The British origins of Black Southerners’ folk beliefs

In his Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro (1926), the white folklorist Newbell Niles Puckett presents the results of a lengthy field work study he carried out, and rightly notes the following:

Regarding the feelings, emotions, and the spiritual life of the Negro the average white man knows little. Should some weird, archaic, Negro doctrine be brought to his attention he almost invariably considers it a “relic of African heathenism,” though in four cases out of five it is a European dogma from which only centuries of patient education could wean even his own ancestors. This confusion of African and European lore only intensifies cultural differences…

[W]hen the Negro acquired in part the language and outward culture of the white man there would be a tendency to acquire his folk-beliefs as well. For these and other reasons to be brought out later, we must not be surprised to find a good part of the Negro folk-beliefs to be of English or European origin.

Here follow some examples:

Horseshoes

In an article on ‘Negro Superstitions’ (1870), Thaddeus Norris states: ‘Of course there is the universal horseshoe branded on the door of negro cabins as a bar to witches and the devil’.

Over 50 years later, Puckett notes the widespread belief in the power of the horseshoe as protection against witches:

Horseshoes hung over the doors, windows, beds and in other parts of the house, are supposed to be a sure way of keeping these unwelcome visitants away. The Maryland Negroes say, “de witch got to travel all over de road dat the horseshoe been ‘fo’ she can git in de house, and time she git back it would be day.”

And a 1964 book on Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina reports the belief that ‘horseshoes nailed over the door will keep off conjuring influences’.

Puckett comments:

In England also this connection between witches and horses is well marked… In many parts of England the horseshoe over the door is used to keep out witches.

He is quite right. In Devon, for example, in order to ‘frustrate the power of the black witch’, the following was done:

Take a cast horse shoe, nail it over the front door, points upwards. While nailing it up chant in mono-tone the following:

So as the fire do melt the wax
And wind blows smoke away,
So in the presence of the Lord
The wicked shall decay,
The wicked shall decay.
Amen.

The Rabbit’s Foot

A 1903 Encyclopaedia of Superstitions states that ‘If you search a negro’s pocket in the South, you will be as apt to find a rabbit’s foot in it as a razor’.

Puckett notes:

Europeans until quite recently valued a rabbit’s foot and carried it about the person as a charm. This is true of the Negroes (and many whites) as well, and they have a little story about Brer Rabbit disposing of the last witch in the world by putting pepper in her vacated skin. Thus Brer Rabbit is just “bawn ter luck” and his left foot will surely bring luck to you.

And also: ‘The phenomenal success of General Fitzhugh Lee of Virginia, in his gubernatorial race, was attributed by the Negroes to the fact that he carried a rabbit’s foot and a bottle of stump water’.

European belief in the power of the rabbit’s foot dates back to at least the first century. Pliny the Elder writes:

Bear’s gall [is] very useful for diseases of the joints, as are also the feet of a hare worn as an amulet, while gouty pains are alleviated by a hare’s foot, cut off from the living animal, if the patient carries it about continuously on the person.

Beliefs in the power of hares’ (or rabbits’) feet persisted for centuries. Writing in 1827, the Englishman William Hone notes an ‘antidote to witchery’ and states that his mother ‘carries a hare’s foot in her pocket, to guard against all attacks in that quarter by day’.

The English folklorist Sir Charles Igglesden (1861-1949) reported: ‘I am told that hundreds of mothers, even today, place a rabbit’s foot in the perambulator when a child is taken out by a nurse’, in order to prevent accidents.

The Lucky Coin

Tony Kail notes that excavations of former slave quarters in the South have turned up coins pierced with holes:

An 1834 half dime was found pierced along with a trade token that had been partially drilled on both sides. The half dime is nearly identical to those found in other slave dwellings in the South. Coins were frequently used as charms and worn on strings as a means of repelling evil or crossings. Dimes that had been pierced were in use in neighboring Mississippi.

Kail cites Puckett:

One “mojo” worn for good luck by an old Negro cook in the Mississippi Delta, included among other things such ingredients as a lizard’s tail, a rabbit’s foot, a fish eye, snake skins, a beetle, and a dime with a hole in it.

We also read, in Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina, that ‘Many Negroes wear dimes with holes in them around their ankles to ward off conjure’.

Meanwhile, in Britain:

Coins which have been defaced in certain ways have long been regarded as lucky pieces across Britain, and have been widely carried or worn to ensure good fortune, or to protect against bad luck. From the early nineteenth century onwards, many reports focus on coins with holes in them.

The Lucky Pin

Puckett writes:

Found things often have their meanings, especially in the case of pins which, of course, represent domestic articles associated chiefly with women. Here again we have a strong European background — almost always this is the case with articles of this sort. “If you see a pin and pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck.” In England there is the same identical rhyme with the addition: See a pin and let it be (lie), All the day you’ll have to cry.

James Haliwell’s 1886 book, The Nursery Rhymes of England, provides the following version:

See a pin and pick it up,
All the day you’ll have good luck;
See a pin and let it lay,
Bad luck you’ll have all the day!

The Hangman’s Rope

Puckett writes:

Ravelings from a hangman’s rope are a choice ingredient for a hoodoo-bag, but this is hardly of African origin, since the Africans are not much given to this form of punishment, and since we find parts of the rope by which a man was hanged valued as a prosperity-charm in Scotland.

Such beliefs were not merely confined to Scotland. John Brand, writing in 1849, reports:

I remember once to have seen, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, after a person executed had been cut down, men climb up upon the gallows and contend for that part of the rope which remained, and which they wished to preserve for some lucky purpose or other. I have lately made the important discovery that it is reckoned a cure for the headache.

Brand also recounts a story about the hanging of Nicholas Mooney (‘a notorious highwayman’) at Bristol in 1752:

A young woman came fifteen miles for the sake of the rope from Mooney’s neck, which was given to her; it being by many apprehended that the halter of an executed person will charm away the ague, and perform many other cures.

