ef I hab ter walk dere alone, an’ tell de jedge dat de constable run
off an’ leff me. I ain’t no runnagadore. I’se goin’ in de cause ob de
right. You’se ’rested me, an’ I’se agoin’ ter stay ’rested. I nebber
see a jail, anyway, an’ I wants ter see one. Times neber’ll be good in
dis country till bof people an’ rulers knows erbout de instertootions
ob de lan’!”
Again did the baffled sheriff explain and expostulate and seek to rouse
in Cuddy a sense of pride and dread of shame. “It’s most time for
’Lection Day, Cuddy. You’ll never be elected again if you go to jail.
They’ll never want a rogue for Gov’nor.”
“’Cause de Gov’nor am a rogue this year ain’t no sign de next one won’t
be,” answered wise Cuddy. And when the constable had straightened out
Cuddy’s ambiguous thought, he said to himself that black politics were
much like white.
“I can’t see why all you blacks are so dishonest and tricky!”
“Why, Mass’ Cranston” (with an injured but unresentful air), “dey has
ter be--dey so kep’ down. It all de fault ob dat unrageous ole George
Washin’ton. When he a-dyin he rolls his eyes an’ say: ‘Forebber keep de
nigger down’--an’ it take a hundred year to work out a dyin’ spell.”
This astounding piece of post-mortem news about the Father of his
Country was new to the constable, though it was commonly believed by
negroes then as now. He answered Cuddy severely and sharply:
“Who told you that nonsense? It’s no reason, anyway. There is no need
for any nigger to be dishonest unless he wants to.”
“Now, Mass’ Cranston, dis’ jess de way I looks at it. Times nebber’ll
be good in dis country till things is fixed an’ proputty’s divided so
no one can’t be poor; den no one can’t be dishonest, cause ef dey has
plenty dey won’t want ter be.”
The constable felt that it was useless to argue further with such a
philosopher, and rode on for some time in silence; then he desperately
exclaimed: “Cuddy, what’ll you take to go home again? I can’t bother
any longer with you. I’ve got to go to Wickford to-night, and you can’t
walk there.”
The old negro shook his head profoundly and thoughtfully, and sighed
deeply, as though abandoning with keen regret a dearly loved and
cherished plan; then he said, solemnly:
“No bribe’ll ebber soil dis hand while it fills de office ob de
Gub’nor’s seat! But dey do say de best charm eber seed ter bring good
luck forebber is ter look at a constable a-dancin’ ober runnin’ water.
Now here’s de bridge an’ a good dancin’-floor. I’ll hole der hoss an’
sing ‘Old Charmany Fair,’ an’ you dance, ter bring good luck ter me in
de ’lection next week. Den I s’pose I’ll hab ter gib up going ter jail
dis time just ter please yer.”
The constable was stunned by this audacious and fairly insulting
proposition; but being thoroughly convinced that Cuddy was half
demented, he thought it better to yield at once to the stubborn negro’s
condition, and thus save his precious and much-wasted time. He jumped
from his horse and angrily yanked off Cuddy’s blanketful of jail
equipage, and threw it on the ground. He glanced apprehensively up and
down the road to see that there was no approaching traveller to spread
the tale of his ridiculous discomfiture and abject submission, and
then walked to the middle of the bridge and began to sullenly dance to
Cuddy’s lively and rollicking dance-tune. The jolly song and dismal jig
were nearly ended, when a most surprising and inexplicable event took
place. The constable’s sedate and quiet horse gave a sudden snort,
reared, broke away from Cuddy’s restraining hand, and plunged violently
down the hill.
“Stop her! Stop her, Cuddy!” roared Mr. Cranston, as he suddenly ceased
his forced dance and began to run.
“I ain’t agoin’ ter run none after dat ole hoss,” said Cuddy; “I’se
got de rheumatiz’ too bad. You jess see ef you can’t run faster as you
can dance. You can’t catch her, dough,” he called after the retreating
sheriff. “I know she’s conjured by de way she run. It always do conjure
a hoss to see a constable a-dancin’ ober runnin’ water.”
As the constable shouted “Whoa!” at the top of his lungs and chased
wildly down the hill out of sight, Cuddy walked to the side of the
bridge and threw into the water the long, sharp locust-thorn that had
done such sly and good execution as a spur, as a “conjure” to the
sheriff’s steed. Then he sat down by the side of his blanket bundle in
the hot noonday sunlight, and he took out his fiddle and scraped and
sawed to the bees and birds and butterflies like a jolly yellow Pan.
