Tom Finn interview with Mary Harmon, Laeon Jones, Claudie Duggan

The John Burrison Georgia Folklore Archive recordings contains unedited versions of all interviews. Some material may contain descriptions of violence, offensive language, or negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. There are instances of racist language and description, particularly in regards to African Americans. These items are presented as part of the historical record. This project is a repository for the stories, accounts, and memories of those who chose to share their experiences for educational purposes. The viewpoints expressed in this project do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the Atlanta History Center or any of its officers, agents, employees, or volunteers. The Atlanta History Center makes no warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in the interviews and expressly disclaims any liability therefore. If you believe you are the copyright holder of any of the content published in this collection and do not want it publicly available, please contact the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center at 404-814-4040 or reference@atlantahistorycenter.com. In this interview, Mary Kathryn Reece Harmon retells folklore stories from her childhood. Her stories include: how her best friend's father was known for his ability to stop others from bleeding; how a man in town conjured off warts; how a domestic servant cured mothers' night sweats with a spell; and the tale of Barbry (Barbara) Allen. Harmon also explains how an expectant mother might accidentally mark her child with things that frighten her during pregnancy; for example, if a mother is afraid of a pig during pregnancy, her child might be born looking like a pig. Harmon also tells of the legend of Devils Tower in Wyoming. Laeon discusses castles in Wales, but his account is scattered and cut off in many places. Claudie Duggan discusses remedies for warts, growing hair that is no longer connected to the body, and baby teething. She parallels Harmon's stories of how women can mark their babies with their fears when they are scared and then touch their baby's face. She also recalls stories about others seeing ghosts, about her disbelief in psychics, and about foods tied to myth. The remainder of the recording (53:55) is cut off. During the last few minutes of the recording, three unnamed people, maybe the interviewers, laugh and sing. Mary Kathryn Reece Harmon (1928-2010) was born in Ellijay, Georgia, to Sam Reece (1904-1940) and Willie Mae Widner (1904-1988). She married Lloyd C. Harmon, Sr. (1915-1991) in 1944, and they had four children: Carol Waag (1948-2000), Lloyd Harmon, Jr., John Reece, and Ralph Harmon. Claudie later Duggan (1919-1999) was born in Sparta, Georgia. She married Clarence Duggan, and they had one daughter, Allie Duggan. She lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Remedies; ~ Table of Contents I. Mrs. Lloyd C. Harmon 1. blood stopper 2. wart remover 3. Cure of "hightssvJeats" (negro folk remedy) - 4. Ballad-"BarbaER Allen'" 5. Legend of Devil's Tower, Wyoming 6. -"marking" babies II. Mr. Laeon Jones 1. Legend of Cardigan Castle 2. construction of folk houses in wales III. Claudie Duggan ~ ~ Negro Folk remedies 1. Earache 2. Groviing hair 3 high fever 4 Whooping cough 5. teething babies 6. neuralgia 7. too thache 8. boils 9. vlart removal 10. "marking" babies 11. Seeing supernatural phenomena 12. Significance of "veil" over face of baby 13. Charm and counter-charm to avoid bad luck caused by breaking a chair. 14. Another boil remedy 15. shingles 16. mumps 17. "~lashing" someone to death 18. root doctor Mrs. Harmon: Transcription "I'm t<lrs. Lloyd C. Harmon of 303 Colchester Drive, stone Mountain. Tom, you asked me to tell you the things I can remember about the, I guess, folklore tales that I grew up knowing. The thing I am about to tell you is not a tale in that it_i~ true [emphasized is) About twenty years ago, when I was a girl up at Ellijay, Georgia, my closest friend's father could stop bleeding.. 'That's a long time ago, but there 'were good medicines even c back then, and t"hen they didn't work, Illany of the people would call this man, whose name was Mr. Harley Sellers. Somehow or other, through something that he did, not through any medication that hE used, hE was able to stop bleeding. It was pretty commonly knovID and just accepted. Ma~y times, people wondered how and why, but they didn't wonder whether or not he could, because they knew of too many cases where he P~_ done this. The most dramatic example that I can think of is when a doctor, a medical doctor, at Piedmont Hospital here in Atlanta called in the middle of the night up there 0 one night and wanted Mr. Sellers to work his 'hocus pocus' to stop a patient from bleeding. The hospital had been unable to stop it, and he did! It was a severe mental strain on him, but he did sto(:~~ient from bleeding, not by'. :'". coming dOvID here, but r~he did was done at a distance of about, oh, at that time, probably eighty-five miles I talked with Mr. Sellers' daughter tOday to be sure it .iould be a.llright to use his name, and she remind'ed me that , t,-iO or three days after thf;S incident, he had a fatal heart attack. Now, she feels that there ,las a connection, that the strain on him was so great that this brought about a heart attack. Of course, nOI-I, I donlt know if there ,laS a .