STRANGE VISION OF ARABELLA
The colored people within a radius of twenty-five miles of Reding Springs camp ground, Union county, congregate there once a year, generally in August, after the crops are laid by, for a big religious revival. At Reding Springs they are far removed from white people, and surrounded by forests. They can camp out, eat, drink, preach and sing to their hearts’ content without molesting anyone. Sometimes the meetings are brought to sudden conclusions by free-for-all fights, started by bullies, with rocks, pistols and razors, but this is an unusual thing for the good darkies of that section strive to keep down any unlawful disturbances. Old Satan, shrewd and alert always, enters the home of God’s people occasionally and makes mischief. So it is at Reding Springs now and then.
Arabella the Day After.
For almost a half century Reding Springs has been a popular camping place for the negroes of the Sandy Ridge region. They gather there and remain for weeks, worshiping according to their lights. Thousands of persons camp there during the meeting. They make the neighborhood dark with their presence and resound with their music.
The Reding Springs meetings are not for the city-bred negro, with his lofty airs and college training, but for the country negro. There he feels at home, where he goes once every twelve months to repent of his sins, give in his experience and shout until weary. The religious enthusiast can sing, preach, pray or participate in any other seemly way in the services without restrictions. The parson reads his text, closes the Bible, and preaches from memory. He gives out the hymns line at a time, and leads in the singing, young and old, saint and sinner joining to make the welkin ring, no one feeling constrained to curb his voice, the more force applied the better, volume, not quality, being demanded.
Dear reader, if you have followed me so far, don’t turn back now, for it is my purpose to tell you about Arabella Simpkins, the prophetess of the Reding Springs section. She was the sage of the community. The negroes feared her, and their fear was of the sort that made them want to get closer to her.
Reding Springs negroes had cause to fear Arabella. The troubles that she predicted came true. She had foretold the storm that swept the harbor away in 1882; the earthquake that shook the tents in 1886, and the bolt of lightning that set fire to the church in 1898. She had seen these in visions and told of them as she shouted up and down the aisles of the camp grounds. The people had learned from experience that the predictions of Arabella came to pass; she had won the respect of the leaders, who looked upon her arrival as an omen for good or bad. She had never attended a meeting except to deliver herself of an abiding prophecy. Therefore, if Arabella appeared on the scene everybody gave way to her and listened with abated breath for her prediction, which she gave when the meeting was at its best, when excitement ran highest. Before the big negress could perform effectively, the preaching and singing had to be of such a character that the hearers cried and wrung their hands. Then, with the aisles and halls filled with shouting men and women and crying children, Arabella sallied forth from her seat, humming softly, walling her eyes and warming up as she went.
It was a hot day in 19— that I went with a party of young people to the Reding Springs camp meeting. We were invited by some of the older darkies of Providence. It was said that Arabella was about due, as she had not been out in several years, and, hence, a good time to go.
We arrived early Sunday morning, looked over the grounds and watched the crowds gather from the surrounding country. I enjoyed the preliminaries. I had never seen so many and such a variety of vehicles. The majority of the darkies came in wagons, sitting flat on the bottom, using wheat or oat straw as a cushion, while others rode in antiquated carriages, buggies and two-wheeled carts, some of which were drawn by oxen. The outskirts of the grounds were covered with canvas tents, where those from a distance lived.