The peculiarities of a people are always best observed by those who do
not live among them, or rather by those who visit them occasionally. Most
of my notes on this subject are taken from the conversation of physicians
born in other localities than those in which they practise. One in my
own county mentions the “apnehme,” or wasting away of children. He says
that popular remedies are measuring the child and greasing it by certain
old women. Another says that the “Pennsylvania Dutch” also measure
for wild-fire or erysipelas, generally using a red silk string, and
measuring about sundown. They blow across the affected part to blow the
fire outside of the string, at the same time they “say words” or powwow.
This physician says that the greasing above mentioned is for liver-grown
children, and not for “abnehme” (as it is spelled). One class of
powwowers do not interfere, he says, with regular practitioners; but one
old woman in this county (who builds a fire in the brick oven, and says
words over the coals) has been known to hide the prescriptions of regular
physicians. He adds: “If a person is burned, recourse is sometimes had to
a professional blower, who blows across the surface, saying words in the
interval. Along the Pennsylvania Canal, on the Susquehanna, where ague
prevails, the patient who has a chill is tied to a tree by a long string,
and he runs around the tree until the string is exhausted, and then on to
some distance. This is tying the chill to a tree. A ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’
remedy for whooping-cough, and one by which they bother the millers a
good deal, is to put the child into a hopper with grain, and let the
child remain until the grain is all ground out. Blood-stopping is very
common in Pennsylvania. I saw a man with an artery cut, in whose case a
blood-stopper was called in. The man pressed his hand on the bleeding
part and repeated something, raising his eyes to heaven; but the artery
was too powerful for him.”
On the west side of the Susquehanna the only county that can
distinctively be called Pennsylvania German is York. A physician in the
borough says that town and county are full of superstitions. He says,
“In case of hemorrhage from the nose, from a wound or from other cause,
a common cure is to wrap a red woollen string round each finger; another
is to lay an axe under the bed, edge upward; and you can’t talk them out
of it. I used to get angry when I first came here, but I found that it
was of no use. These are not occasional things only, but I have seen them
over and over again. Then there are prayers for stopping blood, always in
‘Dutch.’ They can’t be sick in English, and the first question to me as
a physician has been ‘_Kann er Deutsch?_’ (Do you speak German?) One of
the prayers for stopping blood is, I understand, for human beings, and
another for animals; and I think that the names of the persons of the
Trinity are introduced. I have often asked, but they are not allowed to
tell. Soon after I came here, I ordered some boneset tea for a patient,
and the mother asked in ‘Dutch’ whether the leaves should be pulled
upwards or downwards. ‘Will it make any difference?’ I asked. ‘Oh, yes;
if you pull them upwards, it will work upwards; and if you pull them
downwards, it will work downwards.’ [A valuable hint for a physician if
the same plant can be used both as an emetic and a purgative.] Of the
blood of a black fowl,—no other color will do,—three drops are given
internally. I think this is for convulsions; but I hear so many of these
things, and have heard them so many years, that they make no impression
on my mind. These are pure ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’ peculiarities; I have
found none or few of them among foreign Germans.”
I asked whether these ideas still continue or whether they are wearing
out. “No,” he said, “they don’t wear out. I meet them every day. They
still speak of horses and animals being bewitched (_verhext_). I have a
story from good authority of a horse that was said to be _verhext_, and
that turned out to have a nail in his hoof. That is a fact. What are you
going to do about it?”
But to come to another county, Berks. I hear that in Reading there
is a woman called the _Wurst-frau_, because her mother sold sausages
and “puddings.” This woman has a large office practice in salves and
powwowing. In an adjoining county, Lehigh, I remember a few years ago
to have seen the names of two persons put down in the directory as
_powwowers_; the word being spelled as pronounced in “Dutch.”
Norristown, in Montgomery County, is greatly Anglicized; but a physician
says that an idea exists of stopping blood by a religious lingo, into
which come the words “_der Vater_, _Sohn_, _und heilig Geist_.” “A
certain man told me that he had never failed to arrest bleeding from
wounds or even from the lungs, nor was it necessary to be upon the spot;
he could go home and repeat his lingo. This was his only medical skill;
he did not claim to be a doctor.”
