this Narragansett weaver in modern times, by the use of machine-spun
threads and yarns. The warp of these bed coverlets is of strong twine
or thread, while the weft is of various woollen yarns or zephyrs or
crewels, bought at mills. These latter are aniline-dyed, and in no
artistic sense equal the old indigo, hickory, sassafras, or madder
home-dyed wools of yore. These skeins of yarn are prepared for use by
spreading them on a reel or swifts, and winding the yarn off on quills
in a quilling-wheel, which is somewhat like a simplified spinning-wheel.
Besides these weavers who worked in their own homes, making their own
wool into cloth to sell, or weaving the thread and yarn brought to them
by their neighbors, there was a distinct class of travelling weavers,
who went from house to house working for a few shillings a day and
their “keep.” They often were quaint and curious characters; frequently
what were known as “natural preachers;” that is, either mystic or
fanatic souls who tried to supplement or supersede the religious
teaching of the community by itinerant preaching. Such teachers and
preachers have ever flourished in Narragansett since the day of Samuel
Gorton and his associates.
One of these weaver-preachers, undismayed by the indifference and even
the disapproval of his neighbors, built a rude log pulpit in the woods
near his home and there communed aloud with God if not with man. The
sound of his fervid prayers and invocations could be heard afar off
by passers-by in the wood-lanes and roads, even in mid-winter; while
the emphasizing thumps of his sturdy fist kept his blood as warm as
his religion and startled the Narragansett squirrels and chipmunks who
thriftily used the recesses of the weaver’s pulpit as a storage-place
for nuts and acorns. There were few women weavers among them,
especially for linen-weaving, which was hard work. Occasionally some
sturdy woman, of masculine muscle and endurance, was a weaver.
One of these Narragansett women-weavers was a witch. She would sit for
hours bending over her loom, silent, peering into it and not doing a
single row. This angered the dames for whom she worked, but they said
nothing, lest they get her ill-will. Suddenly she would sit up and
start her treadle; bang! bang! would go her batten as fast as corn in a
corn-popper; and at night, after she had gone home, when her piece was
still set in the loom, the family would waken and hear the half-toned
clapping of the loom, which someone was running softly to help the
witch out in her stint, probably the old black man. So, behold! at the
end of the week more cloth appeared on the cloth-beam, more linen was
ready for bleaching, and more rolls of carpet were woven than could
be turned out by any man-weaver in the province. So whether it was
hitching up with the devil or not, she always had employment in plenty;
and her fine linen table-cloths were in every bridal outfit, and her
linen web used in many a shroud throughout Narragansett.
She never ate with the family of her employer as did every other worker
in house or on farm, nor was it evident that she brought food with her.
The minister suspected she ate nocake, which she could easily hide
in her pockets. She never asked for water, nor cider, nor switchel,
nor kill-devil, nor had anyone ever seen her drink. Debby Nichols
once saw a bumble-bee fly buzz-buzz out of her mouth as she wove in
the minister’s loom-loft. But the minister said it was only a hornet
flying past her--the garret was full of them. But, sure enough, at
that very hour Joe Spink fell from his horse on the old Pequot trail
from Wickford and broke his leg. Joe said a big bumble-bee stung the
horse on the nose and made him rear and plunge. Joe had had high words
with the witch over some metheglin he had tried to buy from her the
previous week, for she brewed as well as she wove. The minister said
that if metheglin had been the only drink Joe ever bought he wouldn’t
have fallen from his horse, and that it wasn’t the first bee Joe had
had in his bonnet.
One day some careless darkies in a kitchen set on fire a hank of
tow that was being hetchelled by the chimney-side. The sudden blaze
extended to a row of freshly ironed sheets, then to a wool-wheel, and
soon a dense smoke and darting flames filled the room. All ran out of
the house, some for water, some for buckets, some for help, and no one
thought of the witch in the loom-loft. The bang and rattle of her work
made her ignorant of the noise and commotion below, and as the smoke
entered the loft she thought, “But that chimney do smoke!” Finally
a conviction of danger came to her and she made her way down the
loft-ladder and through the entry with difficulty to the open air.
