THE WITCH SHEEP
In the darkness of Christmas morning, in the year 1811, old Benny Nichols could not sleep. He was not thinking of Santa Claus nor of Christmas gifts; he was watching for the first gray dawn which marked his regular rising hour, and he tossed and turned, wondering why he was so wakeful, until at last he rose in despair and lighted a candle to discover how long he had to wait ere daybreak. To his amazement he found the hands of the old clock pointing to the hour of nine, and as he stood shivering, candle in hand, staring at the apparently deceitful, bland face the clock raised its voice and struck nine, loudly and brassily, as if to prove that its hands and face told the truth. Benny then walked quickly to the window, and saw that the apparent darkness and length of the night came from a great wall of snow which covered the entire window and which had nearly all fallen since the previous sunset.
Keenly awake at once when he recognized the lateness of the hour, the old man wakened his wife Debby, and bade her “hurry up and git somethin’ to eat. It’s nine o’clock, and we’ve had the wust snowstorm ye ever see, and me a-laying’ here in bed, and them new sheep a-walkin’ into the sea and gittin’ drownded!”
Benny was a weazened-faced, dried-up old man, who was the shepherd of a large Narragansett farm which lay between Pender Zeke’s Corner and the bay. He knew well the danger that came to sheep in a heavy snowstorm. He had seen a great flock of a hundred timid, shrinking creatures retreat and cower one behind the other to shelter themselves from the fierce beating of the wind and sleet, until, in spite of his efforts, all were edged into the sea and lost, save a half-dozen whose throats were cut by him with a jack-knife to save the mutton. Without waiting for any warm food, he cautiously opened the door to dig himself out.
“Ye can’t go out, Benny Nichols, in them shoes,” said Debby, firmly. “I told ye long ago they was half wore out—here, put on yer Sunday long-boots.”
This suggestion was a bitter one to prudent Benny, who expected to have those boots for Sunday wear for the next ten years, just as he had for the past ten; and he knew well what a hard day’s work he had before him, and how destructive it would prove to shoe-leather. But Debby was firm, and, seizing the great boots from the nail on which they hung, she poured out the flax-seed with which they were always kept filled when they were not on Benny’s feet. The old man pulled them on his shrivelled legs with a groan at Debby’s extravagance, and then proceeded to dig out a path in the snow. Benny had not seen such a snow-storm since the great “Hessian snow-storm” in the winter of 1778, when so many Hessian soldiers perished of cold and exposure. When he reached the surface and could look around him, he saw with satisfaction that the snow and wind had blown during the previous night away from the water, hence his sheep would hardly be drowned. He quickly discovered a strange-shaped bank of snow by the side of one of the great hay-ricks, so common throughout Narragansett, and he shrewdly suspected that some of his sheep were underneath the great drift. When carefully searched with a rake-stale this proved to be the case, and when he shovelled them out all in the mound were alive and well. In a snow-drift, by the side of a high stone wall, he found the remainder of his flock, save one, a fine little ewe of the creeper breed, the rarest and most valued of all his stock. As sheep-sheds at that time were unknown in Narragansett, the loss of sheep was great in the Christmas storm, and many cattle were frozen in the drifts; and one shepherd noted two weeks later that the hungry cattle he foddered never touched a full lock of hay that he had thrown on the top of a little hillock of snow near his rick. So he thrust at it with his hay-tines, and in so doing he lifted off a great shell of snow-crust, and there peered out of the whiteness the bronze, wrinkled face of the old squaw Betty Aaron, who was sitting bolt upright, frozen stiff and dead, her chin resting on both hands, her elbows on her knees. Hence Benny was justly proud of his rescued flock, though he mourned the one sheep that was lost, and blamed himself for sleeping so late, saying, he “wouldn’t have minded spilin’ his roast-meat boots if he could have found the creeper.”
On the fourteenth day of January Benny Nichols chanced to see in the snow, by the side of a hay-rick which stood a mile away from his home, a small hole about half an inch in diameter, which his practised eye recognized at once as a “breathing-hole,” and which indicated that some living thing had been snowed in and was lying underneath. He broke away the covering of icy crust, and to his amazement saw a poor creature of extraordinary appearance, which he at first hardly could believe was his own lost creeper sheep. She was alive, but alas! in such a sorry plight.
The hungry sheep, in her three weeks’ struggle against starvation, had eaten off every fibre of her own long wool that she could reach, and she lay bare and trembling in the cold air, too weak to move, too feeble to bleat either in distress or welcome. Old Benny wrapped the half-dead creature in the corner of his cloak and carried her home to Debby, who fairly shed tears at the sight of the poor naked skeleton of a sheep. Tenderly did the kind woman wrap the frozen ewe in an old flannel petticoat and feed her with warm milk, a few drops only at first, and then with much caution until the sheep was able to digest her ordinary food. In a week the creeper seemed as strong as ever, quickly gained the lost flesh, and could bleat both loud and long. And with returning health she grew active and mischievous, and was constantly thrusting her long black nose into the most unexpected and most unsuitable places, to the great distress of careful Debby, who longed to put her out of doors.