A regional variation is also found in nineteenth century Devon:

A portion of a rope with which a suicide has hanged himself is a wondrous charm against all accidents, when worn around the person.

Bibliomancy

Puckett writes:

The Negro generally makes a wish, then opens his Bible. If he happens on the words, “and it shall come to pass,” then he believes his wish will be granted…

Many of the conjurers whom I know could read and write, and some turn this knowledge into direct use in sorcery, as where the Bible is used for purposes of divination.

A Scottish minister, writing in 1705, warns:

Or do you think to escape the guilt of sorcery, who let your Bible fall open on purpose to determine what the state of your souls is by the first word ye light upon?

John Harland and T.T. Wilkinson’s 1867 book on Lancashire Folk-Lore notes:

In modern divination, two modes are in popular favour—thrusting a pin or a key between the leaves of a closed Bible, and taking the verse the pin or key touches as a direction or omen: and the divining-rod.

‘Voodoo Dolls’

Puckett reports:

In rural districts of Georgia reputed witches may lay a spell by baking an image of dough representing a person, and sticking pins into it, thus causing the victim to suffer pain.

And again:

Make an image of a person out of graveyard snake-oil mixed with flour or sand, bake it good by an open fire, and you can give a person pains in any part of his body by sticking pins in the image.

Meanwhile, in nineteenth century Devon:

In Devonshire, witches, and malevolent people still make clay images of those whom they intend to hurt, baptize the image with the name of the person whom it is meant to represent, and then stick it full of pins or burn it. In the former case that person is racked with rheumatism in all his limbs; in the second he is smitten with raging fever.

The similarity between folk beliefs associated with black Southerners and the folk beliefs of the people of the British Isles are too marked to be merely coincidental. It would be entirely unsurprising to find that Southern blacks acquired the folk beliefs held by Southern whites and incorporated them into their own folk magical systems. It is possible that, in some cases, analogous West African beliefs were merged with European beliefs (the power of the rabbit’s foot is a strong contender for this), but in general it seems clear that the true origins of a number of black Southerners’ folk beliefs lie in Britain.

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The Folk Beliefs of Nineteenth Century Devonians

Exeter, Devon, England Seen From Exwick from the book From Our Own Country (1898).

Despite Christianisation, the onset of scientific advances, and the Englightenment, the common people of Britain (and plenty of its more formally educated citizens) continued for a long time to adhere to a wide variety of magico-religious folk beliefs, some of which remain today both in the form of popular superstitions and in the realms of ‘alternative spirituality’and ‘alternative medicine’. Indeed, even today, in every major city, as well as some towns and villages, shops can be found offering a wide array of products and services of this sort.

The West Country county of Devon, where I grew up, was a bastion of such beliefs and practices, up to at least the beginning of the twentieth century, as a number of writings attest. In ‘North Devon Customs and Superstitions’ (1867), JR Chanter (author of Sketches of the Literary History of Barnstaple), for example, states the following:

Devon in general, and North Devon in particular, has been very retentive of ancient customs, habits, and superstitions. Its folk-lore is especially interesting from its local form of fairy, the Devonshire pixy. But the most noticeable fact connected with North Devon is, not so much the variety or specially local character of its superstitions and vulgar customs, as of their being still generally interwoven with the daily life of the population. In most parts of the country it is necessary, in order to gather up local customs or legends, to seek out ancient crones or noted legend-tellers; but no one can live in this district, and mix much with the country folks, without finding a general belief in witchcraft still existing, and old customs and superstitions in full sway. A great many of these are, or were, common to all England, but having gradually died out in the more busy parts of the country, have continued here, most probably from the isolated nature of the district, and the stagnant character of the agricultural population.

In 1900, these beliefs were still widespread, as attested by Sarah Hewett, in her book Nummits and Crummits: Devonshire Customs, Characteristics, and Folk-lore:

West Country people generally, and Devonians in particular, are exceedingly superstitious, in spite of all that has been done for them in the way of higher education, and the enlightening influence of the press. Dwellers in the hilly parts of Devon, on Dartmoor and Exmoor, and in the villages bordering upon them, are as deeply imbued with faith in witches, as their forefathers were in the days when Alfred was king.

JR Chanter gives examples of these beliefs and practices:

The medical repute of charms is, in fact, very prevalent; any sudden cure is proverbially said to act like a charm. The seventh son of a seventh son is still in great request to “touch” for fits; and a case of this came out on a legal enquiry only a week or two since. Warts and swellings are removed by various charms, such as skeins of thread knotted with the number of the warts to be removed, and struck across the warts as many times, and then buried; or striking with a witch elm wand, or a piece of stolen bacon; in each of which cases as the buried article decays so do the warts gradually decrease; or by depositing a given number of pebbles or peas in a bag, and losing it, but in this case the unfortunate finder gets the warts himself. But the most favourite remedy for warts, and indeed all swellings, is to have “words” said over them.

A portion of a rope with which a suicide has hanged himself is a wondrous charm against all accidents, when worn around the person.

The tooth ache is cured, and, what is more, perfect exemption from it for the future is supposed to be attained, by biting out a tooth from a corpse or skull…

Accidents, or any obscure ailments to cattle, are commonly attributed to their being witched, or “overlooked”, as the term is, and can only be cured by a white witch; and it is well known that more than one person in North Devon gains his livelihood by acting professionally as a white witch, that is, the country people call him the white witch, though he professes to be a cattle doctor.

In fact, if any one gets into trouble in any way, it is quite a sufficient explanation that he has been “evil-wished and overlooked,” and the white witch is forthwith called into requisition.

Omens, presentiments, and death-warnings, are much believed in hereabouts…

If any one offends an old woman, the severest reply she can make is to say she will have him witched; and an instance occurred only last week.

