Was That Dove An Omen?

 

 

The Oxford Reference Dictionary  of English Folklore defines omens as "Occurrences outside human control, interpreted by communal tradition as foretelling future events".  They go on to give several examples of omens such as the hooting of an owl and seeing magpies.  Dictionary.com defines omen as "anything perceived or happening that is believed to portend a good or evil event or circumstance in the future; portent.  Synonyms for omen include "foreboding, foretoken, prophecy, and premonition".  Now, let's move on to frequent symbolic ideas which are attached to doves before I get to the point of writing this blog post about one dove in particular.  Doves are sometimes seen as symbols of peace, love, and good luck but they are also used as the symbol of the fleeting soul of a dying person and are often seen on flower arrangements at funerals.  

Appalachian Culture commonly holds numerous symbolic representations of an equally numerous set of animals, weather phenomena, sayings, and even slips of the lip.  But this type of belief in portents or omens is not limited to Appalachia and Appalachians.  It is common among nearly every culture in which the members live in close proximity to the earth.  Since the great majority of Central and Southern Appalachia is rural with prevalent industries and lifestyles such as farming, logging, mining, fishing, hunting, and other earth based practices, it is not unusual for Appalachians to believe strongly in symbolic omens, portents, warnings, and handwriting on walls whether those walls are literal or metaphorical.  

In fact, one of my favorite books in all of Appalachian Literature is Mildred Haun's "The Hawk's Done Gone" which is filled with folklore, omens, portents, and premonitions from cover to cover.  Mildred Haun's masters thesis at Vanderbilt University is considered to be a masterpiece in the study of folklore, omens, portents, and premonitions.  Under the title "Cocke County Ballads And Songs”1937, the thesis is available only from the special collections of the Vanderbilt University Library.  But I do not remember specific mentions of doves as portents in my reading of Mildred Haun. 

Two nights ago, on February 4, 2021, as I was preparing for bed at about 10:30pm, I looked out the window in my back door to check visible signs of precipitation as I often do in winter.  To my surprise, about ten or fifteen feet from the door on the blacktop driveway sat an adult dove, absolutely motionless, but not dead since it was in a sitting position.  I decided to go outside to check it out further in order to determine if it might be injured and in need of rescue.  The dove sat absolutely still until I was about step or two away and nearly ready to bend down to see if I could pick it up.  As I started to bend toward the bird, it suddenly burst into flight as only a dove can do and flew away, calling repeatedly as it flew, into a tree behind my house on a hill.

I have a neighbor and good friend who lives about a mile away who is nearly 95 and lives alone after the death of his wife about 16 months ago.  In the world of Covid, I no longer visit him regularly but I generally call him every day, never letting it go more than two days.  When I got up on the morning after my experience with the dove, I called his number and he did not answer.  That is not a total surprise since he still does his own laundry in his basement and also still drives his brand new car which he bought after the death of his wife.  But about an hour after my attempt to call him, I received a call from the wife of his nephew who acts as his next of kin since my friend has no children.  She informed me that my friend had a fall, without injury, at home the night before sometime after he and I had spoken at 7pm.  He had called his nephew that morning after the fall and asked to be taken to the hospital in Morehead, Kentucky, to be checked out since he had fallen due to suddenly becoming light headed.  It has transpired since that the doctors decided his heartbeat was slowed sufficiently to require him to be admitted.  After some observation and testing, they have decided to install a cardiac pacemaker to assist him in maintaining a normal heartbeat.  Otherwise, he is reported to be fine for a man who will be 95 in 3 months.  Hopefully, he will be fine and back home when the procedure is completed on Monday, February 8, 2021, which is, coincidentally, the birthday of my long dead father.  So far as we know, my friend is as good a candidate for the implantation procedure as can be found at his age.  We are all assuming that he will survive the procedure without problems, will be able to escape Covid 19 infection while hospitalized, and will return home to live out the remainder of his long, healthy, productive life.  