“Where’s the cat?” was her abrupt greeting to the shamefaced folk who
began to apologize spasmodically for their neglect to alarm her. “I
saw her an hour ago on the spare bed in the fore room”--and back into
the house rushed the witch, to return in a few moments with Tabby
safely in her arms. This act of course deserved scant praise. Everyone
murmured that there was probably some good reason for doing it, that
everyone knew witches and cats had close relations, that the house
didn’t burn down anyway, and probably she knew it wasn’t going to.
One night a neighbor met her, breathing heavily, her hand at her side,
hobbling haltingly homeward. He told his wife he guessed the witch
was pretty sick. She told the minister’s wife that the witch was
getting her deserts. The latter in turn told her husband, and during a
ministerial visit the next day he discoursed profitably on the probable
illness and the unsanctified life of that misguided woman. The minister
sat long in the front room sipping sangaree, but the hard-working
little tailoress in the kitchen overheard his moralizing and his story.
And when goose and shears were laid aside, and her day’s work was
over, she hurried through the winter gloaming, across the ice-crusts
of three fields, to the witch’s door. No light shone from the window,
either of evil or domestic significance; but the tailoress pulled
the latch-string and pushed open the door, and by the light of her
hand-lantern found the witch in the chilled house cold and dead.
The following August a band of wondering, marauding boys, with
alternate hesitation and bravado, entered the tenantless house.
The windows had all been broken by missiles thrown by witch-hating
passers-by, and the spring rains and summer suns had freely entered the
room. And lo! the witches bed, on which she died--a sack full of straw
of mouse-barley, with occasional spikes of grain attached--had sprouted
and grown through the coarse hempen bed-tick, and was as green and
flourishing as the grass over her unmarked grave.
WHERE THREE TOWNS MEET
In the heart of Narragansett three towns meet at a cross-roads;
they are North Kingston, South Kingston, and Exeter. It is a lonely
cross-roads, even in days of summer, though Weaver Rose’s cheerful
home is near it; but it is picturesque and beautiful in its extended
view, its overreach of splendid locust-trees, and the tangle of wild
flowers fringing the roadside and rioting along the stone walls. There
is no monument or stone, nothing to mark the special tradition of this
corner, as Squaw Rock at Indian Corner, half a mile farther on the
road, a sinister rock with dark, blood-red veins and splashes, a rock
whereon were dashed the brains of a Narragansett squaw by her drunken
brave of a husband.
This cross-roads, or “corner,” has been the scene many times of
episodes as uncivilized, if not as cruel, as the one that immortalized
Squaw Rock. Here--a spot chosen either through fancy, tradition, or
even rustic fashion, or because here three townships meet--have taken
place several of those absurd bequests of barbaric peoples known as
shift-marriages.
These ungallant and extremely inconvenient ceremonies are not American
inventions or Yankee notions, but an old English custom, being in brief
the marriage of a woman, usually a widow, clad only in her shift, to
avoid hampering her newly made husband with her old debts. All through
New England, in New York and Pennsylvania, this custom was known until
this century. In Narragansett it was comparatively common. The exact
form of the _sacrifice_ (for sacrifice it was of modesty to the new
husband’s cupidity) and notions about it varied in localities. Let me
give a marriage-certificate of a shift-marriage which took place on
this very cross-roads where the three towns meet:
“On March 11th, 1717, did Philip Shearman Take the Widow Hannah
Clarke in her Shift, without any other Apparel, and led her across
the Highway, as the Law directs in such Cases and was then married
according to law by me. WILLIAM HALL, _Justice_.”
It is not specified in this certificate that this grotesque proceeding
took place at night, but, out of some regard for decency, and to avoid
notoriety, such was usually the case.
There is an ancient registration book of births, deaths, and marriages
at the handsome new Town Hall at South Kingston, R. I. There is an
entry within it of a shift-marriage:
“Thomas Calverwell was joyned in marriage to Abigail Calverwell his
wife the 22. February, 1719-20. He took her in marriage after she had
gone four times across the highway in only her shift and hair-lace and
no other clothing. Joyned together in marriage by me.
“GEORGE HAZARD, _Justice_.”
