Gazzie holding Tipper, cousin JoAnn, brother Steve, and cousin Dwayne
By the end of yesterday there were a few answers to Fred’s question.
Debbie said: “Caterwaul” is a loud, shrill, wailing, screeching noise. Could be related. And yes, black panthers were for real in the mountains- at least that’s what we were told.”
Becky said: “up in the hills and hollers where i was from in sw va a caterball was another name for the “painter” aka panther (or mountain lion even though they say there ain’t no such in these parts anymore i know better i’ve heard them scream)…
i remember my old great aunt telling me i needed to be quiet so the caterball wouldn’t hear me walking along the road and come get me…”
Blind Pig readers always come through when information is needed about days gone by!
I stayed with Granny yesterday and I asked her about the cat-a-ra-ball, but she didn’t know of it.
Granny and I got to talking about things that scared us when we were children. She remembered telling us about the boogerman, but said it was usually done in such a teasing manner that we likely weren’t scared. I confirmed her suspicion 🙂
I asked her if she remembered her parents Gazzie and Charlie using scare tactics on her and her siblings. She said “Momma always wanted us to stay at home so she’d try to scare us about going off to play. She’d tell us bloody bones would get us.” I said “Well did it work?” Granny laughed and said “No, none of us were scared of bloody bones we thought she just made it up. We did stay close to home but it was only because we knew that’s what she wanted not that we were afraid.”
Gazzie was still using the bloody bones story to herd children when I was young.
There was a long steep bank behind her house that went right down to the edge of the four-lane highway. She didn’t like for us to play back there because I’m sure she was afraid we might get in the road.
At the top of the bank just behind the house there was an old washing machine that filled with rain water. I loved to play in that water! Like Granny and her siblings, whenever Granny Gazzie warned me about bloody bones I wasn’t scared. I could never figure out how a bunch of bloody bones could hurt me and played in that water every chance I got, but I did listen to the warnings of the dangerous highway and stayed well away from it.
When I mentioned Gazzie’s use of bloody bones to keep children safe several years ago, Granny Sue, storyteller extraordinaire, pointed out my Granny Gazzie’s story of bloody bones had been used to scare children since the 1600s.
“In the book Faiths and Folklore, (first published in 1905 and still in print) author William Carew Hazlitt notes that William Butler referenced the term “Raw Head” or “Bloody bones” twice in his book Hudibras, which was written between 1660 and 1680, another indication of the possible Celtic origin of the tale. And in Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500-1700 (published in 2001 by Oxford University Press), Adam Fox notes that “another specter which had been a particular terror of children at least since Reginald Scot’s childhood in the 1540’s was Raw-head and bloody-bone.” He goes on to say that servants often used the term to frighten children, and that the creature was often said to inhabit ponds and to pull in children who got too close the water’s edge.”
When I think of bloody bones today it brings more questions to mind that I wish I could ask Granny Gazzie. I’d like to know who told her about bloody bones and if she knew the rest of the story or only the part about the bones.
Last night’s video: How To Harvest & Eat Maypops/Passion Fruit/Wild Apricots – They Make a Tasty Drink!
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Loved the story. Made me remember some of my relatives that lived in the hills of Penna. My Mom and Daddy left the hills and he went to work for the Pa Railroad and she worked in a Hosiery mill. We went back to visit every few weeks during the Spring and Summer. My cousins thought we were rich because we lived in Town. I guess we were compared to them and we never went hungry. We always helped them in their gardens and Mother helped the ladies can and preserve their crops. The kids picked and the ladies cooked. Great memories and I learned to can and preserve.
May the stories about black panthers never die! Both the stories and the mythical cats have become part of American lore. You can see a black leopard in a zoo, but science has never identified a large black cat that is or ever was native to North America. No museum has ever collected one and no hunter has ever killed and preserved one. No road kills of black, long-tailed cats have been reported. I’m betting that no game trail camera will ever capture an irrefutable image of one. I would suggest that all who have seen a big, long-tailed cat actually saw a mountain lion (cougar, panther, painter–all the same cat) in poor light. The native species are tawny tan to brown, with a black-tipped tail. They would appear dark brown if wet. We still see panthers in south and sometimes central Florida. They are mostly dead from vehicle strikes or on game cameras put out by biologists to study their travels. Long live stories of caterwauls–black or otherwise.
I want to make a couple of comments. Ron and ghost. My father in law told a story of when he was a teenager. He was riding his horse and coming home after dark and having to pass by an old country church cemetery. When coming by the cemetery he could see something white raising up and down on a grave. He took off for home and told his daddy about what he saw, his daddy told him there were no ghost and made him go back to the cemetery the next morning to look for what he had seen. He said it was the page of a newspaper someone had put on a grave. He said if his daddy hadn’t made him go back he would have thought he had saw a ghost for the rest of my life.
