 My mother's parents were very supersitious. She read tea leaves and he planted by the moon My grandfather also would not let a girl or woman step over a row of potatoes he had planted because the potatoes would have cracks in them! So he said! They told their children stories about a sort of piney woods demon called "Rawhead and Bloodybones." Whenever they were bad, it was "Rawhead and Bloodybones" who was going to get them! A women once borrowed a pan for baking bread from my grandmother. When she returned it, the woman told my grandmother that the woman's husband had been "foolin' around" and she had been told if she baked a "hoecake" of cornbread with a pinch of blood from her monthly flow in it, he would stop and be faithful from then on. I don't know if it worked or not; but, my grandmother threw away the pan! My mother's older sister, Nellie, heard somewhere that if she boiled an egg, scooped out the yolk and replaced it with salt; then ate the egg along with the salt and went to bed without drinking any water, she would then dream about the man she was going to marry. Nellie boiled her egg, scooped out the yolk, replaced it with salt, ate the mess; and, then went to bed without drinking water just as she was supposed to. That night she dreamed that a big black dog came to her bed! My grandparent's told her that that was the devil coming to get her for trying to find out things she wasn't mean't to know! |