But, as a native Appalachian deeply immersed in my culture, and having seen the adult dove sitting on the ground in the dead of night less than 12 hours before I learned of my friend's apparent health issue, I am forced to ask, "Was that dove an omen?"  What do you think? 

Cratis D. Williams and I On Death, Dying, and Funeral Rituals In Appalachia

I am currently reading "Tales From Sacred Wind: Coming of Age in Appalachia" by Cratis D. Williams and I will write about it more fully in a more formal kind of book review when I finish it.  But I have just read some important sections of the book about the deaths of various people in the Sacred Wind community of Lawrence County Kentucky in the book and they prompted some memories of my own which led me to write about that aspect of Williams's observations and to insert some of my own.  I also wrote another post about "Tales From Sacred Wind..." since I posted this one which has also become quite popular with lovers of Appalachia and Appalachian History and folkways. It is about both our experiences as children in traditional Appalachian children's games.  At the time I wrote these two most recent posts about Cratis Williams, I neglected to mention in either of them that I had written a much earlier post called "Responses To Some Reading Of Cratis Williams" which might also be interesting to some of you.  It is a response to a small pamphlet he wrote about his most important early teacher, William H. Vaughan, who was a primary influence in leading Williams to pursue a career in academia which was not common at the time in Eastern Kentucky. 

Cratis D. Williams--Photo by The Williams Family

I have written previously on this blog about these topics but the practices in Appalachia have been ever changing in both my lifetime and that of Cratis Williams who was born about forty years before me and has now been dead for thirty-five years.  Cratis Williams was one of the premier scholars in the field of Appalachian Studies and served in various capacities at Appalachian State University.  The best, and perhaps only book, devoted solely to death, dying, and burial practices in Appalachia is "Death and Dying In Central Appalachia" by James K. Crissman.  But it was published in 1994 and is becoming a bit dated twenty-six years later.  "Tales From Sacred Wind..." was published in 2003 based on manuscripts which Cratis Williams had left unpublished at his death in 1985 and is also a bit dated.  There is a genuine need for a more recent scholarly look at death and dying in the region.  Crissman's book is excellent, well researched, professionally documented, and wide ranging in its coverage and I have cited, quoted, and recommended it for many years.  But the work of Williams in "Tales From Sacred Wind.." provides a brief but needed addition to the work of Crissman.  I hope my own observations from a long life in Appalachia also contribute to the field.  

My primary impetus to write about Williams's observations came about quite serendipitously shortly after I read his section on death practices through an e-mail exchange with a new acquaintance about a cemetery in our native Knott County which both of us have known all our lives.  I grew up near that cemetery and my acquaintance has several relatives buried on it.  In his book, Cratis Williams tells a story about one of his elderly female ancestors who planted two cedar trees beside some graves on a cemetery at Sacred Wind.  The old woman would not allow anyone else to assist her in planting the trees and expressed an old folk belief that the person who plants a cedar tree will die before the tree is fully grown.  As my e-mail exchange progressed with my acquaintance about the Knott County cemetery, he said this: "My grandfather died in (a) mining accident in 1948, and my grandmother later moved to Michigan. Her last visit to this cemetery was in 1974. During that visit, she planted some cedar trees near the grave of my grandfather. She told me  there was an old saying, that if you planted a cedar tree, you would be dead by time the tree was large enough to shade a grave.  My grandmother died five years later, in 1979. The cedar trees are still standing, and are posing problems to headstones due to their roots."  It is always fascinating to me to read, and especially to hear first hand, about any Appalachian folkway or folk tale.

Another friend of mine, both on Facebook and in real life, John D. Shelton, responded to this post after I had posted it on Facebook with this story about planting cedar trees which concurs almost exactly with Cratis Williams's story and the one above from my other acquaintance.  "As a teen, I was going to plant a Cedar Tree my Uncle scolded me saying never plant Cedars, because you will die when they are big enuff to shade your Grave."  Obviously, the folkway or folktale about planting cedars and impending death of the planter has spread across a wide area.  