Hewitt gives a number of examples of folk cures, and writes:

The White Witch… is always willing, for certain pecuniary considerations, to dispense charms and philtres, to cancel the evil of the other [the malevolent Black Witch]…

In cases of sickness, distress, or adversity, persons at the present time (A.D. 1898) make long expensive journeys to consult the white witch, and to gain relief by her (or his) aid…

Pinches of powdered plants, scraps of inscribed vellum, dried limbs of loathsome reptiles, juices of poisonous herbs, blood, excrements, and gruesome compositions all blend together to make up the witch’s charms…

I have interviewed many a believer in the efficacy of charms, and from them obtained curious examples of miscellaneous articles claiming miraculous powers to heal. Besides the sale of charms the white witch cures diseases by “striking” and blessing.

The Cathedral city of Exeter seems to have been particularly associated with such practices. An 1844 journal article cites the following example:

It is usual with many persons about Exeter, when affected with ague [a fever or shivering fit], to visit at dead of night the nearest cross-road five different times, and there bury a new-laid egg. The visit is paid about an hour before the cold fit is expected; and they are persuaded that with the egg they shall bury the ague.

William Henderson, writing in 1879, reports that ‘there are still plenty of white witches in Devonshire’ and gives the following example:

At Bratton Clovelly, in Devonshire, a farmer’s cows were charmed, so that his milk yielded neither cream nor butter. He declared on oath that he had put whole faggots on the fire, but the milk would not boil, a proof that it was bewitched. He therefore resorted to the white witch at Exeter.

Hewitt writes:

The word “Abracadabra” written on parchment was given by an Exeter white witch, to a person who desired to possess a talisman against the dominion of the grey witch, pixies, evil spirits and the powers of darkness! It cost a guinea, and was sewn up in a small black silk bag one inch square. This was hung round the neck and never removed.

Devonshire folk magic centred on a belief in the power of both malevolent and benevolent witches, creatures, and spirits. In common with various other magical systems around the world, it blended these beliefs with elements derived from Christianity, the ‘official’ belief system of the time. Hewitt offers various examples.

‘To frustrate the power of the black witch’:

Take a cast horse shoe, nail it over the front door, points upwards. While nailing it up chant in mono-tone the following:

So as the fire do melt the wax
And wind blows smoke away,
So in the presence of the Lord
The wicked shall decay,
The wicked shall decay.
Amen.

‘To destroy the power of a witch’:

Take three small-necked stone jars: place in each the liver of a frog stuck full of new pins, and the heart of a toad stuck full of thorns from the holy thorn bush. Cork and seal each jar. Bury in three different churchyard paths seven inches from the surface and seven feet from the porch. While in the act of burying each jar repeat the Lord’s prayer backwards.

As the hearts and livers decay so will the witch’s power vanish. After performing this ceremony no witch can have any power over the operator.

‘To cure sore throat’:

Read the eighth Psalm seven times for three successive mornings over the patient.

Interestingly, despite the Christian aspects, magical practices were not solely benevolent in nature. A number of examples can be found of the use of magic to cause harm.

‘The herring-bone charm to cause death’ (cited in Hewitt):

Sew into a garment which is worn next to the skin a long thin herring-bone. As the bone dries up, or withers, so will the person wearing it gradually pine away and die.

Henderson notes the following:

In Devonshire, witches, and malevolent people still make clay images of those whom they intend to hurt, baptize the image with the name of the person whom it is meant to represent, and then stick it full of pins or burn it. In the former case that person is racked with rheumatism in all his limbs; in the second he is smitten with raging fever.

Henderson, again:

It is said in Devonshire that you may give [ague] to your neighbour, by burying under his threshold a bag containing the parings of a dead man’s nails, and some of the hairs of his head: your neighbour will be afflicted with ague until the bag is removed.

Henderson cites an example of similar practices which were related to have been discovered in West Riding, Yorkshire, where a woman was wasting away to ‘nothing but skin and bones’:

She had no definite illness, but complained that she felt as if pins were being run into her body all over her. The village doctor was resorted to, but in vain. At last they applied to the Wise-man [white witch], who pronounced that some person was doing her harm, and advised them to search the garden for hidden spells. They did so, and found buried under the window a sheep’s heart stuck full of pins like a pin-cushion. The thing was removed and destroyed and the woman recovered.

How long such beliefs and practices persisted in Devon (and elsewhere), it is hard to say. Certainly, Devon seems to have been particularly resistant to the forces of modernity. Indeed, it would be unsurprising to find that some residual traces of these beliefs persist even to the present day, although the central role played by the white witch seems now to have been confined to the history books.

Backwoods Horror in Nineteenth Century Devon

Illustration from An Old English Home and Its Dependencies (1898)

A recurring theme in the ‘backwoods’ genre of horror films is that of a group of city dwellers either heading deep into the countryside for a weekend retreat or somehow getting lost or stranded in such a location. Invariably, the urbanites stumble upon some isolated farmhouse inhabited by a primitive, violent, and degenerate ‘hillbilly’ family, and few of them live to tell the tale. One thinks, for example, of families such as the Sawyers (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), the Odets (Wrong Turn), and the Fireflies (House of 1000 Corpses).

Reading Sarah Hewitt’s Nummits and Crummits: Devonshire Customs, Characteristics, and Folk-Lore, published in 1900, we find similar themes in a chapter on ‘peculiar and eccentric Devonians’, where Hewitt offers the tale of the Cheriton family, also known as the ‘North Devon Savages’. The family became the stuff of legend, even being written about in the New York Times. Here are some excerpts from Hewitt’s account:

The Cheriton family, fifty years ago, resided in the parish of Nymet Rowland, a hamlet sixteen miles from Exeter, situated in the very centre of the most picturesque part of our fair county.

In the early days of their possession they were respectable, hardworking yeomen, living on and cultivating their estate to advantage. Then a son married badly, and the children of this union grew up idle and dissolute, consequently the farm was neglected and in a short time it fell into a low state of cultivation. Each successive generation sank lower in the social scale till a condition insensible to shame was reached.

The family lived in a most disreputable way. Their language was, as Tickler in his Devonshire Sketches, says, “too horribly foul for repetition: they poured forth copious streams of the dirtiest and most obscene words conceivable.”