In Norristown also I met a woman who had been quite ill; but I heard that
when better she would not get up on Sunday, lest she should never get
well, and Friday was as bad. Her little grandchild having a birth-mark,
she passed the hand of a dead person over it to take it away, but was
unsuccessful.
To return, however, to this county of Lancaster, which I know better. A
physician says that he found a child very ill with membranous croup, for
which he left powders to be administered every half-hour, saying that
when he called again, if it seemed possible to dislodge the membrane he
would give an emetic. When he called, he found a powwower sitting, who
looked very smiling. The doctor went up to the little patient, and asked
whether the mother had given the medicine. She had given only one dose;
the man had said that it was not necessary to give any powders. “Don’t
you think the child is better?” the mother asked. On examination the
doctor declared, “I am sorry to tell you that the child will not live
two hours;” which caused the countenance of the powwower to fall. The
child died, and this case caused the doctor to declare that he would not
practise in conjunction with powwowers; and if they are now called in, it
is done privately.
Although one physician spoke of not finding many of these ideas among
foreign Germans, yet my friend, before mentioned, from the Palatinate
says that when children have earache there, or _abnehme_ (wasting away),
or when persons are in the early stages of consumption, country people
say, “_Lasz dir brauche_” (or, Consult a powwower); and a woman comes
and whispers some words. “My father” (she adds that he was a Reformed
preacher) “knew a blacksmith to whom children were brought, suffering
with earache. The man would heat the big tongs, hold them close to
their ears, and whisper something. My father asked him what he said.
He answered, ‘Nothing; but if he did not whisper, the people would not
believe in him;’ and my father told him that he ought not to impose upon
them.”
HOLIDAYS—EASTER.
I live in the country, but on last Good-Friday was at Reading, and was
surprised to see so many persons going to church. Easter is greatly
observed by Reformed and Lutherans. It is the time of confirmation and
administering the sacrament; and you may hear of churches in country
localities having as high as six hundred communicants. At Easter, of
course, eggs greatly abound. At a boarding-house at Allentown I heard of
colored eggs being offered to callers or taken to friends. Fragments of
egg and of colored shells may be seen on the pavements for about a week.
A little childish myth is found in these more eastern counties, of which
I have heard very little in Lancaster County. It is that the rabbit
lays the colored eggs. A young man in Reading says that when they were
children they always made a nest the evening before Easter Sunday, of an
old hat or something similar, which they set near the door for the rabbit
to lay the colored eggs in. An old man in a tavern, however, says that it
is foolishness, like _Bellschnickel_. At my own tavern the landlady was
coloring eggs, and had bought some canton-flannel rabbits with which to
dress the guests’ tables at breakfast on Sunday morning.
In Lehigh County a lawyer says that when they were children they would
take flax and each make his nest under a bush in the garden. On Easter
Sunday morning they would run out and find three eggs of different colors
in each nest. Literalness has gone so far in Allentown that I hear of
cakes in a baker’s window in the form of a rabbit laying eggs.
At Easton a lady spoke of making nests for her two boys by taking plates,
ornamenting them with cut paper in the form of a nest, putting into each
a large candy egg and colored eggs, and placing a rabbit in one and a
chicken in the other, and hiding them for the boys to find.
This myth of the rabbits’ eggs is very common among the Moravians. One
of my “Dutch” acquaintances, born west of us in Cumberland County,
and afterward living in Maryland, says that her mother told them when
children to set their bonnets at Easter for nests for the rabbits’ eggs.
This is an old German myth. A gentleman from Switzerland says that he
heard the fable there, and he thinks that it prevails all over Germany.
Many or most of our early German emigrants into Pennsylvania seem to have
come from or through the Palatinate. My friend before mentioned, who was
born there, thus describes the custom at her former home. If the children
have no garden, they make nests in the wood-shed, barn, or house. They
gather colored flowers for the rabbit to eat, that it may lay colored
eggs. If there be a garden, the eggs are hidden singly in the green
grass, box-wood, or elsewhere. On Easter Sunday morning they whistle for
the rabbit, and the children imagine that they see him jump the fence.
After church, on Easter Sunday morning, they hunt the eggs, and in the
afternoon the boys go out in the meadows and crack eggs or play with them
like marbles. Or sometimes children are invited to a neighbor’s to hunt
eggs.