~ connection or not. What else would you like for me to tell you about this particular thing?" My Ouestion: that he used? Nrs. Harmon: Do you know anything about the process II No, I really don I t kno,~. I never saw the thing. But as I said, she and I were best friends and .,e told each other every thing, and she did She lolould tell me different instances .,here he did stop various people from bleeding. She never told me how, &~d as I recall, she didnt kno., how. Nobody knew really what he did." My Question:' If an an~mal on the farm was bleeding, did he ever try it on a domestic~imal? Mrs. Harmon: "I donlt kno'-I. T really donlt. I could check .,ith her if you would like to kno." but I really donlt kno., if he tried it on animals or not. She did tell me this morning that she remembered that there had to be some faith involved, that the person O1ho 1'lES bleeding had to more-or'less believe that he was going to stop the bleeding, and he did. Now, I told you one night about the warts that I had on my thumb, and 1',m not sure you believe that. But I ,-]QuId j."! ------------------- ------ 3 have no reason in the world for telling you that. T mean, it makes a good story, but it"s also true." "T had seventeen ,'larts on one thumb. At that ti:nle, ,we didn't have pediatricians, and nobody went to the doctor unless they ,'Jere really sick. We didn't go for check-ups, and we didn't go for little things like warts. We went for infections and bad cuts, and some thingp that we would consider more-or- less serious, ond that was all. So, we had another man in town, over in East V-llijay, where I lived, incidentally, and he was a very old man~He removed warts. One of the things I do remember about was that he never would take any pay for it. He just did it. You just went to his house. So, I had those seventeen ugly, nasty warts on one thumb Cind I \'tln t to his house. A friend v!ent ,'Ii th me, r.. and he rubbed his hand across them andfiP"some mumbo jumbo I~ ~. 2, (f ,JI. JJ.J. ~Pr ~ ;;r; and told me to forget about ;ZJ;l' not that day' 0-/ the next, but in time. 6h, in two weeks, it occured to me one morning that I had forgotten about the warts, and I looked do~m to see vThat via s happening, and they ,.,ere gone! Absolutely gone! They never have come back! " ~he explains that ~ow she takes her ch&ldren to the doctor who prescribes ascetic acid to eat the warts off. She now says that she would rather take her children to some one who can "conjure off" warts instead of a medical doctor. But she has been unable to find someone \lIho can conjure off warts. She really means thisn tt Ny Question: Did you know this fellows name or anything about his background? HI's. Harmon: "All that I can remember is a Hr. Adams. tt That's all that I can remember about him. He lived in an old house. Oh, I don't know, because I was a child, probably no - ." more than ten (10) years'old at thl time this happened and he was real, real old. He must have been 80 because he was just real old. And I remember he and a brother lived alone. They were either bachelors or widowers. [She had a hard time with the word widower, which is surprising, because I had noticed her 'Hell used vocabulary:.J And that I s all I caJ'! tell you about those ~~cept that I still remember exactly where they ,'Iere (warts). I can almost feel the tLJings "Ihen I feel there now. There's a little different sensation in that thumb than in the other." My Question: DidJ'l't your old colored maid have a friend that could conjure off warts? nNo, "Ie used. to have a friend out at Smyrna, who had a colored maid who worked for us a time or two. But mostly for tlliis friend.C"IThis friend out at Smyrna had just had a new baby, had just had a baby-they're all new. ~laUghter.J But, anyvmy, she had just had this baby, and she (, "laS having a thing th8t I S among house,vi:iies, called night 'SVleats" 5 There's probably another term for it, but after you have' tt with the first baby you don't have this thing. Then with lli~y subsequent children, you ,,,al,e up in the night "lith, a ,rell, "lith just all broken out with perspiration like when you have the s