Sadie I am like you, I know what I saw with my own eyes. Read my reply to Fred McPeek on yesterday’s post. I also know the person I mention as much aboutabout the wild animals in this area as anyone alive.
That should read knows as much about the wild animals in this area as anyone alive. Sorry
Great video on May pops last night, Tipper. Thank you. I’ve sucked on a few in my life.
I shoulda put cat er ra ball together as caterwaul. In my defense I’ll say that caterwaul is a sound made mostly by cats, I think. I nU ever associated sound as something that would get me though I have been scared by sounds a many a time. I grew up on tails of bloody bones with red eyes and a scream that could deafen you. Perhaps that was a vestige of my Pa’s time in Swain County, but I think it was fairly common in the flat lands, too.
My oldest uncle, Lee, was 16 years old in 1900 and worked as a drover for an ox wagon train that plied between Bryson City and Maryville. He told the tale of returning one time when he encountered a ‘painter’. He said it was about dusk dark and time for to camp for the night when the painter got on the ridge above him. He saw him slipping through the brush and heard his caterwauling. He was afraid to camp overnight for fear the beast would get his oxen; so he drove through the night cracking his whip every few paces to keep the cat scared (afeared) to come down on them. Come daylight, the cat was gone so he slept an hour or so and proceeded on toward Bryson. I never learned whereabouts the encounter happened. He did say that his arm was sore for a week.
Spooky stories and happenings were a big part of growing up in the mountains of southern West Virginia. We had a very old neighbor lady once who liked to share stories of demons with us when we were children. She said she had seen them running out of her son in law. who had been a “rounder.” She was very old, and she even wore the old bonnets and long aprons. She swears on a tale of a woman working the fields and left her baby on the edge in a safe place. As the tale went, a huge bird came down and grabbed the baby with its talons and took off with the child. She also warned us that three knocks meant trouble. It was probably my wild imagination, but it seemed thereafter I started hearing strange knocks….only if home alone. 🙂 It would seem that it would be difficult to grow up with all the wild stories, but it added a certain adventure and mystery to everyday life. Everything we learned back then was either from a textbook or from the wild imagination of ourselves or others. Parents were extremely busy people. so a lot of the raising was left up to whoever happened to be handy.
There was none of today’s distractions, so everybody who was anybody would tell of some strange encounter. Many said you could hear the panters screaming as the cry of a woman or baby. Fortunately, I never heard that terrible sound. but I knew those who said they did.
I remember my uncle scaring us kids one time when he was home visiting from NY. He had an old chain from somewhere and in the middle of the night, he crept up the stairs, muttering “Raw heads and bloody bones.” It was pretty scary!!!
My mother, growing up in the backwoods of Kentucky and Ohio, was one of twelve children. Half of them were rowdy brothers who teased the girls unmercifully. The girls bathed first, then the boys with their rusty heels and black dirt beads bathed last. Dried and warmed by the heat of the kitchen woodstove, most of the dozen made their way upstairs to bed. Sometimes Ma, being one of the older kids, was one of the last to turn in. She probably helped Granny dash the water out of the tub. Seeing their opportunity to scare their sister, the boys leaned over the top railing and warned Ma to “watch out for Ol’ Raw Head and Bloody Bones!”
The stairs made a turn at the middle landing where there was a hole in the wall. It was said that the feared Raw Head and Bloody Bones resided in the hole and would reach out and grab children as they passed at night. Ma told me that she spent “many a night” sleeping downstairs for fear that Ol’ Raw Head and Bloody Bones would get her.
My parents never tried to scare me – we were too afraid of what Dad would do if we didn’t obey. He never did anything but that scared us even more. He would jump out from hiding and yell gotcha if we acted startled. That was enough! Down here in Florida just over 50 years ago when out little town was beginning to slowly grow – my husband and I were out riding just before dark, trying to get cool and looking for deer (we had just moved to north Florida from a down south big town) to start a tiny homestead out in the country. Well, at dusk we drove down a small dirt road and saw a panther. He was on one side of the dirt road and sitting like a statute staring at the other side of the road into an animal trail. He saw us, took one leap over the entire road and was gone. He was as big a a huge Great Dane and had a tail as long as his body. Amazing and beautiful. But we never walked along this road or even rode our horses down it as my SIL grandfather had been mauled by a panther and was in bed weeks recovering many years before. That year a friend had shot a black bear behind our little farm and that was too close for comfort. There were huge alligators in the ponds and US Highway 19 was stopped for traffic when a car hit a 12 footer laying across the road. We never moved again – our roots were planted in this wild new home.
What kind of whacked grandparents were these?
That’s a wonderful picture with your grandmother. All you children look slightly perplexed. Perhaps it’s just the sun in your eyes.