And he chuckled and laughed and whistled and sang, and once he jumped
up and danced through “Old Chalmouni Fair” with a brisk vigor that
put to shame the unwilling and clumsy efforts of the constable, and
made the tow tongs and the blue coat-tails snap and flap around his
shrivelled old yellow legs. It was certainly most astonishing to see
such agility and activity in a man so aged, and in one so rheumatic and
so witch-ridden an hour previously. At last a passing farm-wagon picked
him up and carried him and his great bundle to his own door.
As Cuddymonk replanted his early potatoes the following morning, he
once more soliloquized to his wife:
“I tell you, Rosann, dat ole fool ob a Cranston won’t nebber ’rest me
fer debt no more. I ain’t goin’ to raise no more pigs anyway, even ef I
does get ’em somewhat cheap. ’Tatoes is better’n pigs. Times nebber’ll
be good in dis country till ebberybody stops raisin’ pigs an’ plant
’tatoes; dat’s de true secret ob de pollitercul crisis ob dis land.”
THE WITCH SHEEP
In the darkness of Christmas morning, in the year 1811, old Benny
Nichols could not sleep. He was not thinking of Santa Claus nor of
Christmas gifts; he was watching for the first gray dawn which marked
his regular rising hour, and he tossed and turned, wondering why he
was so wakeful, until at last he rose in despair and lighted a candle
to discover how long he had to wait ere daybreak. To his amazement
he found the hands of the old clock pointing to the hour of nine,
and as he stood shivering, candle in hand, staring at the apparently
deceitful, bland face the clock raised its voice and struck nine,
loudly and brassily, as if to prove that its hands and face told the
truth. Benny then walked quickly to the window, and saw that the
apparent darkness and length of the night came from a great wall of
snow which covered the entire window and which had nearly all fallen
since the previous sunset.
Keenly awake at once when he recognized the lateness of the hour,
the old man wakened his wife Debby, and bade her “hurry up and git
somethin’ to eat. It’s nine o’clock, and we’ve had the wust snowstorm
ye ever see, and me a-laying’ here in bed, and them new sheep a-walkin’
into the sea and gittin’ drownded!”
Benny was a weazened-faced, dried-up old man, who was the shepherd of a
large Narragansett farm which lay between Pender Zeke’s Corner and the
bay. He knew well the danger that came to sheep in a heavy snowstorm.
He had seen a great flock of a hundred timid, shrinking creatures
retreat and cower one behind the other to shelter themselves from the
fierce beating of the wind and sleet, until, in spite of his efforts,
all were edged into the sea and lost, save a half-dozen whose throats
were cut by him with a jack-knife to save the mutton. Without waiting
for any warm food, he cautiously opened the door to dig himself out.
“Ye can’t go out, Benny Nichols, in them shoes,” said Debby, firmly.
“I told ye long ago they was half wore out--here, put on yer Sunday
long-boots.”
This suggestion was a bitter one to prudent Benny, who expected to
have those boots for Sunday wear for the next ten years, just as he
had for the past ten; and he knew well what a hard day’s work he had
before him, and how destructive it would prove to shoe-leather. But
Debby was firm, and, seizing the great boots from the nail on which
they hung, she poured out the flax-seed with which they were always
kept filled when they were not on Benny’s feet. The old man pulled them
on his shrivelled legs with a groan at Debby’s extravagance, and then
proceeded to dig out a path in the snow. Benny had not seen such a
snow-storm since the great “Hessian snow-storm” in the winter of 1778,
when so many Hessian soldiers perished of cold and exposure. When he
reached the surface and could look around him, he saw with satisfaction
that the snow and wind had blown during the previous night _away_
from the water, hence his sheep would hardly be drowned. He quickly
discovered a strange-shaped bank of snow by the side of one of the
great hay-ricks, so common throughout Narragansett, and he shrewdly
suspected that some of his sheep were underneath the great drift. When
carefully searched with a rake-stale this proved to be the case, and
when he shovelled them out all in the mound were alive and well. In a
snow-drift, by the side of a high stone wall, he found the remainder of
his flock, save one, a fine little ewe of the creeper breed, the rarest
and most valued of all his stock. As sheep-sheds at that time were
unknown in Narragansett, the loss of sheep was great in the Christmas
storm, and many cattle were frozen in the drifts; and one shepherd
noted two weeks later that the hungry cattle he foddered never touched
a full lock of hay that he had thrown on the top of a little hillock
of snow near his rick. So he thrust at it with his hay-tines, and in
so doing he lifted off a great shell of snow-crust, and there peered
out of the whiteness the bronze, wrinkled face of the old squaw Betty
Aaron, who was sitting bolt upright, frozen stiff and dead, her chin
resting on both hands, her elbows on her knees. Hence Benny was justly
proud of his rescued flock, though he mourned the one sheep that was
lost, and blamed himself for sleeping so late, saying, he “wouldn’t
have minded spilin’ his roast-meat boots if he could have found the
creeper.”