This was but two years after the marriage of Widow Clarke, and the
public parade may have taken place on the same spot, but there is a
slight variation, in that the fair Abigail’s ordeal was prolonged to
four times crossing the road. The naming of the hair-lace seems trivial
and superfluous with such other complete disrobing, but it was more
significant than may appear to a careless reader. At that date women
wore caps even in early girlhood, and were never seen in public without
them. To be capless indicated complete dishabille. A court record still
exists wherein is an entry of a great insult offered to the town
constables by an angry and contemptuous woman. She threatened to pull
off her head-gear and go before them, “only in her hair-lace and hair,
like a parcel of pitiful, beggarly curs that they were.” So the abandon
of only a hair-lace comported well with Abigail Calverwell’s only a
shift.
Hopkinton is another Narragansett town, in the same county. In 1780
David Lewis married at Hopkinton, Widow Jemima Hill, “where four
roads meet,” at midnight, she being dressed only in her shift. This
was to avoid payment of Husband Hill’s debts. Ten years later, in
a neighboring town, Richmond, still in the South County, Widow
Sarah Collins appeared in the twilight in a long shift, a special
wedding-shift covering her to her feet, and was then and thus married
to Thomas Kenyon.
Westerly, still in the same Narragansett county, had the same custom
and the same belief.
“To all People whom It May Concern. This Certifies that Nathanell
Bundy of Westerly took ye Widdow Mary Parmenter of sd town on ye
highway with no other clothing but shifting or smock on ye Evening of
ye 20 day of Aprill, 1724, and was joined together in that honorable
Estate of matrimony in ye presence of
JOHN SANDERS, _Justice_.
“JOHN COREY.
“GEORGE COREY.
“MARY HILL.
“PETER CRANDALL.
“MARY CRANDALL.”
The use of the word smock here recalls the fact that in England these
marriages were always called smock-marriages.
The Swedish traveller, Kalm, writing in 1748, tells of one Pennsylvania
bridegroom who saved appearances by meeting the scantily clad widow
half-way from her house to his own, and announcing formally that the
wedding-garments which he thereupon presented to her were not given to
her but were only lent to her for this occasion. This is much like the
ancient custom of marriage investiture, still in existence in Eastern
Hindostan.
Another husband who thus formally lent wedding-garments to a
widow-bride was Major Moses Joy, who married Widow Hannah Ward in
Newfane, Vt., in 1789. The widow stood in her shift, within a closet,
and held out her hand through a diamond-shaped hole in the door to
the Major, who had gallantly deposited the garments for Madam to
don before appearing as a bride. In Vermont many similar marriages
are recorded, the bride not being required to cross the highway. One
of these unclad brides left the room by a window, and dressed on
the upper rounds of a ladder, a somewhat difficult feat even for a
“lightning-change artist.” In Maine the custom also prevailed. One
half-frozen bride, on a winter’s night in February, was saved for a
long and happy life by having the pitying minister, who was about to
marry her, throw a coat over her as she stood in her shift on the
king’s highway. In early New York, in Holland, in ancient Rhynland,
this avoidance of debt-paying was accomplished in less annoying fashion
by a widow’s appearing in borrowed clothing at her husband’s funeral,
or laying a straw or key on the coffin and kicking it off.
The traveller, Gustavus Vasa, records a shift marriage which he saw
in New York in 1784. A woman, clad only in her shift, appeared at the
gallows just as an execution was about to take place, demanded the
life of the criminal, and was then and there married to him. It is
well known that in England criminals sentenced to death (usually for
political offences) were rescued from the gallows by the appearance
at the time and place of execution of women who claimed the right of
marrying them, and thus saving their lives.
It has been asserted that these shift-marriages were but an ignorant
folk-custom, and that there never was any law or reason for the belief
that the observance procured immunity from payment of past debts. But
it is plainly stated in many of these Narragansett certificates that it
was “according to the law in such cases.” The marriages were certainly
degrading in character, and were gone through with only for the express
purpose of debt evasion, and they must have been successful. The
chief actors in these Narragansett comedies were, from scant negative
testimony of their life and the social position of their families, not
necessarily of limited means. Any man of wealth might not, however,
wish to pay the debts of his matrimonial “predecessor,” as the first
husband is termed in one case.