I never heard tell of bloody bones or raw head. Here on BP&A may have been my first introduction. What I recall was tales of witches and ghosts. Witches were taken a bit serious and ghosts quite a bit serious but not for scary so much as just wonder at the inexplicable. There were reliable testimonies of the existence of ghosts but with no understanding of why they should exist. I have never met one to know it but I have no difficulty accepting them as ‘real’, just not materially so.
About scaring the kids, I marvel a bit at how us country kids were free to take risks. The grownups thought about the big risks and cautioned us about them, such as the highway mentioned. After that though we were on our own. We could still get in serious trouble but almost always it was fooling with something we had been warned about. Mainly it was just cuts and scrapes and bangs and bumps and bites, just country life. How I got through childhood intact I don’t know. Some of the time my angel was pretty busy.
Ron, my angel worked overtime. I put myself in danger at least as often as it happened accidentally or unintentionally.
I never heard about bloody bones, but as a child my mom told us kids that the boogie man would get us at night if we were bad. We quickly figured out that since the older siblings were still around after a day of misbehaving, it wasn’t true.
My Uncle Dick used to terrorize us as children with stories about the Raw Head, who lived in the attic at my grandparents’ house, and stories about Bloody Pigtails, who lived in the pantry at night. He must have heard it from our grandmother, whose family roots were in Scotland. My cousins and I still joke about the Raw Head and Bloody Pigtails, but I never knew where the stories came from–I figured Uncle Dick made it all up! Bloody Pigtails was probably a version of Bloody Bones. It made for a lot of scares and a lot of laughter!
My wife said her mom would make dolls from the Maypop flower
I think the photo of Gazzie and her great grand babies is lovely! I can see plainly in her face a very strong, stern and wise woman made after many years of life. I myself find Bloody Bones kind of scary. And if anybody reading this thinks there’s no black and big brown pumas still around, keep telling yourself that… Either I’m a big fat liar or I’m not period. I know what these eyes have seen and heard. There’s plenty to be frightened of starting with your neighbors and “the Stranger “ who rarely lets others see the stranger in themselves… nonetheless I contend the scariest is what’s familiar to you every day. One doesn’t lust after what his/ her eyes don’t see every day…I got a silver truck and within 6 months there were many neighbors with silver SUV’s and that’s just one proof… Bloody Bones, I believe in you!!!!
It is really interesting when you think how these scary stories told to children have not changed very much in hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Just like childhood games and rhymes, each new generation passes them on to the next. This morning as I read your post, a thought ran through my head. Time is just a vapor, just a blink in God’s eye. We think hundreds of years takes a long time, but for God those years are just a matter of seconds. I like the thought of life and ways for humans, since Adam and Eve, basically have remained the same. Technology has changed the way we do things, but our basic human instincts are the same. Each generation has had it’s comfort food, daily chores for basic needs, and the way we think has pretty much remained the same. I am sorry I have missed the past couple evenings commenting on you tube. I have been so crazy busy the past few days, and time needed to work on everything that has to be completed each day, has spilled over into my nights. Being self employed, I do try to keep a schedule leaving my evenings for relaxing and winding down for the day. Watching your videos and commenting is part of my reward at the end of the day. But there are times when the day’s work melts into my planned (and much needed) quiet time. I just wanted to let you know all is ok. I am just busy, busy, busy right now. Thank you for this wonderful post!
Donna. : )
Great picture!!! Was this Easter Sunday?
Never heard of bloody bones but definitely interesting to read up on.
-Lenora thank you! It may have been Easter. I’ll have to ask Granny 🙂
Tipper,
I an now a man of 74 years. When as a boy of 5 or 6 my grandfather would tell me a story about ‘bloody bones’ to amuse and frighten me. All I remember of the story after these years is a small portion. I’ll quote the phrase. “Red eyes and bloody bones coming down the road. Red eyes and bloody bones coming to get you.” This was enough to throw fear in a little ones heart.
I remember other kids talking about bloody bones. I must have had a sheltered life in that respect as I never heard stories about them til much later.
ah caterwall, that makes sense.
Black Panthers were real in upstate Florida eons ago…we use to hear them in the woods behind our house. Never saw one, but could hear them late at night. Tipper, is Gazzie your Grandmother on your Mom’s side. I guess I haven’t been reading and/or paying attention long enough. And, where did you get your seeds for the passion flowers?…think they would be fun to grow. God Bless
-Glenda we got them from friends but you can find them online 🙂
My mother told me her family used to scare the children with the threat that Bloody Bones would come get them if they didn’t behave. She never told me exactly what Bloody Bones was just that they used it to scare the children for their own entertainment. From her reaction to it I would say it was used in a malicious fashion.