Williams also discussed several funerals he had attended both as a child and as an adult in Lawrence County including the deaths of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.  He even discusses one funeral which his entire one room school attended for the father of a classmate who had died from "lockjaw", tetanus, after having stepped on a nail while tearing down a house.  He discusses the man having been buried in a shroud or winding cloth only one of which such funerals I have ever known about in my life.  A man who owned property adjoining ours in my childhood home and, in fact, adjoining the cemetery which my acquaintance and I have been discussing was the only person I ever knew who was buried in a shroud or winding cloth and I did not attend that funeral which I regret.  For those of you who have not encountered either term, a shroud or winding cloth is a plain flat, usually white, garment or sheet in which a dead body is wrapped in the casket.  As I understand it, a full sized or larger sheet was used in most cases and the body was placed with the feet a foot or two above a corner with the head a foot or two below the diagonally opposite corner in order to increase the length and folding options of the shroud or winding cloth.  The washed and prepared body was then wrapped in the cloth usually beginning with a fold of the lower corner over the feet up to about the knees.  Then one side was folded over and possibly under the body and the other side was folded in the opposite direction in the same manner.  Usually after a viewing, visitation, or funeral, the top corner was then folded down to cover the face of the deceased.  It is my understanding that in some other countries, especially in the Middle East, this is still the dominant method in use.  In Appalachia, America, and several other countries, the use of white cloth is, of course, a symbol of purity.

Cratis Williams also discussed having known people who had their coffins made while they were alive and storing them in attics, barns, or spare rooms.  In an earlier post on this blog, I wrote about Clabe Mosley, an Old Regular Baptist preacher, whose coffin hung in the attic of my maternal grandparents' house for several years before he actually died.  Williams, in this book, also concurs with my writing that these people who had coffins built while living would sometimes actually get in and test the coffin as I reported that Clabe Mosley had done.  John D. Shelton also relayed this story about a person who had their coffin made well before they died and allowed the coffin to deteriorate in a fence row before his death.  But others, after the death, repaired the coffin and used it to bury the original buyer.  "I had another relative who was poor, so he built his own Casket and painted it, tried it for size, placed it in the Grave Yard fence row, it sat there many years covered in grass and weeds, no one moved it, he died and a Cousin and Preacher dug it out the weeds and cleaned it and made repairs, and a woman from Church made a cloth lining, and he was buried in it. This happened a few years back."

Cratis Williams also discussed grave houses in "Tales From Sacred Wind..." as I did in my post about burial practices in Appalachia in which I also included a few photos none of which are originally shot by me.  One of the funnier stories in the book is about a distant relative of Williams who, after getting drunk at a square dance, decided to crawl in the grave house of an ancestor to avoid walking home in the rain.  The man was awakened and terrified by an old sow and her pigs when the sow decided to use the grave house to scratch an itch.  Williams's relative thought he was experiencing a "hain't" and left the cemetery in terror until he realized it was only a sow.  I know of a couple of grave houses on a small cemetery near the Johnson/Lawrence county line on US 23 which are clearly visible from the divided highway.  I also know a few in Lawrence and Elliott counties in an are near where Williams grew up.

Williams also discussed, and his posthumous editors provided several photos of his grandfather David O. Williams who had a large stone, homemade mausoleum, or grave house built to hold the bodies of himself and his wife.  I know of one hand cut stone grave house of a similar nature at a small cemetery between Mousie and Lackey in Knott County Kentucky which is unmarked and said to contain the body of one of the first white settlers to that area.  That stone grave house has several cracks and openings where the stones have settled over the years and I have to admit that I have been tempted to return with a flashlight to see what is visible through the cracks.  I also know of a similarly constructed grave house in a small cemetery near Morgan County High School in West Liberty, Kentucky which also shows signs of settling and age. John D. Shelton, whom I mentioned above, also reported this anecdote about a grave house he had seen: "There is one Grave Yard in Clinton County (Kentucky) which has a little House on one Grave about four feet tall that has Windows in it, I guess they wanted the Loved one to get Sun and be able to see out."