But the sheep’s lost wool could not grow as quickly as did the fat on her ribs, and she could not be thrust out thus, naked and bare, in the winter air, so Debby decided to make for the little creature a false fleece. For this purpose she took an old blue coat which had once been worn by her son, and cut off the sleeves until they were the right length to cover the ewe’s forelegs. She then sewed at the waist of the coat two sleeves from an old red flannel shirt; these were to cover Nanny’s hind legs. And when Debby drew on the gay jacket and buttoned it up over the sheep’s long backbone with the large brass coat-buttons, there never was seen such a comical, stunted, hind-side-foremost caricature of what is itself a caricature—an organ-grinder’s monkey.
When Benny carried the gayly dressed Nanny out to the enclosed yard, it was hard to tell which exhibition of feeling was the keenest—poor, unconscious, and absurd Nanny’s delight in her freedom and her eager desire to take her place with her old companions, or the consternation and terror of the entire flock at the strange wild beast which was thus turned loose among them.
They ran from side to side, and crowded each other against the paling so unceasingly and so wildly, that Benny carried the unwilling ewe back to the kitchen.
At nightfall, however, Benny again placed Nanny in the open field with the sheep, thinking that they would gradually, throughout the darkness, become used to the presence of her little harlequin jacket, and allow her to graze by their side in peace.
That night two cronies of Benny’s came from a neighboring farm to talk over that ever-interesting topic, the great snowstorm, and to buy some of his lambs. The three old men sat by the great fireplace in the old raftered kitchen in the pleasant glow from the blazing logs, each sipping with unction a mug of Benny’s famous flip, while Debby rubbed with tallow the sadly stiffened long-boots that had been worn in the Christmas snow. Suddenly a loud wail of distress rang in their ears, the door was thrust violently open, and in stumbled the breathless form of the tall, gaunt old negress Tuggie Bannocks. She was a relic of old slavery times, who lived on a small farm near the old Gilbert Stuart Mill, on Petaquamscut River. They all knew her well. She had bought many a pound of wool from Benny to wash and card and spin into yarn, and she always helped Debby in that yearly trial of patience and skill—her soap-making. The old negro woman had double qualifications to make her of use in this latter work: her long, strong arms could stir the soap untiringly for hours, and then she knew also how to work powerful charms—traditional relics of Voodooism—to make the soap always turn out a success.
Tuggie Bannocks sank upon the table by the fire, murmuring: “Tanks be to Praise! Tanks be to Praise!” and closed her eyes in speechless exhaustion. Debby took a half-crushed basket of eggs from the old woman’s arm, drew off her red woollen mittens, and rubbed briskly her long cold claws of hands. Benny had a vague remembrance of the old-time “emergency” saying, “feathers for fainters,” and seized a turkey’s wing that was in daily use as a hearth-brush, thrust it into the flames, and then held the scorching feathers under the old negress’s nose until all in the room were coughing and choking with the stifling smoke.
Spluttering and choking at the dense feather-smoke, Tuggie gasped out: “I ain’t dead yit—I specks I shall be soon, dough—kase I seen de ole witch a-ridin’—I’se most skeered to death” (then in a fainter voice)—“gib me a mug of dat flip.” Startled, Benny quickly drew a great mug of home-brewed beer and gave it a liberal dash of Jamaica rum and sugar, then seized from the fire the red-hot “loggerhead” and thrust it seething into the liquid until the flip boiled and bubbled and acquired that burnt, bitter flavor that he knew Tuggie dearly loved. The old woman moaned and groaned as she lay on the table-top, but watched the brewing of the flip with eager eye, and sat up with alacrity to drink it.
With many a shuddering sigh and many a glance behind her at the kitchen door, and crossing her fingers to ward off evil spirits she began: “Ye know, Miss Nickkels, I telled ye I was witch-rid by ole Mum Amey, an’ dis how I know I was. Ye see I was a-goin’ to wuk a charm on her first off—not to hurt her none, jess to bodder her a leetle—an’ I jess put my project on de fire one night, an’ it jess a-goin’ to boil, an’ in come her ugly, ole grinnin’ black face at de door, an’ say she a-goin’ to set wid me a spell.” Mum Amey was a wrinkled half-breed Indian of fabulous age and crabbed temper, a “squaw-nurse,” who was, of course, not half as black as negro Tuggie. “She walk ober to de chimbly to light her pipe an’ ask me what I a-cookin’, an’ I say Ise a-makin’ glue, cause Ise afeard she see de rabbit’s foot in de pot, an’ I say it all done, an’ yank de pot offen de crane so she can’t see into it. An’ ob course when I take de project offen de fire afore it’s wukked, it break de charm; an’ wuss still, I can’t nebber try no project on her no more. Ole Mum Amey larf, an’ say, a-leerin’ at me, dat pot ob glue won’t nebber stick nothin’ no more. An’ ebber sence dat night I ben witch-rid. Mornin’s when I wakes up I sees marks ob de bit in de corners ob my mouf, where Mum Amey ben a-ridin’ me all ober Boston Neck an’ up de Ridge Hill till I so tired and stiff I can’t hardly move. Ise ben pinched in de night an’ hab my ha’r pulled. An’ my butter won’t come till I drops a red-hot horseshoe in de cream to dribe her out. One day I jess try her to see ef she a witch (dough I know she one, ’cause I see her talkin’ to a black cat); I drop a silber sixpence in her path, an’ jess afore she get to it she turn an’ go back, jess I know she would. No witch can’t step ober silber. An’ now, Benny Nickkels, I know for shore she’s a witch, I see her jess now in de moonlight a-chasin’ an’ ridin’ your sheep; an’, shore’s yer bawn, yer’ll find some on ’em stone dead in de mornin’—all on ’em, mebbe!”