A correspondent, who when a young man lived in the neighbourhood, tells me that no one could beat them at rough language, horseplay, and filthy discourse. They were a disgrace to the neighbourhood and a nuisance to their neighbours. One day, when passing the house, he was accosted by a woman of the tribe, who called him disgusting names, pelted him with mud and stones, performed indescribable offensive acts, and finally chased him brandishing a hay fork, with which she would have undoubtedly assaulted him had he not beaten a hasty retreat…

The farmhouse and outbuildings were originally trim and well kept, but had been gradually allowed to reach the last stage of dilapidation. The thatch was stripped from the rafters, and the rooms below received all the rain which fell, the wind played havoc with, and carried away every scrap it could dislodge. The windows had long been denuded of glass, and in winter were stuffed with bundles of hay or straw to protect the inmates from the severity of the weather; the air had free passage from basement to roof. A person standing in what was at one time the kitchen, could see the clouds passing and the birds flying above the roof. The doors were nowhere. The living room was almost destitute of furniture, and in place of seats a hole had been dug in the lime-ash-floor in front of the fireplace, which was on the hearth. Into this hole the legs of the members of the family rested as they sat on the bare floor around the fire…

Their land being freehold no one dared interfere with the family so long as they kept upon their own ground. Many strong efforts were made to clear them out of their holding but without success, and for many years these disgraceful conditions continued.

Over their social life one would wish to draw a curtain, for they regarded not the holy rites prescribed by the Church, nor the authority of bishops, arch-deacons, or civil laws. They had all things in common, and multiplied into a large family without marriage. Their conduct, habits, manners, and language, made them a terror and a nuisance to their immediate neighbours. Their misdeeds were the cause of their making frequent appearances before the magistrates in the local police courts. The surrounding farmers, after a time forbore to summon them as their ricks, stacks, barns, and homesteads were fired. By whom? None could tell, though pretty shrewd guesses were levelled at the Cheritons…

A former rector of this parish, a tall robust man, standing six foot, two inches, in his stockings, whenever he passed the premises was assailed with showers of stones and inexpressibly revolting abuse. The property has long ago changed owners, and of the fate of the Cheritons very little is known. The old folks are dead, and the younger ones have emigrated or married, thus breaking up a family notorious for evil in all its forms.

James Greenwood, in his 1883 book In Strange Company: Being the Experiences of a Roving Correspondent, writes of a visit he paid to the home of the Cheritons. He sets the scene in dramatic tones:

Hut, hovel, stye, or whatever else it should be termed, it is in every respect inferior to anything in the way of house architecture that can be met with in the most barbarous regions on the earth.

A mandan of the Indian prairies would laugh to scorn such an effect at hut-building; a man-eating Fijian would regard as a wanton insult the suggestion that the hideous structure at Nymet Rowland might serve as a pattern useful to be followed in his construction of a dwelling-place…

[T]he barbarian tribe of Nymet Rowland, squatting amid the model dairy farms and mellow apple orchards of Devonshire… care no more for the house they inhabit than the pig does.

He continues:

This was the inviting domicile for which I was bound; and the closer I approached, the more vividly rose to my mind the current stories of its redoubtable inhabitants — of the eldest son, the lawless villain with a gun who, on the smallest provocation, or none at all, would let fly at a peaceful neighbour; of the shock-headed amazons, who, from concealed parts of the premises, hurled bricks and other unpleasant missiles at strangers. I thought, too, of the offensive farmer who, guilty of no crime more grave than that of looking over the fence behind which these savages dwelt, was set on and so terribly cut and mauled, that, in the words of the local guide book, “he bears the marks of his barbarous treatment to this day.”

Greenwood knocked at the door, requesting water, and entered into the Cheriton home, where he found a group of women and children, as well as pigs, cocks, hens, and ducks. He describes their living area as follows:

There was not a single article of what could be called furniture to be seen — neither chair, nor stool, nor table. Ranged against the wall to the right was a long rough-hewn bench, and above it was slung a shelf on which were stacked a few odd bits of crockery, five or six yellow quart basins, and an old earthenware foot-bath patched and tied round with string, which, since a ladle reposed in it, and the idea of feet-washing among such a community was simply ridiculous, I presume was the family soup tureen. On the bench were a pile of onions, a monstrous loaf or two of hearth-baked bread, a battered tin pail three parts filled with milk, a ragged old saddle, and some jars and bottles containing apparently medicine for cattle.

There was no fire-place; but a ruddy glow smouldered from a hole in the floor of the earth, and over it, by an iron chain, a cooking pot was suspended.

Despite all of this, Greenwood has to admit the Cheritons aren’t actually all bad, despite their filthy living conditions and the presence of pigs, cocks, hens, and ducks in the house:

Bad as they may be, these North Devon barbarians — bestial, filthy, and inexpressibly vicious — they at least exhibited towards me, a chance visitor and complete stranger, an amount of hospitality that smote my conscience hard when I reflected how little I deserved it. A damsel of the tribe, aged apparently about twenty, with thick clouted boots on her feet like those of a maltster, and a white rag bound about her muscular jaws, caught up an antique pot or piggin of red clay, capable of holding, I should say, a couple of gallons. This she took out, and brought it back full. Then she got a little jug and half filled it with water out of another vessel, filled it up with milk, and presented it to me with the polite observation that “she wished as how it was cider, but they were quite out of it.”

Only when the parson (the parish priest) is mentioned, does Greenwood see another side:

“You’re a stranger?” said she, interrogatively.

I nodded.

“Don’t know the passen” (parson), “or any of them in these parts?”

“No; shouldn’t know them if I saw them.”

“There, I told thee so,” said she, turning to the others ; whereon, as though it was the constant recreation of their lives, and my entry had interrupted it, there arose a family chorus of the foulest abuse and cursing, directed against “passen” and all his friends, that might have made my blood run cold, only that I was stooping over the red-hot chumps and sticks to get a light for my pipe.

“Parson a bad sort?” I ventured to enquire.