NO'.' these aren't just tales, Tom. I'm not elaborating,or exagerating, or givir~ you anything but facts; these are facts. Now what the factual reasons behind it is I don't know, but ~ flu. You know your temperature gOES up and dOvID and up and do,m, and so she was having these things and they were most uncomfortable and she mentioned to Lucy (her colored maid) that they '-lere just driving her crazy in the night._ ,So, and I quite well remember this, the baby who at that time the new baby, is now nine (9) years old. And Lucy said, 'Miz Hilda, I C&l stop that if you'll just let me do what +want to do.' So, she did something like put & pan of water under the bed or some such thing, at any rate she cast a spell and this friend the next morning (she is the one named Hilda),I cantt give you her last name. sSbe told me she'd kill me if I ever told it. She called me the next morning, she said, 'vlell it vJOrked, I didn't have 'em anymore.' And she didn't have them anymorel$Y ~ I do know that these things happened. Now let's back UP and see if you have this. (This last statement was prompted by the sudden realization that at first my tape recorder had been sldpping terribly, vihich it ,,'as to do again 'later, but even more noticably.] Mrs. Harmon: You asked about the folk songs that I heard when I was growing up. I heard quite a lot of them but the 0&1y one that I can remember,r don't remember "mere I heard it. r just heard it all my life, it '-l8.S "Barbry Allen." ~ (Earlier, I had asked her if she had ever heard a song in vlhict, a- clllan-'died for the love of a woman; the "loman soon: dies also, and a briar grows from his grave, and a red, red rose gravIS from hers. I'lrs. Harmon burst out with, "Oh, I bet you mei'n "Barbry Allen~" As a'matter of fact, I meant "Barbry Allen", "S."eet William", or for that matter any other ballad that had the briar pr the rose in it. She didn't say, But I suspect that she heard the vlords from a record, because they bear a remerkable resemblance to those in the Viking Book.) Nrs. Harmon: "1'!ovl I'm not sure that I remember all the '1,0 rds, butit "len t some thing like thi s : II' In Scarlett tOvID .~here I v,a,s born t~ere was a'fair maid dwellin' Made every youth cry well awake ~er name was Barbry Allen. T'was in the merry month of May ~he greenbuds they were swellin' Sweet William on his death bed lay for the love of Barbry Allen. He sent his man ~~o her there to the tOvID where she was dwellin' Oh, you must come to my master dear, if your name be Barbry Allen. For death is urinted on his face and o'er fuis ~ is stealin,l,c ~ .-I .ohdhOlS teLaway~to:ccomfort ... him1;,e u~.f2r ~ 10V~~ Barbry Allen. If death is printed on his face i _~ and o'er his ~is steal in' ~LX And yet no better shall ~~ for the love of Barbry Allen. So slowly, slowly she came up,~ and slowly she came him , A.n.d all she said v'he~tnere she ca e, Young man, I ~ou're dyinj{. If on your deathbed you do lie ~~at is the tale you're tellin' I can not keep you from your death farewell, said Barbry Allen He turned his face unto her straight and death was with him dealin' Adiu, adiu my dear fridU.s all, be kind to Barbry Allen. And slowly, slowly raised she up, and slowly, slowly left him, A~d sighing, said she could not stay since death of life had Teft him. She hadn't gone a mile or two, when she heard the deathbe11xi~gih' and every toll the deathbell gave cried woe to Barbry Allen. On father, dear father, go dig my grave, go dig it deep, and narrow, S,-jeet \oJilliarn died for me today, I'll die for him tomorro,-,.'. One was buried in the high church yard, the other in the choir, From one grave grew a red, red r~~e from the other grew. a briar. ~nd then it seems like there was something about how they sort of intertvlined (ilitWE 1 Ei,) and made peace ,-lith each other, and she fOlli~d peace of mind or soul or Whatever was left. lilith, through these flmrers that greu together, but'that 's just all I remember. Tom, you asked ~ about legends up around my home tovm. I can't thi~~ of any particular ones, but I do think of one thing you might find interesting, That's neer my husband's home; my husband's home is in South D~,ota. And Wyoming is a bordering state. There they have Devil's Tower, Wyoming. I'M sure you've he2rd of it. Its an enormous piece of granite 7 that sort of juts up out of the earth with real strange ridges d01ID the side and nobody really knows what happened. Geologists thiru, it might of (have) been formed by some kind of volcanoe, but the legend there is: ~ .. "Indian children vere playing on the top of this rock, and a ~ ear came after them. They prayed to their spirits, to their great fathers, or great spirit~ or whatever their gods were, and he pushed the rock up out of the ground in order to deliver ~em from the bear, and this bear had its claws at the top just ready to grab 'em. And so as the rock pushed up out of the ground, the bear's claws made these marks all the way dO,VD the side, and so there they are as you drive up. You look ~p, vla.