Prof. Wackernagel, of Allentown, has kindly pointed out to me the
antiquity of the myth. The old German goddess of spring was called Ostara
(whence Easter). She rode over the fields in the spring in a wagon
drawn by hares. (Our Pennsylvania rabbit is really a hare, as it does
not burrow in the ground.) The egg is an emblem, says the professor,
of the resurrection from the dead; so herein he finds heathenism and
Christianity blended. However, the author of _Das Festliche Yahr_
(Leipsic, 1863) considers the myth older than Christianity; for he says
that in Thuringia, Hesse, Suabia, and Switzerland it is said now, as
apparently in ante-Christian times, that the hare or Easter hare lays the
eggs. Finally, one of my German friends finds the whole a myth of the
renewal of life in the spring.
HALLOWEEN.
On the 30th of last October our farmer locked the gate on the road,
lest it should be taken off. Therefore the Halloween visitors limited
themselves to taking down bundles of corn-fodder in the field and
building a fence across the road, and to propping up one end of the
market-wagon on the fence. I am told of a person who once had his wagon
taken apart, and the pieces put up into different trees, so that it was
some time before all were found. In Lebanon County a similar custom is
found. One of my acquaintances living in a small town says that they
celebrate Halloween roughly,—hanging beets and cabbages at the doors,
moving steps, taking gates from hinges, throwing corn. The speaker
was born in Lehigh County, where nothing of this prevailed, and this
fact constitutes one of the chief distinctions among our Pennsylvania
Germans of Lancaster and Lebanon on one hand, and Lehigh, Berks, upper
Montgomery, and probably Northampton on the other. In Montgomery a young
“Dutchman” did not even know when Halloween is, and when I described our
Lancaster County custom, said, “That ain’t any use.” Traces of similar
observances of Halloween are found, however, in other regions. In
Philadelphia the boys indulge in ringing front-door bells. In Harrisburg
people who had wooden door-steps used to take them into the house, lest
they should be carried off. Of Franklin County, beyond the Susquehanna, I
am told that at Waynesboro’ it has been a favorite amusement at Halloween
to gather store-boxes and build a fortification around the town pump, and
collect wheeled vehicles around the public square. At Lockhaven, up the
West Branch of the Susquehanna, my landlady was anxious that her cabbage
should be housed, for fear that it would be carried off on Halloween.
My German acquaintances, before quoted, born in the Palatinate, do not
report to me anything of this kind as existing in Germany at Halloween.
One of them says, however, that at the time of putting up string-beans
(which are preserved like sour-krout), children throw the strings into
front doors. And Mr. Wollenweber, of Reading, also a native of the
Palatinate, says that when the farm-work was over in October, they used
to practise tricks. He has helped to take a wagon to pieces, and put it
together again in a stable or barn. “We troubled ourselves very much,” he
says. He adds that the boys were expected, when the fun was over, to come
together and take it down again; but this is not the case in Lancaster
County.
Can it be that some of these practices belong to the season of the year,
and are a warning to the tardy to gather the fruits of the earth and
their farm implements?
In his work called _Die Alte Zeite_, or Old Times, Mr. H. L. Fisher,
of York, Pennsylvania, describes such pranks as played at weddings
or home-comings “infares.” The boys hid the bridegroom’s horse in a
quarry, and the young men’s saddles and bridles were put upon trees,
straw-stacks, etc.
In the text I have spoken of Bellschnickel, who in “Pennsylvania Dutch”
land takes the part of Santa Claus, being in fact the same personage;
Bellschnickel, or Peltz Nickel, being St. Nicholas in furs. St. Nicholas
day is not, however, Christmas eve. It is the 6th of December; but it is
in Advent. One of my German friends thus describes Peltz Nickel: “In the
Palatinate at Christmas they have the Christ-kindchen, which is a little
girl dressed in white and riding on a donkey. I often made one myself,
dressed in my mother’s wedding-veil. If you have no donkey, a boy is
dressed to represent one and goes on all-fours. The Peltz Nickel is a boy
leading; he is blackened, and has a beard and rattling chains. He gives
a switch to the mother, which sticks behind the glass the whole year, if
the children do not hide nor break it. This begins on the first Sunday of
December, with Advent, and may be practised till Christmas. He carries
apples and nuts. The children must kneel and say their prayers, and if
they say them nicely they get some of these, and perhaps honey-cakes and
candy, which the Christ-kindel and Peltz Nickel distribute; but they do
not give the Christmas gifts.” She adds, “We only went to one or two
houses.”