“A reg’ler old,” spoke the young gentleman in the ashes, deftly picking up a stick with his toes, and thrusting it into the fire; “that’s what I’d like to do wi’ passen,” a sentiment which was highly applauded by the rest, one of the girls adding, in far more idiomatic language than I dare use, that she would like to perform upon the gentleman in question the operation of disemboweling.

Greenwood concludes his account by making further observations about the lifestyle of the Cheritons. He strongly implies incestuous practices:

The facts are simply these: Here is a man — Cheriton by name — who takes a woman as his mate; and the pair agree to defy decency and goodness in any shape for the remainder of their lives, and “to do as they like.” The den they inhabit at the present time is that in which more than forty years ago they first took residence. They can afford to keep aloof from their neighbours, their homestead being surrounded by about forty acres of good land, their own freehold. In the natural course of events, they have children; their daughters grow up and have children, and the latter in turn grow up and become mothers; but no one ever yet heard of a marriage in that awful family, or ever knew any male stranger to be on visiting terms with it. The only adults of the masculine sex ever heard of in relationship with the Cheritons are the old man, Christopher; his eldest son Willie, aged thirty-five or so; and the fourteen-year-old youth I have already mentioned.

They decline communication with the world outside the boundary hedges of their estate. Accidental encounters with civilized beings are invariably accompanied by conflict, physical or verbal. No one knows when a child is about to be born in this mysterious settlement, for they dispense with the service of a doctor and nurse each other. No one knows to whom a child belongs when it is born, nor are the neighbours usually aware of the fact until by chance some one gets a glimpse of the infant two or three months afterwards. Supposing the members of this awful tribe to be so inclined, they might dispose of their infant dead and nobody would be the wiser. The horrible suspicion is, that they herd together like brutes of the field, and breed like them.

Greenwood also describes the Cheritons as living off subsistence farming:

Of the five-and-thirty or forty acres owned by the Cheriton savages, not a fifth part is under cultivation; it being their practice to grow no more than suffices for their personal consumption, and that only in the way of potatoes and cabbages, and a little wheat which they dry and grind for themselves. They breed a few sheep — a mere dozen or so. They hire no labourers, the whole family engaging in the necessary field-work; the females helping at the plough, assisted by an old horse and a bull.

Greenwood’s account of the Cheritons (as well as that found in Hewitt’s book) contains many elements found in modern rural horror films: A violent clan living in squalor on a run-down old farm; a hatred of civilisation and religious authority; a house shared with animals; the suggestion of incest; and the traveller who escapes back to the safety of urban modernity:

” They’ll be home with him presently,” said old grand-mother savage, who sat rocking the awful baby that was squeaking like a snared rabbit.

“Who will be home with him?” I asked.

“My old man and Willie,” she replied.

Willie was the young fellow who had nearly smashed the unoffending farmer; so, inwardly thanking her for the timely hint, I bade the interesting family good-morning, made for the five-barred gate that grew out of the black mud, and sought the sweet highway.

In many ways, then, the Cheritons are forerunners of the type of rural family found in contemporary horror stories.

Were the Cheritons actually as bad as some said? It is hard to tell. Certainly, they seem to have been in conflict with their parish priest, for, in addition to the material found in Hewitt and Greenwood’s accounts, the New York Times article on the family states that ‘[t]he outcasts known as the “North Devon Savages,” were brought some time ago to public notice by the clergyman in whose parish they reside’.

Why the Cheritons hated this clergyman so much, we may never know, although one can’t help but suspect that at least some of the Cheriton mythology may have in fact been concocted as a pretext for stripping them of their land. The Cheritons hurled abuse at ‘the “passen” and all his friends’; perhaps those ‘friends’ were moneyed landowners who didn’t like rural riff-raff getting in the way…

Hot Sauce and Devilled Bones in Nineteenth Century England

In nineteenth century England, cayenne pepper was a very popular ingredient, and had been for many years. Indeed, Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769), for example, contains 53 references to ‘Chyan pepper’. In addition to simply sprinkling powdered cayenne pepper on food, there was also the option of purchasing commercially produced salts, sauces, and vinegars infused with cayenne (AG Payne, 1886, pp.24-26).

A leading product of the period was Clarence’s Cayenne Sauce, described at the time as ‘a very hot sauce’ (Payne, p.25), which was, according to advertisements in London newspapers (1869 and 1870), ‘pronounced by connoisseurs the best sauce’. These connoisseurs were largely drawn from the English upper classes. Clarence’s Cayenne Sauce was promoted at the International Exhibition of 1862 as follows:

This sauce is used as a relish to roast meat, game, poultry, steaks, chops, cutlets, fish, soup, gravy, &c. Its thorough adaptation to this purpose has won for it a first class among sauces, and extensive patronage in the houses of the nobility and gentry, and in the clubs.

‘The clubs’ is a reference to the private members clubs of London, where the wealthy gathered to drink and socialise. In addition to enjoying foods laced with cayenne sauce, the patrons of these clubs were also big fans of a snack known as ‘devilled bones’. Since 1964, Americans (and now many people in other countries) have been accompanying late night bar room sessions with Buffalo wings; fried chicken wings coated in a cayenne pepper hot sauce. Long before that, 19th Century Englishmen were enjoying a similar combination.

Devilled bones was a simple dish made by combining ‘the bones of any remaining joint or poultry, which has still some meat on’ (Soyer, 1858 [1845], p.159) with butter, hot mustard, and cayenne pepper. The meat was scored so the seasonings would permeate throughout (Payne, p.25), then coated with this ‘devil sauce’ and briefly cooked until hot. There were various different recipes, depending on the location. For example, the members of Boodle’s Private Members’ Club (which exists to this day) in St James’s Street, London, were served devilled bones coated in a mixture of butter, dry English mustard, black pepper, salt, curry powder, cayenne pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

A simpler recipe can be found in Mary Davies’ The Menu Cookery Book (1885, p.181), a book intended for ‘moderate people with moderate incomes’:

Take the leg, back, or wing bones of turkey or fowl, score them a little with a knife, butter them well, then lay mustard thickly over, sprinkle cayenne or common pepper on, and broil. Serve very hot.