And it should be remembered also that at the time these weddings took
place there was nothing boorish in the community. Considering the
necessary differences in the centuries, the “South County” was not
nearly as “countrified,” to use a conventional term, then as now.
Exeter has ever been sparsely settled, with many woodlands, meagre
farms, and little wealth, though it had one church with a thousand
members; but North Kingston had a thrifty and enterprising general
population, with many men of wealth, and handsome houses. South
Kingston, the nearest town-centre to the cross-roads, was settled
by men of opulence and of polite culture. It was the richest town
in the State of Rhode Island, paying, as late as 1780, double the
taxes assigned to Newport and one-third more than Providence. The
cross-roads, where the three towns meet, was not far from St. Paul’s
Church, where the planters and their families gathered each Sunday,
riding to it over the very highway where the shift-marriages took place.
As I sat on a fallen tree last summer at the lonely cross-roads, the
scene of so many of these shift-marriages, the place, with its fairly
tropical bloom, seemed a romantic spot for such a grotesquery; but
the picture of the last of these benumbed brides, who, early in this
century, clad only in a linen shift, on a February night--a _New
England February night_--shivered across the frozen road to avoid
the payment of some paltry debt, and the thought of the unspeakable
husband who would let her go through such a mortifying and distressing
ordeal, there seemed scant romance, and nothing but ignorant and sordid
superstition.
TUGGIE BANNOCKS’S MOONACK
Tuggie Bannocks, the Narragansett negress, decided to work a charm
on old Bosum Sidet, the negro tinker. She was not going to charm him
in the ordinary commonplace way, albeit pleasing, that most dames
follow--be they old or young, black or white--to allure human beings of
the opposite sex. Her charm was, alas, a malignant one, a “conjure,”
that she angrily decided to work upon him as a revenge for his clumsy
and needless destruction of her best copper tea-kettle while he was
attempting, or I suspect pretending, to repair it. This charm was not
a matter of a moment’s hasty decision and careless action; it required
some minute and varied preparation and considerable skill to carry it
out successfully, and work due and desired evil.
Tuggie’s first step, literally, was to walk over the snowy fields,
the frozen roads, to Bosum’s house to obtain some twigs or sprigs of
withered grass that had grown and still lingered in his dooryard.
Lest Bosum’s wife should suspect any uncanny motive for her visit, she
carefully elaborated a plan, and carried on, in its furtherance, a long
conversation with regard to a certain coveted dye-stuff which Mother
Sidet manufactured; it turned all woollen stuffs a vivid green, and
was in much demand throughout Narragansett to dye old woollen rags and
worn-out flannel sheets and shirts this brilliant, verdant hue, when
they could thereafter be used to most astonishing and satisfactory
advantage in conferring variety in the manufacture of those triumphs
of decorative art, those outlets of rural color-sense, home-made woven
rag-carpets, and hooked and braided rugs. Tuggie argued with much
dignity and volubility that she should be told the secret of this
dye-stuff as some slight compensation for her ruined tea-kettle. It is
needless to state that she was unsuccessful, nor had she expected to be
otherwise. The secret of the dye was Molly Sidet’s stock-in-trade, just
as the soldering-iron and solder were her husband’s.
At Molly’s refusal Tuggie waxed wroth, and a most unpleasant exchange
of personalities took place, which culminated in Tuggie’s exasperating
reference to an event which had occurred in Bosum’s youth, and about
which he and his wife were exceedingly and naturally sensitive. He
had once gone proudly to Boston for a three months’ visit to ply his
trade and see the town. At the end of two weeks he had reappeared
in Narragansett, kit in hand and depressed in appearance. When
interrogated as to the reason of his sudden and speedy return, he had
answered, acrimoniously, that “Boston folks is too full of notions.”
In the course of a few weeks, however, news came to Narragansett that
Bosum had been arrested in Boston for his well-known trick of stealing,
and had been whipped through the town at the cart-tail. Nothing could
anger Molly Sidet more than a reference to “Boston notions.” Tuggie
used this thorn in the side with well-planned judiciousness and with
the pleasing and wholly satisfactory result that Molly ordered her
fiercely out of the house. This was precisely what she desired, for a
witch cannot work a full, a thoroughly successful conjure on one who
has always treated her well and kindly, and shown her due hospitality;
hence old Tuggie, by Molly’s abrupt expulsion of her from her house,
was left free to work her wicked will.
