Folklore Snake Exaggerations from the US December 22, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Beach has often written on the myths created by American newspapers: and the (deliberately?) naive recycling of the same by British newspapers. Here is a nice example which is making fun of tales concerning snakes: the only surprise perhaps is the absence of the ‘monstrous snake’. True to form this was taken by a Lancashire newspaper (20 June 1888) from (certainly) an American paper: though there is no source given, can anyone help? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Do you want some items about snakes?’ asked an agriculturally-rural-looking gentleman of an editor. ‘ If they are fresh and true.’ responded the editor. ‘Exactly,’ replied the farmer. ‘These items are both. Nobody knows ‘em but me. I got a farm down the island [what island] apiece, and there’s lots of snakes on it. Near the house is a pond about six feet deep. A week ago my little girl jumped into the pond, and would have drowned if it hadn’t been for snake. The snake seen her, went for her, and brought her ashore. The particular point about this item is the way he did it.’ ‘How was it?’ asked the editor. ‘It was a black snake, about thirty feet long, and he just coiled the middle of himself around her neck so she couldn’t swallow any water, and swum ashore with his head and tail. Is that a good item?’
‘First class’.
‘You can spread it out you know. After they got ashore the girl patted the snake on the head, and it went off pleased as Punch. Ever since then he comes to the house regular at meal times, and she feeds him on pie. Think you can make anything out of that item?’
‘Certainly. Know any more?’
Next we get to the snake aupair. All the snakes on ‘the island’ are friendly.
‘Yes. I got a baby six months old. He’s boy. We generally sit him on the grass of a morning, and he hollers like a bull all day; at least he used to, but he don’t any more. One morning we noticed he wasn’t hollering, and wondered what was up. When we looked there was a rattlesnake coiled in front of him scanning his features. The boy was grinning and the snake was grinning [as snakes do]. By and by the snake turned his tail to the baby, and backed his rattle back right into the baby’s fist’ ‘What did the baby do?’ ‘Why just rattled that tail so hard you could hear it three quarters of a mile, and the snake lay there and grinned. Every morning we found the snake, until one a bigger snake came, and the baby played with his rattle just the same till the first snake came back. He looked thin, and I reckon had been sick and sent the other to take his place. Will that for an item?’
‘Immensely,’ replied the editor.
‘You can fill in about the confidence of childhood and all that, and you might say something about the blue eyed cherub. His name is Isaac. Put that in to please my wife.’
Next comes the hoop snakes: one of the most bizarre bits of Americana.
‘I’ll do it. Any more snake items?’
‘Lemme see. You’ve heard of hoop snakes?’
‘Yes; often.’
‘Just so. Not long Ago heard a fearful row in our cellar one night. It sounded like a rock blast, and then there was a hiss and things was quiet. When I looked in the morning the cider barrel had been busted. But we didn’t lose much cider.’
‘How did you save it?’
‘It seems that the staves had busted out, but before they could get away four hoop snakes coiled around the barrel and tightened it and held it together until we drew the cider off in bottles. That’s the way we found ’em, and we’ve kept ’em around the house ever since. We’re training ’em for shawl straps now. Does that strike you favourable for an item?’
‘Enormously responded the editor.’
‘You can fix it up so as to show how quick they was to get there before the staves were blown off. You can work in the details.’
‘Of course. I’ll attend to that. Do you think of any more?’
And now we get to the garter snake.
‘Ain’t you got enough. Lemme think. Oh yes! One Sunday me and my wife was going to church, and she dropped her garter somewhere. She told me about it, and I noticed a little striped snake running alongside and listening to her. By and by he made a spring, and just wound himself round her stocking, or tried to, but he didn’t fetch it.’
‘Why not?’
‘He wasn’t quite long enough. He jumped down and shook his head and started off. We hadn’t gone more’n a quarter of a mile when we see him coming out of the woods just ahead of us. He was awful hot and tired, and he had another snake with him twice big as he was. They looked at my wife a minute and said something to each other, and then the big snake went right to the place where the garter belonged. He wrapped tight around it, put his tail in his mouth, and went asleep. We got him yet. We use him to hold the stovepipe together when we put the stove pipe up. Is that any use as an item?’
‘Certainly,’ said the editor.
‘You can say something about the first snake’s eye for distances, and intellectuality, when he found he wouldn’t go ‘round. You know how to do that better than me.’
‘Oh yes!’ said the editor. ‘When did all these things happen?’
‘Along in the fore part of the spring, but I didn’t say anything about ’em then, ’cause it wasn’t the season for snake items. This is about the time for that sort of thing, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ chipped in the editor, ‘you couldn’t have picked out better time for snake stories.’