Basically, then, an early form of hot wings.

While hot sauces and devilled bones were very popular, not everyone was a fan. Kettner’s Book of the Table (1877, p.157), for example, contains the following disparaging remarks:

It is the great fault of all devilry that it knows no bounds. A moderate devil is almost a contradiction in terms; and yet it is quite certain that if a devil is not moderate he destroys the palate, and ought to have no place in cookery, the business of which is to tickle, not to annihilate, the sense of taste.

Eventually, the hot sauce and devilled bones trend died out, a fact bemoaned by the essayist EV Lucas in his 1924 book Encounters and Diversions (pp.19-20):

Britons, who were never to be slaves, are slaves once more, principally to cynical Italian caterers. Where are certain simple delicacies of yesteryear? Where is that ancient nocturnal amenity, the devilled bone? After the theatre, how agreeable it once was, too many years ago, to seek the Blue Posts in Cork Street and be sure of devilled bones!

A head waiter is quoting as saying that ‘nobody asks for them now’.

Visit any major supermarket (and plenty of smaller shops) in England today, and you can purchase a wide variety of hot sauces, including cayenne sauces, although Clarence’s Cayenne Sauce is sadly nowhere to be found. Asking for devilled bones in a pub or bar will most likely result in a look of confusion on the part of the barkeeper. Ask for hot wings, however, and there’s a fair chance you’ll be served some, particularly in the larger chains (although, recently, Buffalo wing sauce is being replaced by trendy Sriracha hot sauce).

Hot sauce and hot wings seem like something relatively new and exotic in England today; however, they actually have an English pedigree dating back to at least the nineteenth century.

The English Roots of Southern Fried Chicken

Southern fried chicken is a dish known throughout the world as one of America’s most iconic exports, as well as being, for many, the quintessential culinary representation of the culture of the Southern United States. Indeed, there are 900 KFC restaurants in the UK alone.

Most people, I imagine, would assume that Southern fried chicken is rooted firmly in the American South. After all, the clue is right there in the name. However, for those who may have an interest in the origins of this dish, a visit to any number of food-related websites will present a story of the dish coming about through a meeting of the foodways of Scotch-Irish immigrants and African slaves. So, we are presented with a romantic story of a meeting of the foodways of two underdog groups – indentured servants and slaves – which resulted in the creation of an iconic dish.

The current Wikipedia entry on fried chicken, for example, makes the following claims:

The first dish known to have been deep fried was fritters, which were popular in the Middle Ages. However, it was the Scottish who were the first Europeans to deep fry their chicken in fat (though without seasoning). Meanwhile, a number of West African peoples had traditions of seasoned fried chicken (though battering and cooking the chicken in palm oil). Scottish frying techniques and West African seasoning techniques were combined by enslaved Africans and African-Americans in the American South.

Another typical account reads:

The Scots, and later Scottish immigrants to the southern United States, had a tradition of deep frying chicken in fat as far back as the middle ages, unlike their English counterparts who baked or boiled chicken. When it was introduced to the American South, fried chicken became a common staple. Later, Africans brought over on the slave trade, became cooks in many southern households and incorporated seasonings and spices that were absent in traditional Scottish cuisine, enriching the flavor.

However, when one looks for evidence of a tradition of fried chicken in Scottish cookery, it is found to be lacking.

One example of fried chicken being mentioned in a Scottish context can be found in the travel journals of the Scotsman James Boswell. Boswell writes of a meal he enjoyed in the Hebrides in September 1773: ‘We had for supper… a large dish of fricassee of fowl, I believe a dish called fried chicken or something like it’. A prototypical fried chicken dish identified as a ‘A Fricassey of Chickens’ [sic] can be found in an English cookery book dating to 1725, but not in any Scottish sources I have been able to find, and this dish consists of chicken pan fried in butter, rather than deep fried in the supposed Scottish tradition.

Another example of fried chicken appearing in a Scottish context can be found in the 1825 Supplement to the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, which has an entry for ‘fried chicken’, identifying it as being another name for a Scottish ‘broth’ called ‘friar’s chicken’. Interestingly, a correspondent writing to The Planter’s Review (a magazine for plantation owners in the antebellum South) in 1843, made the claim that ‘friar’s chicken’ is actually the original name for ‘the old Virginia dish, fried chicken’. The editors of The Planter’s Review rightly responded with incredulity: ‘We know and respect our correspondent’s love of ancient lore, which we think has mislead [sic] him a little upon the subject of Friar’s chicken. If to call a chicken which is fried, “fried chicken,” be a corruption, it is surely the most natural and excusable error of which we have ever heard’.

Two further examples of recipes for fried chicken in Scottish sources can be found in The Cook and Housewife’s Manual, published in Edinburgh in 1825, and The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie – a book of recipes collected in the period 1841-1897 and published posthumously in 1909. Neither identifies fried chicken as a Scottish dish.

The Cook and Housewife’s Manual features ‘A continental method of dressing Cold Roast Fowls’:

Beat up two yolks of eggs with butter, mace, nutmeg, &c. Cut up the fowls, dip them in this, and roll the egged pieces in crumbs and fried parsley. Fry the cut pieces nicely in butter or clarified dripping, and pour over the dish any white or green vegetable ragout (that you may have left) made hot. Parmesan grated is used to heighten the gout of this dish.

The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie includes a recipe for ‘Fried Chicken Fillets’, which it names Gebackene Haendel, ‘a favourite supper dish at Vienna for the first month of spring chickens, when they are very young and plump’:

You take a plump little chicken, joint him and skin him, season the pieces delicately with cayenne, mace, salt, and pepper ; and fry him in a light batter in a saute pan, turning the pieces often as they cook, and he comes up dry outside, but juicy within. Squeeze a lemon over all if you like when dished.