Though Tuggie did not get the coveted dye-stuff, nor the recipe
therefor, she did not return home empty-handed; she managed to
pick without discovery a few leafless twigs from the great bush of
southernwood that grew by the stone doorstep of Bosum Sidet’s house,
and she felt that her visit had not been in vain. Fortune favored her.
As she passed the door of the tinker’s barn she slipped in unobserved
and clipped a few hairs from the tail of his cow. It would have been
much better, much surer, to have had these hairs from Bosum’s own head,
but to aspire to a fibre of his close-cropped wool was useless.
As Tuggie Bannocks walked home over the crisp snow she muttered to
herself with delight, and she glowered and scowled at the children as
she passed the school-house at the corner, and they hooted and jeered
at her in return, and called out, “Te-Rap, Te-Rap,” which everyone
knows is the greeting that witches cry out to each other.
She certainly was deemed a witch by her neighbors as well as the
children. And this reputation was not accidental, it was jealously
cultivated. She conformed her mien and behavior to all that was
expected of a witch; and she had been gifted by nature with one
feature which, much to her satisfaction, enabled her to exhibit
convincing proofs of her pretensions. She had two full rows of double
teeth (front teeth and all were double), which could be displayed to
telling and bewildering advantage to those who thought her “just like
other folks.”
She did have some uncanny habits; some that, a century previous, in a
Puritan community, would have set her afloat to sink or swim.
She never sat upon stool or chair or settle in anyone’s house; no one
had ever seen her seated save on a table or dresser or bed, or even on
a cradle-head--this to the painful apprehension of the mother who owned
the cradle. When spinning flax in one house she sat on a saw-horse. She
had not a chair in her house, but there was an oaken chair-moulding
at the top of the wainscoting in her spacious old kitchen; and it was
currently reported and believed that when she was alone she perched
or clung with her heels on this moulding. The Newport chap-man, Chepa
Rose, told at the Ferry that he saw her one night running round the
room on the moulding. But Chepa was not truthful, so I do not believe
it.
Tuggie dwelt alone in the ell part of an old gambrel-roofed house,
which had seen better days, but was now deserted and sadly dilapidated,
and was indeed in its main portion almost roofless. The ell, which
contained the great raftered kitchen and two other rooms, was, however,
tight and comfortable, and made a cheerful, picturesque home. Tuggie,
who was strong and capable, worked for the farmers’ wives around;
dipped candles, made soap, spun yarn and wove carpets, brewed and
salted; she also cultivated a little patch of land of her own, and
knit stockings to sell, and was altogether a very thrifty, industrious
person. She was in reality far more afraid of being bewitched than she
was confident of bewitching, and that evening, as she prepared to “burn
a project” to conjure old Bosum Sidet, she started at every sound, and
turned her petticoats inside out, to keep off evil spirits, and at last
hung a bag of egg-shells around her neck as a potent saving-charm.
She first mixed a little flour and water into dough and stirred in the
hairs from the cow’s tail--these were the straw for her brick; then
she moulded the dough into the shape of a heart and stuck two pins in
for legs and two for arms; this would surely give Bosum “misery in de
legs and arms”--in short, rheumatism. This dough-heart she set aside,
for it was not properly part of the project, and would only fulfil its
diabolical mission when it was carried to Bosum’s door and set upon his
fence or doorstep, when the “misery” would begin.
She then, with rather a quaking heart, prepared to burn the project.
The sprigs of southernwood from Bosum’s door-yard, a few rusty nails,
the tail of a smoked herring, a scrap of red flannel, a little mass
of “grave-dirt” that she had taken from one of the many graveyards
that are dotted all over Narragansett, and, last of all, that chief
ingredient, the prime factor in all negro charms--a rabbit’s foot--were
thrown into a pot of water that was hung upon the crane over a roaring
fire. Of course everyone in Narragansett knew that when a project began
to boil the conjured one would begin to suffer some mental or bodily
ill; hence Tuggie listened with much satisfaction to the premonitory
bubbling within the pot.