22 Dec 2015: Bruce T. ‘One of my favorite subjects. They’re big part of local folklore, you can’t convince people they don’t exist. The stories usually go something like this “Grandma was out at the well when she heard a terrible yowl. It was a bobcat going at it with a snake. The snake started to get the worst of it, so it put it’s tail in it’s mouth and rolled down the hill so fast the cat couldn’t catch it.” or “When Uncle Bill was a boy a snake lunged at him. Bill took off for the house. Damned if that snake didn’t grab it’s tail in it’s mouth and head off after him. Bill barely made it to the house when the snake hit the door with a thump. It scared the bejeezus out of him. He can’t stand the sight of snake to this day. Now a hoop snake isn’t poisonous, but they’re mean and got a nasty bite. Ol’ Bill got off lucky that day!” There’s also a whip snake that will supposedly wrap itself around your leg and use it’s tail like a whip until you get off it’s territory. People used to claim they would run a horse to death. However the whip snake stories never had the personal touch the hoop snake stories did. My Grandfather used to tell me a version of the rattlesnake in the crib tale when we would visit the old house he was born in. He’d tell me that the rattlesnakes were so thick they would crawl up in the crib with the babies and play them to sleep with their rattles. As we would find the skin that a rattlesnake shed occasionally in that old house, my six year old self bought it hook, line and sinker. I have had a couple of interesting encounters with garter snakes. One was walking with my dog in the early spring. Garter snakes gather in balls when they mate. I walked up on a ball that was nearly as large as a football in your parlance. I remember thinking “That’s were the story of Medusa’s head came from!” Being a teenager I did the natural thing and booted them over the hill. My first garter snake encounter was the best. It was at a baptism in a local river as a small boy. I was standing in the shallows as the preacher was dunking a few of the flock, doing his best to nearly drown them. A garter snake wrapped itself around my leg just above the ankle. I pulled it off, held if up, and said “Look Nellie!” to my Great Aunt. She let out scream and headed for the bank. It stopped the proceedings in it’s tracks.The preacher looked my way and said, “Let it go Bruce, you know we’re not that kind of church.” I had no idea what he meant at the time, but the congregation cracked up. (Growing up in a state overrun with poisonous snakes, the only recorded snakebite deaths have occurred at Holiness Church services. If you’re going to pull a snake out of a cage while whooping and stomping with the Spirit, you’re asking for it. Their congregations also drink strychnine, but that’s another story.) Snake encounters and whoppers about snakes are common here. The tales teach you to keep your eyes open and watch where you step.
31 Dec 2015: JEC writes in: Season’s Greetings, Dr. B! About the snakes, there seems to be an almost inherent human loathing of snakes which makes them perfect fodder for folk tales. I still remember when as a young teenager in the early 70’s in the American South I was told tales of the “hoop snake” by an elderly black man as we worked hauling hay. “Old Will” had been born sometime before 1900 and was wrinkled and craggy but otherwise a physical marvel who was able to perform heavy labor, albeit slowly, but steadily, well into his 80’s. He entertained his fellow workers with tales of “the old days”, and more than once said that as a youth he had personally seen a “hoop snake”. He said it was black and of immense size, “as big around as mah ahm”. He swore he watched as the hoop snake grasped its tail in its mouth and somehow righted itself into a wheel “as high as mah haid”. Then it started rolling toward him at such speed that he had to run as fast as he could to escape it. He said he eventually outsmarted the hoop snake by running uphill, where apparently the snake was unable to follow.
Now, I was already familiar with the hoop snake from the Pecos Bill stories and from my grandmother having told me about the outlandish tales people told in her youth. Even though I scoffed at Will’s story he never wavered. In those days before media saturation (even in the early 70’s Will chose to live without electricity, an indoor toilet or even running water) it was just possible that he may have convinced himself there was some truth to this and his other tales. He also told tales about “haints”, “conjuring women” and even one encounter with”Old Nick”. Will certainly claimed to have lived an eventful life, but then claims of personal experience are the very stuff of classic folktales.
I’ve often wondered since about the various cultural echoes in those tales. I knew that in Will I was hearing the voice of generations of slaves. But there was also a trace of “Scotch Irish” folklore from immigrants from both the Highlands and the Lowlands as well as Ulster who had moved into our area in the late 18th century. Will and other older blacks I knew called every big hunting-style knife a “dirtch”, a clear derivation of the Scottish “dirk”. I also remember Will talking about “dancing a reel”. So it’s conceivable the hoop snake tales could have originated with the Greeks as the “ouroboros”, come across the Aegean to Rome and thence to Britain, Scotland and colonial America. Or perhaps the snake story originated in Senegal, Gambia or the Ivory Coast countless centuries before it came to America via the hellish Middle Passage.
I just remembered that somewhere around my parents’ house there is a cassette recording of Will telling some of his tales, which my father made in the late 60’s or early 70’s. It’s probably in the same place with the recording he made in 1967 of my nonagenarian great uncle telling stories of his father’s exploits as a cavalryman with Nathan Bedford Forrest. I’ve got to find them: they would be priceless to me today.
Chris from Haunted Ohio Books: Hah! I’m a huge fan of snaix stories and this one was new to me. It can be found from about 1880 July 21, 1880
Paper: Portland Daily Press (Portland, Maine)
Volume: 18
Page: 1
to–a very late example of recycling this tall tale–April 25, 1930
Evening Star (Washington (DC), District of Columbia)
Page: 47
23 jan 2016 Bob S an old friend of the blog writes: Searching on the unusual phrase “agriculturally-rural-looking” I traced three US references to the story in Newspaperarchive.com , between September 1880 and February 1881: New Castle Index Wednesday, September 1, 1880, New Castle, Pennsylvania; Winnipeg Free Press Saturday, October 2, 1880, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Princeton Democrat Saturday, February 19, 1881, Princeton, Indiana.
Thanks, Bob!