On the fourteenth day of January Benny Nichols chanced to see in the
snow, by the side of a hay-rick which stood a mile away from his home,
a small hole about half an inch in diameter, which his practised eye
recognized at once as a “breathing-hole,” and which indicated that some
living thing had been snowed in and was lying underneath. He broke away
the covering of icy crust, and to his amazement saw a poor creature of
extraordinary appearance, which he at first hardly could believe was
his own lost creeper sheep. She was alive, but alas! in such a sorry
plight.
The hungry sheep, in her three weeks’ struggle against starvation,
had eaten off every fibre of her own long wool that she could reach,
and she lay bare and trembling in the cold air, too weak to move, too
feeble to bleat either in distress or welcome. Old Benny wrapped the
half-dead creature in the corner of his cloak and carried her home to
Debby, who fairly shed tears at the sight of the poor naked skeleton
of a sheep. Tenderly did the kind woman wrap the frozen ewe in an old
flannel petticoat and feed her with warm milk, a few drops only at
first, and then with much caution until the sheep was able to digest
her ordinary food. In a week the creeper seemed as strong as ever,
quickly gained the lost flesh, and could bleat both loud and long.
And with returning health she grew active and mischievous, and was
constantly thrusting her long black nose into the most unexpected and
most unsuitable places, to the great distress of careful Debby, who
longed to put her out of doors.
But the sheep’s lost wool could not grow as quickly as did the fat
on her ribs, and she could not be thrust out thus, naked and bare,
in the winter air, so Debby decided to make for the little creature
a false fleece. For this purpose she took an old blue coat which had
once been worn by her son, and cut off the sleeves until they were
the right length to cover the ewe’s forelegs. She then sewed at the
waist of the coat two sleeves from an old red flannel shirt; these
were to cover Nanny’s hind legs. And when Debby drew on the gay jacket
and buttoned it up over the sheep’s long backbone with the large
brass coat-buttons, there never was seen such a comical, stunted,
hind-side-foremost caricature of what is itself a caricature--an
organ-grinder’s monkey.
When Benny carried the gayly dressed Nanny out to the enclosed yard,
it was hard to tell which exhibition of feeling was the keenest--poor,
unconscious, and absurd Nanny’s delight in her freedom and her eager
desire to take her place with her old companions, or the consternation
and terror of the entire flock at the strange wild beast which was thus
turned loose among them.
They ran from side to side, and crowded each other against the paling
so unceasingly and so wildly, that Benny carried the unwilling ewe back
to the kitchen.
At nightfall, however, Benny again placed Nanny in the open field with
the sheep, thinking that they would gradually, throughout the darkness,
become used to the presence of her little harlequin jacket, and allow
her to graze by their side in peace.
That night two cronies of Benny’s came from a neighboring farm to talk
over that ever-interesting topic, the great snowstorm, and to buy some
of his lambs. The three old men sat by the great fireplace in the
old raftered kitchen in the pleasant glow from the blazing logs, each
sipping with unction a mug of Benny’s famous flip, while Debby rubbed
with tallow the sadly stiffened long-boots that had been worn in the
Christmas snow. Suddenly a loud wail of distress rang in their ears,
the door was thrust violently open, and in stumbled the breathless
form of the tall, gaunt old negress Tuggie Bannocks. She was a relic
of old slavery times, who lived on a small farm near the old Gilbert
Stuart Mill, on Petaquamscut River. They all knew her well. She had
bought many a pound of wool from Benny to wash and card and spin into
yarn, and she always helped Debby in that yearly trial of patience and
skill--her soap-making. The old negro woman had double qualifications
to make her of use in this latter work: her long, strong arms could
stir the soap untiringly for hours, and then she knew also how to work
powerful charms--traditional relics of Voodooism--to make the soap
always turn out a success.