As regards the New Year, Mr. Wollenweber says that in Berks County,
around Womelsdorf, a dozen boys or so will form a company, choose a
captain, take a gun, and go around the neighborhood, calling on different
persons and asking leave to wish them a New Year. If they obtain consent,
they will form into a rank, and the captain will repeat the following
verses:
“Nau wunschen wir euch en Neues Yohr,
En Bretzel wie en Scheuer Thor,
En Brodwurst wie en Ofen Rohr,
Und in der Midde-Stub en Tisch
Oof yedem Eck en gebrodener Fisch,
Und in der Mitt en Bottell Wein,
Das soll unser Neu Yohr’s Wunsch sein.”
“Now we wish you a New Year; a pretzel like a barn-door; a fried sausage
like a stove-pipe; and in the middle room a table, with a fried fish at
each corner, and in the midst a bottle of wine,—that shall be our New
Year’s wish.”
Then they fire off the gun, and are invited to come in and take a
supper. Generally they go to farm-houses, where there are a number of
daughters, and these daughters are usually prepared to give them a
hospitable reception.
This custom, says Mr. Wollenweber, also prevails in the Palatinate.
I am also told that the custom of firing-in the New Year is found in
Lehigh, Berks, and Lebanon Counties.
THE PLAINER SECTS.
Some of our Pennsylvania German Baptist sects cannot escape a suspicion
of asceticism. I speak of them as Baptists, for not only the Dunkers who
dip, but the Mennonites who pour, are Baptists, because they baptize
on faith, adults or young persons, and not infants. At the time of the
great Centennial Exposition one of our farmers told me that although
their members were not forbidden to visit it, yet it had been recommended
for them not to do so. He said that there were worldly things there,
unnecessary things. Of the stricter sect of New Mennonites I heard that
they were forbidden. But as these churches are of simple congregational
form, this rule and this recommendation may have been local.
I met another farmer on a railway train, and asked about the Exposition.
He answered, “I don’t think the Lord has any love to them things. It’s
like those picnics and things; those that will go to them will do
anything.” But his name was afterward connected with a more disreputable
thing than a picnic.
In some things our New Mennonites are very strict. It is said that one
was obliged to take down his front porch and another to cut down his
evergreen-trees, apparently because they were suspected of being “proud.”
A woman inclined to the same sect cultivated no flowers. Yet it is
surprising how showily the members allow their unbaptized children to
dress, in which they are a great contrast to the Amish. It is the same
New Mennonites who have so rigid a ban in the church of which I have
spoken in the text. I have spoken of a father who did not come to the
family table. A member of the church was kind enough to explain to me the
cause. He gave way to a selfish spirit, found fault unnecessarily. The
wife bore it a long time, and then complained to the meeting, whereupon
he did not show a penitent spirit; he was not willing to humble himself
before her. So they continued to eat apart, to be separate. Our Old
Mennonites confess their faults to each other in an open meeting of the
members. If the same rule prevails among the New Mennonites, we can see
that it would not be at all grateful to the pride of “the natural man” to
apologize thus to a meeting of which the wife was a part.
As regards another sect, the River Brethren, an acquaintance tells me
that he was expelled from them for voting at elections; but still some
of the brethren will vote. But against him there were two other charges,
namely, of having a melodeon in his house and having his property insured.
Another division of the Mennonites are the Amish, who are very simple
in dress and habits, very recluse. I once called on a plain old Amish
farmer in moderate circumstances. His clothing was long worn, but clean
and well mended, and his bent form, silver beard and hair commanded
regard. A neighbor was with him whom he called Chrissly, the nickname of
Christian. In conversation I spoke of one of my relatives as a lawyer,
and I saw that this had an immediate effect. The neighbor remarked that
when Judge Jasper Yeates was growing old, he said that lawyers are like
woollen yarn, they will stretch. The old man added, “I guess they must
tell rather more than the truth when they _blead_.”
