September 12, 2008

• Of woolly worms and August fogs
  

  
  Woolly worms, August fogs, the breastbone of a goose, the song of a katydid ...
  ...
  Since I’ve been writing this column, many people have told me that our
  late publisher emeritus, J. E. Dunlap, often wrote about natural signs
  that predict the weather, and they often say they’ve missed reading
  about them since J. E.'s been gone.
  Not knowing a thing
  about “weather signs,” I decided to do some research. It gave me an
  excuse to go to one of my favorite places, the Boone County Library,
  where I found a treasure — “Ozarks Magic and Folklore,” published in
  1947 by Vance Randolph.
  A native lowlander, Randolph
  explains that he first visited the Ozark country in 1899, and spent
  much of his life in the Arkansas and Missouri hills. “I fished and
  fought and hunted and danced and gambled with my backwoods neighbors,”
  he writes. “I traveled the ridge roads in a covered wagon, consorting
  with peddlers and horse traders and yarb doctors and moonshiners ... “
  Although
  much of the colorful folklore of the region is gradually fading away
  with each new generation homogenized by television and Internet, I
  believe that a lot of folks still enjoy watching faithfully for these
  weather signs that Randolph records.
  “Signs and
  superstitions about the weather naturally seem important to a people
  who live by tilling the soil, and are taken very seriously in the Ozark
  country,” Randolph writes.
  The author quotes a gentleman
  in Jasper County, Mo., as telling him, “Nobody ever claimed that them
  old signs was always right. But I've been a-watchin' the weather for 60
  years, an’ I believe these here goosebone prophets are just about as
  good as the government men we've got nowadays.”
  The term
  “goosebone prophet” refers to the practice Randolph describes of
  examining the breastbone of a wild goose killed in the fall. “If the
  bone is thin and more or less transparent, the winter will be mild,” he
  writes. “If the bone is thick and opaque, the winter will be severe. If
  the bone is white, there will be a great deal of snow.”
  Another
  winter sign comes from “a patriarch at St. Joe, Arkansas” who said that
  “for every 100-degree day in July there will be a 20-below day the
  following January.”
  The folklore collector says that many Ozarkers told him “it never frosts until the cockleburs are ripe.”
  It was widely believed in the Ozarks that “katydids sing to bring on cold weather in the fall,” Randolph said.
  He
  found a number of variations in the katydid/frost connection. Some said
  a frost will come two weeks after the katydids sing; other farmers
  expected the first frost exactly six weeks after the katydids’ singing
  begins; others said nine weeks; others three months. Randolph says he
  heard in Taney County, Mo., that the first killing frost always comes
  10 weeks after “the locusts begin to holler.”
  The writer
  says an old man in Washington County, Arkansas, told him he always
  marked on his calendar the date he first saw a “Devil’s-darning-needle”
  insect, sometimes called a “walking stick.” The old man told him the
  first real frost always comes just six weeks later.
  He
  writes that if you see butterflies late in the autumn, that’s a sign
  that cold weather will arrive soon. “The same is true of big woolly
  caterpillars,” he adds. (Those must be the “woolly worms” J. E. used to
  write about.)
  “Some say that the number of days the
  first snow remains on the ground indicates the number of snows to be
  expected during the winter,” he writes.
  A lady in Rolla,
  Mo., told Randolph if you count the number of sunny days between July 1
  and September 1 and multiply by two, you’ll arrive at the number of
  freezing cold days you can expect the following winter.
   Many
  Ozark folks of Randolph’s day believed that the severity of the coming
  winter was indicated by the thickness of natural things like feathers
  and fur and cornshucks. “If hair on muskrats, skunks, coons and possums
  is unusually thick, the hillman expects a hard winter,” he writes. He
  said every child of the hills had heard the rhyme, “Onion skin mighty
  thin/Easy winter coming in.”
  Other signs of a severe
  winter include: squirrels heading south; hornets building their nests
  low in the trees; a big crop of walnuts; an abundance of acorns;
  cherries or lilacs blooming in the fall; woodpeckers beginning to peck
  at the foot of a tree and working their way to the top; the moon
  appearing farther north than usual in the fall; and a very hot summer.
  When
  the trees’ foliage is unusually dense in summer, or bright in color, it
  was said to mean a very cold winter is on its way. Have y'all noticed
  how thick the leaves are on our trees right now, and how fall color is
  already showing in some of the dogwoods and maples?
  Randolph
  said it was widely believed that the number of fogs in August is always
  equal to the number of snows the following winter.
   Jeff
  Christenson told me this week a man stopped him recently to ask, “Who's
  keeping up with the August fogs now that J. E. is gone?”
   Are
  there any goosebone prophets out there who counted the fogs in August,
  or made note of the day the locusts started to holler?
   
  By Celia DeWoody
  Copyright 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  • 9:54 pm
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