~' up high a.nd you see these big clm., marks going all the "lay up the side." (Actually, this geologic formation is basaltic lava, that cooled so rapidly, its crystals did not have time to cool and assume their normal rhombohedral sbape, so instead they are long, paralleill, square-sided crystals.j Hrs. Harmon: P~other thing you might enjoy hearing about is how some of the older generation up around home used to believe, and they may still believe that a WOIDan that's carrying an unborn child could mark the baby Vlith, oh~ some, disfiguring ma~k by a thing that frightened her during her pregnancy. F,or example :Oh, if she savl a pig and it frightened 'her, then the child might be born vii th the likeness of a~:!b~g: a pig's foot, or a snout, or some such thing not necessarily in relief, but the outline of a pig on its body somevhere. apples, then, the child might be born 'IIlith a red mark somelllhere tha.t looked like an apple. Mr. Laeon Jones: [Mr. Jones wes uncovered when I heard that many old people resided permanently in the old Someone offers the ,<lord "birthmark". If she ate too many tt Hotel Candler in Decatur. I recorded, over a period of three days, from him, but as he was extremely deaf, I had a very hard time making it knOwn to him what I was after. In this interview (I erased the major portion of the interview; as it was information not pertinent to the sUbject) I got one good legend about a British seige of a welsh castle, from all indications, around 1200 A.D. The tape is very hard to undere stand because Mr. Jones mixed Gaelic with English. The other voice is an informant that refused to sing songs. She, Mrs. Margaret Eberhart. formerly Hogg, from Edinburgh, Scotland, actually did more harm than good, because every time Mr. Jones started taL~ing about what I wanted to hear, she deliberately changed the subject, so that only one taped lett gend resulted, and one off-tape story about the building of Mr. Jones, will you repeat the story seige of a Welsh Castle at the mouth of - stone houses~ My Question: about the British Cardigan Bay? Mr. Jones: [Starts sentence in Gaelic~ other towTI, Meine Cardigan waS across the bay called Criceth and they had a castle there, you see. Cardigan Castle was the last one to surrender this year, in the battle.At that time, there WpS a tunnel under Cardigan Bay Between the two castles and when the war W[S going on, Cardigan Castle was under siege. The English thought they didn't have nothing to eat there very long you see, because nobody couldn't carry nothing in 10. there, but this other castle .8.bout fifteen miles by land going do"m a.round the road. But} I guess it's about half that distance across the water because there's a curve in the sea shore. So they claimed they were getting fish from that other castle and were teasing the English from outside the castle, the English that "ere guarding the castle. They we,re throwing fresh fish [down to the Bri ti~h .J Often they had been there for months, and they [the British] thought they didn't have nothing to eat... They were getting fish, they say, through the tunnel under the sea, and they could have stayed there indefina"tely." rangment when they gave up What finally happened to the Welsh in- My Question: side the Castle? Mr. Jones: "Well, I think, see, [the Welsh] they made some ar. that every King of England had to be a Prince of Wales. That's the reason they used to come to Canounon (?) for a child to be born." The Queen-Mother would come to Wales during her pregnancy so that her child could be born WelshJ Mrs. Hargaret Eberhart: [The Scotch woma.n) "I know when the child became eighteen like this Prince Charlie has, he's supposed to go over to Wales to make himself Prince of Wales." [At this point, the conversation drafts to a geography lesson on the SUbjects of, Liverpool, Mersey River, farming houses, etc. Mr. Jones, I am afraid. did not understand exactly viha t I 'lanted. He started talking about his old :;." friends. He was unable to concentrate on anyone subject longer than two or three minutes. The only bther thing I got of interest from Mr. J~nes Was, unfortunately, Off-tape. My tape recorder had started skipping again. This last bit was a story of the building of houses. Mr. Jones said that he had helped build the home his family had lived in immediately preceeding his immigration to the United States just before the Boer Wa~, to avoid serving in the British army. He told hOvl the large c stones vJere quarried from: a nearby hill.