Tuggie Bannocks sank upon the table by the fire, murmuring: “Tanks be
to Praise! Tanks be to Praise!” and closed her eyes in speechless
exhaustion. Debby took a half-crushed basket of eggs from the old
woman’s arm, drew off her red woollen mittens, and rubbed briskly her
long cold claws of hands. Benny had a vague remembrance of the old-time
“emergency” saying, “feathers for fainters,” and seized a turkey’s wing
that was in daily use as a hearth-brush, thrust it into the flames, and
then held the scorching feathers under the old negress’s nose until all
in the room were coughing and choking with the stifling smoke.
Spluttering and choking at the dense feather-smoke, Tuggie gasped
out: “I ain’t dead yit--I specks I shall be soon, dough--kase I seen
de ole witch a-ridin’--I’se most skeered to death” (then in a fainter
voice)--“gib me a mug of dat flip.” Startled, Benny quickly drew a
great mug of home-brewed beer and gave it a liberal dash of Jamaica
rum and sugar, then seized from the fire the red-hot “loggerhead” and
thrust it seething into the liquid until the flip boiled and bubbled
and acquired that burnt, bitter flavor that he knew Tuggie dearly
loved. The old woman moaned and groaned as she lay on the table-top,
but watched the brewing of the flip with eager eye, and sat up with
alacrity to drink it.
With many a shuddering sigh and many a glance behind her at the kitchen
door, and crossing her fingers to ward off evil spirits she began: “Ye
know, Miss Nickkels, I telled ye I was witch-rid by ole Mum Amey, an’
dis how I know I was. Ye see I was a-goin’ to wuk a charm on her first
off--not to hurt her none, jess to bodder her a leetle--an’ I jess put
my project on de fire one night, an’ it jess a-goin’ to boil, an’ in
come her ugly, ole grinnin’ black face at de door, an’ say she a-goin’
to set wid me a spell.” Mum Amey was a wrinkled half-breed Indian of
fabulous age and crabbed temper, a “squaw-nurse,” who was, of course,
not half as black as negro Tuggie. “She walk ober to de chimbly to
light her pipe an’ ask me what I a-cookin’, an’ I say Ise a-makin’
glue, cause Ise afeard she see de rabbit’s foot in de pot, an’ I say
it all done, an’ yank de pot offen de crane so she can’t see into it.
An’ ob course when I take de project offen de fire afore it’s wukked,
it break de charm; an’ wuss still, I can’t nebber try no project on
her no more. Ole Mum Amey larf, an’ say, a-leerin’ at me, dat pot ob
glue won’t nebber stick nothin’ no more. An’ ebber sence dat night I
ben witch-rid. Mornin’s when I wakes up I sees marks ob de bit in de
corners ob my mouf, where Mum Amey ben a-ridin’ me all ober Boston Neck
an’ up de Ridge Hill till I so tired and stiff I can’t hardly move. Ise
ben pinched in de night an’ hab my ha’r pulled. An’ my butter won’t
come till I drops a red-hot horseshoe in de cream to dribe her out. One
day I jess try her to see ef she a witch (dough I know she one, ’cause
I see her talkin’ to a black cat); I drop a silber sixpence in her
path, an’ jess afore she get to it she turn an’ go back, jess I know
she would. No witch can’t step ober silber. An’ now, Benny Nickkels,
I know for shore she’s a witch, I see her jess now in de moonlight
a-chasin’ an’ ridin’ your sheep; an’, shore’s yer bawn, yer’ll find
some on ’em stone dead in de mornin’--all on ’em, mebbe!”
Benny looked wretched enough at this statement. Dearly as he loved his
sheep and ready as he was to face physical discomfort and danger in
their behalf, he was too superstitious to dare to go out in the night
to rescue them and brave the witch.
“How did she look, Tuggie? And what did she do?” whispered awe-struck
Debby.
“Oh, she was mons’ous fearsome to see! Witches don’t nebber go in deir
own form when dey goes to deir Sabbaths. She was long an’ low like a
snake. She run along de groun’ jess like a derminted yeller painter,
a-boundin’, an’ leapin’, an’ springin’, a-chasin’ dem pore sheeps--oh,
how dey run! Wid her old red an’ blue blanket tied tight aroun’
her--dat’s how I knowed her. An’ she had big sparklin’ gold dollars on
her back--wages ob de debbil, I ’specks. Sometimes she jump in de air
an’ spread her wings an’ fly awhile. Smoke an’ sparks come outen her
mouf an’ nostrums! Big black horns stick outen her head! Lash her long
black tail jess like de debbil hisself!”