I am thoroughly enjoying reading this book and regret that I was never able to meet Cratis Williams in the flesh.  He is funny, informative, at times risque, and well worth reading.  "Tales From Sacred Wind..." is a book which ever student of Appalachian Studies should place on their "Must Read List". 


 

"I Bought Me A Dog A Dozen Authentic Folktales From The Southern Mountains" Collected by Leonard Roberts--Book Review

Dr. Leonard Roberts--Photo by Lynneda Stansbury

Dr. Leonard Ward Roberts, Ph. D., was the premier folklorist and collector of both folk tales and folk songs during his tragically abbreviated career which ended on April 26, 1988, at the age of 71 when he was involved in a fatal wreck with a coal truck as he was pulling onto US 23 at the mouth of Mare Creek near Betsy Layne in Floyd County Kentucky where he had lived most of his life. He published a total of 8 books during his career, all of which were collections of folktales or folksongs from Central and Southern Appalachia except for "The McCoys: Their Story" which was about the famous McCoy family of the notorious feud along the Kentucky/West Virginia border.  This little book we are discussing was the first of his published books and is actually more a pamphlet than a full fledged book; but, it is well worth reading if you can locate a copy.  It was published in 1954 by the Council of The Southern Mountains in Berea, Kentucky, and was reprinted in at least 20 printings until at least 1982.  But, I suspect that most of those printings were small and the book is difficult to find.  At the time of its publication, this book was apparently popular enough with lovers of folklore and Appalachian Studies that it did sell several hundred to a few thousand copies.  Good luck if you try to find a copy! 

The book is a pamphlet of 48 unnumbered pages and contains 12 Appalachian folktales and 13 Appalachian riddles.  It is a fun read whether or not you have ever been exposed to the folktale format which traveled with the early settlers from the British Isles to the colonies in America, and thence across the Cumberland Gap into the heart of Appalachia where the social isolation of the mountains can be credited with at least part of their ability to survive into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These kinds of oral folktales exist in many forms in nearly all areas and cultures of the world.  In a way, what it boils down to is that after a long day as a hunter gatherer, it was comforting and pleasurable around the family fire to tell or listen to fantastic stories being told by anyone who was willing to stand up and speak out in the folktale form.  Thousands, if not millions, of these folktales arose and were preserved by both tellers and listeners, some of whom went on to either become or rear future court jesters, bards, balladeers, and strolling minstrels. Roberts devoted his life to teaching in several Kentucky colleges, (Berea College, Morehead State University, Union College, and Pikeville College) collecting folktales and folk songs, and to publishing as the driving force of what became the Pikeville College Press.  The tales in this little book represent several types of the genre and include one, "The Candy Doll", which Roberts says, in the brief introduction, is the only version he has ever seen of it in America.  It is a witch story which Roberts says he collected from a 12 year old girl in Leslie County Kentucky. Actually, another of the stories was also provided to Roberts by a different young girl in Eastern Kentucky. The "Candy Doll" contains what Roberts calls the element of "Murder by Sympathetic Magic".  There are also folktales in the collection which represent giant tales; hunting tales; wise fox tales; and another which is sometimes referred to as his most well known, "Raglif, Jaglif, Tetarlif, Pole", which is about a man attempting to escape from the clutches of a giant.  

This is a fine little book to utilize to introduce yourself both to the work of Leonard Roberts and to the field of Appalachian Folklore.  If you cannot locate a copy of this book, you can generally always find copies of "Up Cutshin & Down Greasy" or "South From Hell-Fer-Sartin".  Reading any of Leonard Roberts' books will also serve as a wonderful introduction to that ever growing group of Big Sandy River Valley natives such as Dr. Roberts, The Judds, Crystal Gayle, Chris Stapleton, Molly O'Day, Loretta Lynn, Cratis Williams, and US Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson who have, over the last century plus, wielded such a powerful cultural influence on the entire nation in roles as varied as academic scholar, supreme court justice, Bluegrass singer, country singer college basketball coach, and ballet dancer.