I said to the old man, “You all vote?”
“Yes; there’s some of them a little conscientious; but if they are, they
can just leave it alone. It may be I’m dumb; but I just think we must
have government,—we have Scripture for it,—and if the good people—what
I call the tame people—stays away and leaves it all to the rowdies, how
would it be? We must _bray_ for the government; do all we can. We mustn’t
go to pole-raisings. It oughtn’t to be, but sometimes they will, you
know.”
“Do any of your young men learn trades?” I asked.
“Yes; some are carpenters or cabinet-makers.”
“But you would rather have them farmers; why do you like that best?”
“I think if a man’s a _Gristian_, that’s the best thing he can undertake.”
* * * * *
I have been told of an Amish farmer who was sitting at table with several
young men who had lately joined the meeting, having been baptized. One
of these was his hired man called Yoney (a nickname for Jonathan). The
Amish here do not in general wear suspenders, and the old man, addressing
Yoney, said, “_Was hasht du verschproke in der Gemeh?_” (What did you
promise in meeting?) The young man looked at his clothes, and the elder
pointed out the suspenders.
Yoney answered that he was allowed to wear the clothes that he already
had until they were worn out.
“These look like new ones.”
“They were my best ones,” he answered, “and I have just begun to wear
them every day.”
A girl who has lived among the Amish has told me that they are obliged to
give to beggars or “stragglers,” or they would be turned out of meeting.
She does not know indeed that they are obliged to give to those who are
able to work; but she did not believe that she ever saw them turn any
away.
The impression prevails concerning the Amish that they endeavor to fulfil
the saying, “Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would
borrow of thee turn not thou away.” When I turn my mind to these plain
people, I sometimes recall the trailing arbutus, which is found partly
buried under the leaves and clinging close to the surface of the ground,
but which when drawn up displays, though sometimes disfigured with dead,
brown leaves, such a delicate form and tint, and exhales so sweet a
perfume.
And I also have recalled Pope’s _Temple of Fame_:
“Next came the smallest tribe I yet had seen,
Plain was their dress and modest was their mien;
‘Great idol of mankind, we neither claim
The praise of merit, nor aspire to fame!
But safe in deserts from the applause of men
Would die unheard of, as we lived unseen.’
...
‘And live there men who slight immortal Fame,
Who then with incense shall adore our name?’”
Yet our Amish are not a highly-educated people. Some years ago I inquired
of a neighbor (who did not speak English fluently) on the subject of
education. He said that they were not opposed to school-learning, but to
high learning. “To send children to school from ten to twenty-one, we
would think was opposed to Holy Scripture. There are things taught in
school that don’t agree with Holy Scripture.”
I asked whether he thought it was wrong to teach that the earth goes
round the sun. “I don’t know anything about it; but I am not in favor of
teaching geography and grammar in the schools: it’s worldly wisdom.”
* * * * *
All these Baptist sects have an unpaid ministry. Dr. H., of Bucks County,
had a patient who was a Mennonite preacher, and the doctor refused to
receive payment, saying that his father had taught him never to take pay
from ministers of the gospel. The preacher looked sober and worried, but
left quietly, and not long after he came bringing oats and corn for the
doctor’s horse. Afterwards he would bring flour or buckwheat-meal and
choice bits about butchering time. Thus he seems, without entering into
argument, to have relieved conscientious scruples about taking pay for
preaching.
* * * * *
The ceremonial of these plain German sects is not formal and stately,
like that of the Romish Church. A Moravian of Bethlehem was amused
with one of their ministers, who, in ordaining a preacher, said, “_Nau
kannscht du taufe, und nau kannscht du copulire_.” (Now you can baptize,
and now you can marry.) Then turning to a brother, “_Hab ich net ebbes
vergesse? Oh, ya; nau kannscht du auch beim Abendmahl diene_.” (Haven’t I
forgotten something? Oh, yes; now too you can serve in the Supper.)
Perhaps I would better translate the foregoing, “Thou can serve in the
Supper,” for our Pennsylvania Germans generally use the pronouns thee and
thou.
* * * * *