[Granville-Hough] 31 Aug 2009 - Witsol Stories
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough-trust at oakapple.net
Tue Dec 21 06:34:25 PST 2010
Witsols Stories.
One of my grade school classmates was Witsol Robinson,
who must have been of Scotch Presbyterian heritage, though his family
belonged to our Concord Baptist church. Witsol, in his youth, spoke with
a definite accent, probably from his grandfather Noah Robinson. When he
said balls of fire, an outsider would surely have heard it as balls
afar. It was from Witsol that I first heard about ball lightning, a
phenomenon which has been documented through the years. According to
Witsol, his grandpa Noah had been chased down a rail fence by balls
afar. Now, I would guess that Noah did see ball lightning follow a rail
fence, causing him to run down the opening made by the fence. According
to other witnesses, the activity only lasts for seconds. I would guess
if one saw ball lightning on a fence moving toward you, you would run
quite a distance without looking back.
"Have you ever seed fox far?" The only time you can see fox fire is at
night when you come across decaying wood in which a luminous fungus is
growing. The first time I ever say it was on a fishing trip to Okatomy
Creek when I was trying to sleep in a hollow tree. It was all around me.
My dictionary tells me now that one of the funguses to produce this
effect is Armillaria mellia.
Another favorite story of Witsols was about hoop snakes. Grandpa Noah
had definitely seen hoop snakes with more than one head. They seemed to
roll along and pay no attention to humans. Many people have talked and
heard about hoop snakes, but others just listen with skepticism.
Recently, some species of snakes have been televised during copulation,
when several males wrap themselves around the female, all vying for a
chance to fertilize her eggs. During this activity, they roll and tumble
as they joust to get into mating position. They might well look like
hoop snakes. They pay no attention to humans or other predators. Grandpa
Noah, being a piney woodsman, must have encountered snakes in the midst
of copulation rolling about, and he passed that story on to his
grandchildren as hoop snakes. I personally never had such an encounter,
and I would prefer not.
Grandpa Noah also told about his desperate escape from the conscription
agents during the Civil War. The Piney Woods people had no slaves and
little incentive to fight a rich mans war. They hid out to avoid the
draft, and conscription agents were hired to bring them in, dead or
alive. When they came looking for Noah Robinson, he ran for the woods,
dodging from one big longleaf pine to the next. He described that the
trees he dodged behind caught the bullets, but he had been able to
disappear so that the conscription agents rode away.
(My own great grandfather, Sampson Arender, guardedly told the story
that a conscription agent chased him and another man into Strong River
swamp. He and the other man came out of the swamp, but the conscription
agent did not. Great Grandpa Arender or someone else said he immediately
went over into Rankin County and enlisted in a company where he was not
known.)
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