\;; Us:i:ng sledge hammErS and cold drills, holes were pounded into the boulders; then pegs of dry vJood were pounded into the holes. Adding wJter to the pegs eventually caused them to swell, splitting the ., boulder in .the shape desired. These now shaped boulders were stacked, without the use of mortar as we know it. Mr. Jones s&id lime from the neighboring Dover limestone cliffs was mixed with grass to make a sticky paste-like substance which was used in the absence of mortar. His home, a two story. rock structure, WpS roofed with slate. Slat~when stratified in beds, can be broken into thin sheets a.bout 1/2 of an inch think, in the fashion that mica sheets are split. These thin sheets of slate were then used also in the lime paste to form a very durable and wa terproof rnof. Mr. Jones swore that the blocks of granite making up the house were so ~losely fitted that the blade of a knife could not be inserted between blocks. II . II)... I asked 41'. Jones to draw c. floor plan of the house, but his hand shook so badly that he could not dra':! veIl. So, from whet he described, lroked like this: the bottom floor of the cottage \~\~ ~~ J; I;r-~l. (A# To ')eCiPO ,,1 rO'Jr II PI_ - 'j II / - e II "i1tk~Dr tf"'~~ II 1-1ill It'! :.. ~4 IJ /" Claudie Duggan; HollT QooR. Voices in background: Tom Finn, collector Carol Harmon Ers. Lloyd C. Harmon, informant #1 ~'vlell, le.-mme see. Hy name is Claudie Dugg2ns. My home town is Sparta, Georgia. Now Iim living in Stone Hountain, Georgia." U'1ost of this- 1'ie.S addressed to Carol, as .Cla1.<die 1"&S <:.sked the questions by Carol. Claudie, ac.negro, vIaS suspicious of people she did not know, particularly white people, said Mrs. Harmon. As she did not know me, I was afraid this might have a bearing on the material I would collect. So, in view of that fact, I asked Carol to ask the questions. Claudie lme1" her 1vell, since she had been Carol's maid during a lengthy illness Carol had about this time two years ago.;] l "Ca-al, do you know de bes' 1vay to git rid a' de earache? al'vIaYP fine somebody' s no kin to you and comb a little hair out their head and ball it up and stick it in your ear and go on and lay dO\Vll. So, when you wake up, dere's no earache, and never no mo I." Claudie: [She was telling how to lrrmake hair grow, even tho\gh it is no longer connected to the roots in your scalp] Oh, jes' cut you off a little bit and put it in a jar and go on out and put it in a liaf' gallin jar, and it'll grow as long as 'at any kind a jar, with a lid to it. Dats hair of'n your haid." [~or a high feve!J "Turmtime (turpentine) and a lay it unef' yo' bed. Break a fever, put some turmtime in a lid Claudie: "Jes 'e go on tl ere and catch you an ole toad frog and pull his two hind legs and skin 'em. Take em in there and put~ 'em in a bottle and make you some soup out it. Put some meal in it, a.nd drink it jes" like you would anything else." Mrs. Harmon: "This is for babies teething?'" Claudie: "Oit you a dim e, a silver dirlle from somebody dat no kin to de baby. You have to git it from somebody dat no kin to 'em. Hake you a hole it it', and put it around his little nake ,(peck) and all 'is teeth is come in, take it out and put tup and vlait on de next one." Mrs. Harmon: "Do you have to get it any special way, Claudie?" mine with anybody." Claudie: "Jes' gitit. Jes' ask. I useli tc change A PDF transcript exists for this recording. Please contact an archivist for access. Professor John Burrison founded the Atlanta Folklore Archive Project in 1967 at Georgia State University. He trained undergraduates and graduate students enrolled in his folklore curriculum to conduct oral history interviews. Students interviewed men, women, and children of various demographics in Georgia and across the southeast on crafts, storytelling, music, religion, rural life, and traditions. As archivists, we acknowledge our role as stewards of information, which places us inaposition to choose how individuals and organizations are represented and described in our archives. We are not neutral, andbias isreflected in our descriptions, whichmay not convey the racist or offensive aspects of collection materialsaccurately.Archivists make mistakes and might use poor judgment.We often re-use language used by the former owners and creators, which provides context but also includes bias and prejudices of the time it was created.Additionally,our work to use reparative languagewhereLibrary of Congress subject termsareinaccurate and obsolete isongoing. Kenan Research Center welcomes feedback and questions regarding our archival descriptions. If you encounter harmful, offensive, or insensitive terminology or description please let us know by emailingreference@atlantahistorycenter.com. Your comments are essential to our work to create inclusive and thoughtful description.