Benny looked wretched enough at this statement. Dearly as he loved his sheep and ready as he was to face physical discomfort and danger in their behalf, he was too superstitious to dare to go out in the night to rescue them and brave the witch.
“How did she look, Tuggie? And what did she do?” whispered awe-struck Debby.
“Oh, she was mons’ous fearsome to see! Witches don’t nebber go in deir own form when dey goes to deir Sabbaths. She was long an’ low like a snake. She run along de groun’ jess like a derminted yeller painter, a-boundin’, an’ leapin’, an’ springin’, a-chasin’ dem pore sheeps—oh, how dey run! Wid her old red an’ blue blanket tied tight aroun’ her—dat’s how I knowed her. An’ she had big sparklin’ gold dollars on her back—wages ob de debbil, I ’specks. Sometimes she jump in de air an’ spread her wings an’ fly awhile. Smoke an’ sparks come outen her mouf an’ nostrums! Big black horns stick outen her head! Lash her long black tail jess like de debbil hisself!”
At this dramatic and breathless point in Tuggie’s flip-nourished and quickly growing tale, credulous Debby, whose slow-working brain had failed to grasp all the vivid details in the black woman’s fervid and imaginative description, interjected this gasping comment: “It must ha’ been the devil or the creeper.”
Benny jumped from his chair and stamped his foot, and at once burst into a loud laugh of intense relief, and with cheerful bravado began to explain animatedly to his open-mouthed cronies that of course anyone could see that Tuggie’s sheep-chasing witch was only the creeper sheep in her new fleece, and he offered swaggeringly to go out alone to the field to bring the ewe in to prove it.
The old negress sprang to her feet, insulted and enraged at the jeering laughter and rallying jokes, and advanced threateningly toward him. Then, as if with a second thought, she stopped with a most malicious look, and in spite of Debby’s conciliatory explanations and her soothing expressions “that it might have been Mum Amey after all,” she thrust aside Benny’s proffered mollification of a fresh mug of flip, seized her crushed basket, stalked to the door, and left the house muttering, vindictively: “High time to stop such unrageous goin’s-on—dressin’ up sheeps like debbils—scarin’ an ole woman to death an’ breakin’ all her aigs! Ole Tuggie Bannocks ain’t forgot how to burn a project! Guess dey won’t larf at witches den!”
And surely enough—as days passed it could plainly be seen that the old negress had carried out her threat—for the chimney was “conjured”—was “salted.” On windy nights the shepherd and his wife were sure they could hear Tuggie dancing and stamping on the roof, and she blew down smoke and threw down soot, and she called down the chimney in a fine, high, shrieking voice: “I’ll project ye, Benny; I’ll project ye.” And she burnt the cakes before the fire, and the roast upon the spit, and thrice she snapped out a blazing coal and singed a hole in Debby’s best petticoat, though it was worn wrong side out as a saving-charm. And Benny could see, too, that the old ram was bewitched. The remainder of the flock soon became accustomed to the sight of Nanny’s funny false fleece, but he always fled in terror at her approach. He grew thin and pale (or at any rate faded), and he would scarcely eat when Nanny was near. Debby despairingly tried a few feeble counter-charms, or “warders,” but without avail. When sheep-shearing time came, however, and Nanny, shorn of her uncanny fleece and clothed in her own half-inch snowy wool, took her place with the other short-clipped members of the flock, he ceased to be “witch-rid”—the “project,” the “conjure” was worked out. He grew fat and fiercely brave, and became once more the knight of the field, the lord of the domain, the patriarch, the potestate of his flock.
The story of Tuggie Bannocks’s fright and her revengeful “project” spread far and wide on every farm from Point Judith to Pottawomat, and was told in later years by one generation of farmers to another. And as time rolled on and Nanny reared her lambs and they her grand-lambs, the creeper sheep were known and sold throughout Narragansett by the name of witch-sheep.