish you a merry Christmas and to follow it up with the suggestion that you could make it merrier with a carton of a certain brand of cigarettes or by installing an oil heater in the old fireplace, but regardless of the handicaps of isolation, the Christmas spirit pervaded the hills and the children worshipped Santa Claus even as they do today.
In 1841 the backhill Ozark region was made up of settlements of a few families, usually kith and kin. The weather was never too cold nor the roads too bad for them to get together on Christmas Day. If the parson happened to be present they would have religious worship for they were pious people and chips off the old block of Puritanism. The dinner was not a series of elaborate courses, but it was a substantial meal such as hillsmen relish. It consisted of wild meat such as deer and wild turkey, or perhaps a fat hen boiled in a big pot and surrounded by tasty, tender dumplings. Corn bread was the staff of pioneer life, but on this occasion there was sweet bread with wild honey or sorghum used as sweetening. Toys were few, and candy, when obtainable, was invariably of the striped-stick variety, but the children, knowing no better, were easily satisfied. A backhill Christmas one hundred years ago was, without doubt, a comparatively simple affair, but it fitted well into the prosaic of human life at that period.
Parade of Folklore
Folklore has been defined as the beliefs and practices of barbarians and illiterates, but this definition is incomplete and only partially true. In its broadest sense, folklore includes all customs, beliefs, mannerisms, legends, and lore of the folk, regardless of the cultural status of the class in which they are found. Its sources may be divided into three classes:
1. The traditions and practices of uncivilized peoples.
2. The beliefs and ways of the uneducated portion of civilized society.
3. Survivals of primitive lore which linger in the customs of cultured peoples and influence their activities.
Each of these groups is a fertile field for the folklorist. There is an abundance of material to be found even among the elite. Take, for example, the subject of superstition which is one of the strongest survivors of the fear element to be found in human nature. One of the most progressive merchants in Arkansas will not permit his janitor to sweep dirt out through the door after dark because of the mythical bad luck penalty connected with this practice. A keeper of a big city hotel refuses to number a room “13” and never starts a journey on Friday. Many cultured people continue to believe in superstitions and regulate their conduct accordingly. In fact, it is an almost universal trait of mankind.
The parade of folklore is colorful pageantry, pristine in its simplicity but pregnant with meaning. Traditions thrive best in a land which refuses to succumb to the plow. Ozarkians, who recognize cultural values, take pride in their folkways and consider them a noble heritage from a glorious past. Let us lift the curtain for a look at the shadowy land of yesteryears with old-timers who recognize the historical value of backhill lore and logic. The items that follow are contributions of old-line Ozarkers who have helped shape the destiny of the Ozark Country:
The good old days in the Ozarks. Our best doctor had his saddlebags stuffed with quinine, castor oil, turpentine, and calomel. His admission to the profession may have been obtained by a grade of sixty-seven percent in these four medicines, but we had faith in his practice. Ozarkers in those days didn’t have modern ailments, and a hot onion poultice usually cured the inflammation of the bowels now called appendicitis. The doctor gave us blue mass pills for constipation—that is, if our home supply of mayapple roots had run low.
We used a “mad stone” to draw the poison from a wound made by a dog having hydrophobia. We secured the stone from the stomach of a buck deer. It was laid upon the wound and allowed to draw. It was then removed and placed in a bowl of hot milk. If it had been effective, the poison would turn the milk green. The treatment was continued until the stone could be dipped into a bowl of milk without coloring the liquid.
Our neighbor across the creek would stand at the corner of his five-acre patch of wheat and “whet a banter” on his cradle. This was done by stroking the blade with a whetrock, producing a code or tune recognized by all hillsmen. This challenge would bring other cradlers helter-skelter to the spot to compete with him in cutting around the field. Sometimes the winner was entertained with an oyster supper or a squirrel stew at the expense of the losers.
Almost every settler had a small field of wheat to be ground into flour for home consumption. If his land was not suited to wheat, he would take a “passel o’ corn” to the mill and trade it for flour. The grain was first cut with reap hooks, which was a very slow process. The cradle was thought to be a great improvement over the old way of harvesting. A good cradler could cut four acres of grain a day. Threshing was accomplished by tramping or with a flail. One method was to build a rail pen four or five rails high and place a sheet on the ground within the pen. Rails were laid across the top and the bundles of grain laid upon them and beaten with a flail.
Before the days of the fan mill the wheat was winnowed on outstretched sheets, agitated in a natural or artificial draft. Sometimes a hollow log was used as a winnowing machine. A handle was attached to one end and the log rolled from side to side, separating the grain from the chaff.
Some of the first settlers beat their wheat in mortars to make it into flour. Then came the small horsepower gristmills and after that the larger water-power mills.
The first breaking plows used in the Ozarks were of the “barshears” type. The bar and shears of the implement were made of metal by the local blacksmith or the pioneer farmer himself. These were attached to homemade wooden moldboards and stocks. These plows were not strong enough to break up the sod of blue stem grass on the prairies and this fact caused many settlers to pass the lucrative level lands and locate on the ridges. After the timber was cleared, they broke the land with a bull-tongue plow which had a jumping coulter in front of it. This plow could take lots of punishment among stumps and roots. By the second year the barshears plow could be used for the breaking. Corn and other “rowed” crops were cultivated with a “double shovel,” drawn by a single mule or horse. Many hill farmers still use this implement in preference to modern two-horse cultivators.
Fences in the backhill country were restricted to crop lands in the old days. Horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs were marked or branded and turned loose on the range. Horses were branded as in the West, on hip or shoulder, usually with the initials of the owner. Hogs were marked by cutting holes or making slits in the ears. Sheep had labels placed in their ears to identify them. Cattle were branded or labeled as the owner preferred. These brands and marks were sometimes recorded at the county seat to avoid infringement of rights. There was always a bell horse, a bell cow, and a bell sheep among the stock turned on the range. Most of the stock would stay near the one that carried the bell. Roundup time was in the fall. Neighbors joined together in collecting and identifying their herds.
We used linchpin wagons, so named becaus
e the wheels were fastened on with linchpins stuck through the ends of the wooden axles. The old Anglo-Saxon term for axletree is lynis. “Lynispin” was shortened to “linchpin” by the early settlers. The outer end of the hub was slotted to admit the pin which was dropped through the slot and hole in the axle and the wheel end keyed on. The reverse operation, and the wheel was off.
One hundred years ago there was a scant population in the Missouri Ozarks. Travel between the sparsely settled communities was over rough trails, or along watercourses in various types of boats. A few roads linked some of the more important towns with St. Louis.
A stagecoach line was operated between St. Louis and Springfield, but the speed of which people boasted in 1841 would try the patience of Job today. It was a matter of pride that the traveler could leave St. Louis by stage and be in Springfield at the end of three days. High water and muddy roads often held up travel for days or weeks at a time.
There was no highway department in Jefferson City—first called The City of Jefferson—to petition when a community needed a new road. There was but one thing to be done; people did it. They organized “road bees” and went to work with axes, picks, and shovels to build roads along the best route between two points. The shortest distance was not considered. The roads were routed along the ridges where they were least affected by flooded streams.
There were no bridges, so men applied for permits to operate ferries across the larger streams. Rates of ferriage across streams varied, but it is interesting to note the rates of an Osage River ferry, operated by Thomas O. Witten in 1841. Witten had to file a $500 bond and pay the county collector the sum of two dollars for a license to operate his ferry one year, and was permitted to charge the following rates:
Man and horse . . . 25¢
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