At this dramatic and breathless point in Tuggie’s flip-nourished and
quickly growing tale, credulous Debby, whose slow-working brain had
failed to grasp all the vivid details in the black woman’s fervid and
imaginative description, interjected this gasping comment: “It must ha’
been the devil or the creeper.”
Benny jumped from his chair and stamped his foot, and at once burst
into a loud laugh of intense relief, and with cheerful bravado began
to explain animatedly to his open-mouthed cronies that of course anyone
could see that Tuggie’s sheep-chasing witch was only the creeper sheep
in her new fleece, and he offered swaggeringly to go out alone to the
field to bring the ewe in to prove it.
The old negress sprang to her feet, insulted and enraged at the jeering
laughter and rallying jokes, and advanced threateningly toward him.
Then, as if with a second thought, she stopped with a most malicious
look, and in spite of Debby’s conciliatory explanations and her
soothing expressions “that it might have been Mum Amey after all,”
she thrust aside Benny’s proffered mollification of a fresh mug of
flip, seized her crushed basket, stalked to the door, and left the
house muttering, vindictively: “High time to stop such unrageous
goin’s-on--dressin’ up sheeps like debbils--scarin’ an ole woman to
death an’ breakin’ all her aigs! Ole Tuggie Bannocks ain’t forgot how
to burn a project! Guess dey won’t larf at witches den!”
And surely enough--as days passed it could plainly be seen that
the old negress had carried out her threat--for the chimney was
“conjured”--was “salted.” On windy nights the shepherd and his wife
were sure they could hear Tuggie dancing and stamping on the roof,
and she blew down smoke and threw down soot, and she called down the
chimney in a fine, high, shrieking voice: “I’ll project ye, Benny; I’ll
project ye.” And she burnt the cakes before the fire, and the roast
upon the spit, and thrice she snapped out a blazing coal and singed a
hole in Debby’s best petticoat, though it was worn wrong side out as a
saving-charm. And Benny could see, too, that the old ram was bewitched.
The remainder of the flock soon became accustomed to the sight of
Nanny’s funny false fleece, but he always fled in terror at her
approach. He grew thin and pale (or at any rate faded), and he would
scarcely eat when Nanny was near. Debby despairingly tried a few feeble
counter-charms, or “warders,” but without avail. When sheep-shearing
time came, however, and Nanny, shorn of her uncanny fleece and clothed
in her own half-inch snowy wool, took her place with the other
short-clipped members of the flock, he ceased to be “witch-rid”--the
“project,” the “conjure” was worked out. He grew fat and fiercely
brave, and became once more the knight of the field, the lord of the
domain, the patriarch, the potestate of his flock.
The story of Tuggie Bannocks’s fright and her revengeful “project”
spread far and wide on every farm from Point Judith to Pottawomat, and
was told in later years by one generation of farmers to another. And as
time rolled on and Nanny reared her lambs and they her grand-lambs, the
creeper sheep were known and sold throughout Narragansett by the name
of witch-sheep.
THE CRUSOES OF THE NOON-HOUSE
In a grass-grown graveyard by the side of an old Presbyterian church
in Narragansett, the warm, midday sun shone brightly down one spring
Sabbath in the year 1760 upon two boys twelve years of age, two
cousins, named Elam Noyes and Cotton Fayerweather. They stood by
the side of their grandfather’s grave, which bore a new blue slate
headstone, inscribed with his name and age, and the verses:
“You children of ye name of Noyes
Make Jesus Christ yo’r oleny choyse.”
The boys had gone into the church-yard with the apparent design of
examining this fine, though misspelled, token of the stone-cutter’s
art, but were really speaking and thinking of a very different subject.
They would never have been allowed to wander in the church-yard to
indulge in idle talk, and even now could spend but a few minutes in
conversation together. It was their only meeting-time during the
week, for they lived at extreme ends of the town, and Elam recited
his lessons to the Baptist minister, who lived near him, while Cotton
attended the village school. They were two well-built, healthy
boys, both dressed in clumsy, homespun suits of clothes, with full
knee-breeches, long-flapped coats and waistcoats, coarse yarn stockings
and buckled shoes, and great gray beaver hats several sizes too large
for them. Elam was as solemn and serious in his appearance as was his
father, but in his brain was a current of keen romance rarely found in
the head of any elderly colonist. As he left the church-yard with his
cousin he said, with much impressiveness, “Remember, Cotton, if you are
not here by candle-light I shall tarry no longer, but shall go home.”