The recipe is attributed to ‘John’/’JFC’. The author adds:

If for supper add a sauce in a boat made thus : Draw down the uncooked head, bones, and trimmings of the bird, with a little lemon peel to flavour; strain, and add a little mushroom to flavour, thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour, add a liaison of 1 egg.

So, while references to fried chicken can be found in relation to Scotland, the only dishes that resemble the fried chicken we know today are attributed to continental Europe.

Friar’s chicken, on the other hand, is a soup-based dish, rather than anything like modern fried chicken, as made clear in the recipes found in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (a 1747 English cookery book that also features a seminal fried chicken recipe), Maria Eliza Rundell’s Domestic Economy, and Cookery, For Rich and Poor (an 1825 English cookery book), Lady Harriet Elizabeth St. Clair’s Dainty Dishes (an 1866 book published in Edinburgh), The Cook and Housewife’s Manual, and The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie.

It is worth noting that salt, pepper, mace, and parsley feature consistently in recipes for friar’s chicken (as they do in later actual fried chicken recipes), that one recipe states that ‘the meat may be nicely browned in the frying-pan, before it is put to the soup’, and that the carrot, turnip, and onion stock called for in another bears some resemblance to the marinade in the 1911 fried chicken recipe of the African-American chef Rufus Estes. However, the notion that Southern fried chicken has any direct link to Scottish cooking is clearly without merit.

So, if the Scottish side of the Southern fried chicken narrative does not stand, then what of the claim that this ‘Scottish’ dish was combined with an African fried chicken tradition and ‘West African seasoning techniques’?

In his fascinating book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, the African-American scholar Adrian Miller examines numerous sources and ultimately concludes that ‘we can’t say for certain that fried chicken existed in precolonial West Africa’ (p.52) and that ‘[w]hile it’s difficult to assert a clear African provenance for American-style fried chicken, some evidence points to Britain’ (p.53). I will look at that body of evidence below, but it is perhaps worth briefly addressing the claim that ‘West African seasoning techniques’ are evident in Southern fried chicken recipes.

Looking at numerous recipes dating from 1824 to 1922 (and many more beyond that, up to the present day) found in American cookery books, authored by both white and black cooks, the seasoning for fried chicken remains remarkably similar: salt alone (1824), and salt and pepper (1839, 1878, 1881, 1883, 1885, 1886, 1913, 1916, 1917, 1922). What we find consistently is that Southern fried chicken is seasoned using simply salt and pepper. The notion that Southern fried chicken somehow benefited from the use of ‘West African seasoning techniques’, then, is likewise without merit.

If Southern fried chicken does not, after all, find its genesis in a meeting of ‘Scottish frying techniques and West African seasoning techniques’, where, in fact, does it come from?

In 1725, the Englishman Robert Smith published Court Cookery: or, The Compleat English Cook. This collection of recipes was, as the introduction to the book states, intended for the wealthy elite (‘the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain’). It is worth noting that this book was published a century before The Virginia Housewife, the earliest major Southern cookery book.

The dishes in Smith’s book include what is arguably a prototypical fried chicken recipe:

Take Rabbets [sic] or Chickens; but if Chickens, you must skin them; cut them into small Pieces, and beat them flat, and lard them with Bacon; season it with Salt, Pepper and Mace; dredge it with Flower [sic], and fry it in sweet Butter, to a good Colour.

This dish, Smith writes, is to be served with seasoned gravy (‘season it high’), sliced lemon, force-meat balls, crisp bacon, and fried oysters.

Also included are a recipe for pickled pork (a dish which remains ‘a staple of Cajun & Creole kitchens’ in Louisiana today); a recipe for ham which is salted and then smoked (similar to the ‘country ham’ of the contemporary South); a recipe for fried apple pies (another dish found in the South today); and a recipe for potato pie, which is seasoned with mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, and salt (and therefore has noticeable similarities with modern Southern recipes for sweet potato pie).

Eleven years later, in 1736, the Englishman Nathan Bailey published a book titled Dictionarium Domesticum: Being a New and Compleat Household Dictionary, For the Use Both of City and Country. The Dictionarium Domesticum includes the following recipe for ‘A Marinade of Chickens’:

Cut the chickens into quarters, and marinade them in the juice of lemons and verjuice, or with vinegar, salt, clove, pepper, chibols: or a bay leaf or two: Let them lie in this marinade for the space of three hours, then having made a sort of clear paste or batter with flour, white wine and the yolks of three eggs, drop the chickens into it, then fry them in lard, and serve them up in the form of a pyramid, with fry’d parsley and slices of lemon.

When prepared, this dish clearly resembles what we now know as fried chicken.

1747 saw the publication of Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, a book that went on to be not only very popular in England but also in the United States:

Her cookbook was on Martha Washington’s bookshelf; Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin both had copies as well, with Franklin enjoying it so much that he brought it with him to France and had some of the recipes translated so he could keep eating Glasse’s food while abroad.

Glasse’s simple language, aversion to wastefulness, and belief that anyone could make great food fit in perfectly in the US.

Amongst the numerous dishes listed in Glasse’s book, we find recipes for calf’s chitterlings (‘blanche and boil them like hog’s chitterlins’), pickled pig’s feet and ears, fried potatoes and mashed potatoes, crawfish soup, potato pudding, and pound cake. We also find a recipe titled ‘To Marinate Chickens’:

Cut two chickens into quarters, lay them in vinegar for three or four hours, with pepper, salt, a bay-leaf, and a few cloves, make a very thick batter, first with half a pint of wine and flour, then the yolks of two eggs, a little melted butter; some grated nutmeg and chopped parsley; beat all very well together, dip your fowls in the batter, and fry them in a good deal of hog’s lard, which must first boil before you put your chickens in. Let them be of a fine brown, and lay them in your dish like a pyramid, with fried parsley all round them. Garnish with lemon, and have some good gravy in boats or basons.

The inclusion of gravy, sliced lemon, fried parsley and laying the chicken pieces in a pyramid shape shows clear continuity with the recipes of Smith and Bailey. The use of sliced lemon and parsley also shows some similarities with the fried chicken being cooked in Vienna, Austria, at the time.

Given the popularity of Glasse’s book among the elites of the US, we can say with certainty that her fried chicken recipe would have been in circulation, and Thomas Jefferson’s admiration for the work provides an interesting link to the state of Virginia, a state whose First Families were of English descent.

From one of those families came a woman named Mary Randolph, whose family had ‘roots extending back to the colony’s formative years’ and who went on to be the first person ever buried on the grounds which would become Arlington National Cemetery. In 1824, Randolph published the seminal Southern cookery book, The Virginia Housewife. The book was a great success, and Thomas Jefferson wrote to Randolph, thanking her for sending him a copy, which he said he held in ‘high respect and esteem’.

The Virginia Housewife includes a number of dishes similar to those found in modern Southern cooking, such as okra and tomatoes, catfish soup, barbecue pork, cornbread, mashed potatoes, macaroni pudding (macaroni and cheese), sweet potato pudding (sweet potato pie), and pound cake. It also features a recipe for fried chicken:

Cut them up as for the fricassee, dredge them well with flour, sprinkle them with salt, put them into a good quantity of boiling lard, and fry them a light brown.

The chicken is to be served with fried mush (leftover cornmeal), fried parsley, and a milk and parsley-based gravy. The similarities with the aforementioned English recipes for fried chicken are clear, despite Randolph’s recipe being somewhat simpler. Arguably, it is here that we see the true genesis of Southern fried chicken.

The recipe went on to be developed to include pepper as well as salt for the seasoning (as seen in Lettice Bryan’s 1839 book The Kentucky Housewife), which was really a return to the approach of Robert Smith, but little else changed for many years to come.

The continuity is clear: Sarah Rutledge’s 1847 book The Carolina Housewife calls for a cream and parsley gravy to accompany the fried chicken; Marion Cabell Tyree’s recipe in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878) features a butter and parsley gravy, and fried mush; Estelle Woods Wilcox’s The Dixie Cook-Book (1883) includes a milk gravy; ML Tyson’s The Queen of the Kitchen (1886) recommends a cream gravy, parsley garnish, and fried mush; Laura Thornton Knowles’ Southern Recipes Tested By Myself (1913) has a milk or cream gravy accompaniment; and Echos of Southern Kitchens (1916), published by The United Daughters of the Confederacy, California Division, swaps flour for cornmeal but keeps the cream gravy.

The recipes of African-American cooks have the same approach: Abby Fisher’s fried chicken recipe in What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking (1881) uses only salt and pepper for seasoning; Rufus Estes’ recipe in Good Things To Eat (1911) features a marinade similar to that of Nathan Bailey, and a fried parsley garnish; and Aunt Caroline’s Dixieland Recipes (1922) calls for salt and black pepper.

While it is impossible to say with absolute certainty how Southern fried chicken came to be, we can nonetheless suggest there is a strong probability that it has its origins in England. The idea that fried chicken was a Scottish dish is demonstrably false, for, aside from two 19th Century recipes for Backhendl (Viennese breaded fried chicken) found in books published in 1825 and 1909, Scottish sources are silent. There is likewise little to suggest that Southern fried chicken is actually a variant of a purported traditional African dish brought to America by slaves.

It seems highly likely that Backhendl is a ‘cousin’ of the fried chicken recipes found in English cookery books, as both use pan frying in lard, and feature parsley and lemon wedges as garnishes. Which came first, it is hard to say. However, there appears to be no direct connection between Backhendl and the development of fried chicken in the Southern United States. There were German immigrants to Virginia, but these were not drawn from aristocratic circles (Backhendl was a dish of the upper classes), and traditional Southern fried chicken does not employ the breading technique of the Viennese recipe.

We know that fried chicken was seen in the antebellum South as an ‘old Virginia dish’. We also know that fried chicken was already featuring in English cookery books a significant amount of time before the publication of The Virginia Housewife. Furthermore, we know that the Virginia elite (for whom fried chicken was prepared) were very strongly linked to England and made use of English recipes. So, when the sources are studied and the options considered, arguably the most convincing explanation for the emergence of Southern fried chicken is that the dish is an outgrowth of the cookery of upper class England.

The rise of intensive farming techniques and the emergence of fast food restaurants has resulted in Southern fried chicken becoming, today, a global phenomenon available to rich and poor alike. In 2017, UK customers spent an estimated £2.2bn in chicken restaurants. Little did most of them know that the ‘American’ food they were buying in all likelihood actually originated here.

British Folkways

A collection of posts by Edmund Standing on British folk culture:

Seventh Century European folk religion

Tenth Century Anglo-Saxon folk magic

Eleventh Century European folk religion

Christianity as folk magic in medieval England

Saints in the folk devotion of medieval England

Alcohol consumption in 16th Century England

Seventeenth Century English folk magic

Eighteenth Century British folk religion

Divination by Bible and Key in 19th Century England

The wakes and feasts of country parishes

British crossroads magic

Sacred Wells in Britain

Love and death in British folk magic

European-American Folk Traditions

When settlers from the British Isles and Germany arrived on the shores of North America, they brought with them not only Christianity, but also a variety of folk beliefs and practices related to every aspect of life and death.

To Appalachia was brought a belief in signs and omens, numerous proverbs, and folk healing practices centred on ‘Granny Women‘. Three fascinating posts on Appalachian folk magic can be read here, here, and here.

To the Ozarks came a form of folk magic very firmly grounded in Protestant Christianity, while holding much in common with other folk religious and magical systems. A helpful glossary of Ozark folk magic can be found here.

Meanwhile, the ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’ brought from Germany a magico-religious systemknown as brauche, or ‘powwowing’. Powwowing is rooted in German esoteric traditions and makes use of both the Bible and material derived from European grimoires. Even today, the practice persists, albeit often still under a veil of secrecy. A good website providing information on the Pennsylvania Dutch traditions can be found here.