Chatter and Chitter
mark
B verb
1 To cause (an unborn child) to have a defect (as a physical mark or a behavioral tendency) from an experience or occurrence to the mother during her pregnancy: hence noun marking = this experience occurrence.
1929 Duncan and Duncan Sayings 234 A woman that’s big musn’t look at nothin’ or she’ll mark hit [= the child]. 1949 Arnow Hunter’s Horn 194 She was craving greens bad, and if she didn’t get some pretty soon, this child she carried would be marked with greens and would never in all it’s life get enough of them to eat. 1961 Williams Content Mt Speech 15 Pol never let on. She jist said she reckoned all them thar shines and rusties the old man had cut had marked Lil’s baby. 1963 Watkins and Watkins Yesterday 148 Hill women were extremely careful about everything they did or even thought when they were pregnant, because any unusual or frightening event could mark the baby they were carrying…Dave Hobgood was marked by his father, who got drunk when his mother was pregnant and misbehaved so much that he marked his child. 1978 Morton Superstitions 2 Marking was of major concern during prenatal care. Marking was a prenatal experience of the mother showing up as a physical characteristic of the baby. …This marking was done mainly through experiences in which the mother was frightened and touched a spot on her body, causing a birthmark symbolic of whatever frightened to appear on her baby. The other effect was for the marking to be in the form of a physical defect in a cognitive or motor skill of the baby. Unusual cravings may also cause marks symbolic of the things craved, usually a mark resembling food to appear on the baby at birth. 1989 Giardina Storming Heaven 3 They is many a way to mark a baby while it is still yet in the womb. A fright to its mother will render it nervous and fretful after it is birthed. If a copperhead strikes, a fiery red snake will be stamped on the baby’s face or back. And a portentous event will violate a woman’s entrails, grab a youngun by the ankle and wrench a life out of joint. 1990 Cavender Folk Medical Lex 27 marking = a birthmark, physical characteristic or behavior trait caused during pregnancy by the mother having a frightening /unfortunate experience or violating a taboo.
—Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English
One doesn’t often hear the old folklore about marking a baby these days. It was still fairly common to hear folks talk about it around pregnant women when I was growing up.
When I was pregnant with the girls my grandmother died and a couple of months later The Deer Hunter’s grandmother passed away too. By that point I had been put on complete bed rest and couldn’t attend her funeral.
At my grandmother’s funeral one of my uncles stopped me as I was going into the church to tell me I might not want to view the body cause it might mark my babies.
I’ve most often heard marking a baby in reference to birthmarks shaped like whatever scared, upset, or frightened the women before giving birth.
I find birthmarks and the way they are sometimes passed along to the next generation fascinating. Chatter has both mine and The Deer Hunter’s birthmarks which is especially interesting.
Last night’s video: Eating Banana Sandwiches in Appalachia.
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The original belief in marking a baby comes literally from the Bible, of Joseph putting striped sticks in the troughs when the strongest sheep and goats were mating, since he and his father-in-law Laban had made a deal that Jacob could have all the striped and spotted sheep and goats, thereby giving him all the strongest animals and Laban would get the uncolored but weakest lambs and kids. My grandma had a great aunt in the late 1800’s in SW MO, who was riding a horse while she was in the late stage of pregnancy and the horse stepped in a gopher hole while running across the field. The horse’s leg was badly hurt and remained crippled. When the baby girl was born soon afterwards, my g-g-aunt Macey, she had badly deformed knees, and eyes on the outsides of her head, like a horse. She was a middle aged woman as I was growing up but active in our church . My grandma didn’t want my pregnant mom to look at twin walnuts growing on the tree in our yard to prevent her having twins so Mom did it a lot just to prove her wrong. So Mom had identical twin boys! I am one of them, now 72 years old. I studied and majored in cattle genetics so know there is no such thing as “marking a baby” scientifically, the story of Jacob and the striped sticks during sheep mating was simply God blessing Jacob for his hard work (and possibly his conniving methods).
My uncle who is not a blood relative but was married to my Aunt (mom’s sister) was the only man I ever let touch my belly when I was pregnant (besides my husband). He had never gotten to feel a baby move before. Uncle was overjoyed that Caleb jumped around like a Mexican jumping bean when he touched my belly. Caleb isn’t a spitting image in the face, but his body type and mannerisms are Uncle made over. That makes me very happy! I loved Uncle Owen to pieces!
My Mother was sure she “Marked” her firstborn. She was a real Appalachian woman, born in what is now the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Cherokee N C is her official place of birth on record. She met my Father George Howell about 1925 and sort of eloped with him in 1928. He was a “Wood Hick” Logger in the Smokies and she was a School Teacher in what is now the Park. I don’t know the exact year of my deceased sister’s birth but she died at birth in the early 1930s. Lona Helen Cordell Howell was more than five months pregnant and living near Slaty Fork West Virginia. They had moved there for work in the logging operation, The story goes: She was standing in the Kitchen of her home, looking out the window, when she witnessed Dad and another man carrying a dead man down the railroad track toward her home. They had locked their arms under the dead man who was in a sitting position. She Screamed and grabbed her belly where the baby’s bottom would have been thus marking the fetus. The baby was born alive and on time without identifiable sexual or anal features. Mother said she heard “her’ cry and then silence. Virginia Dare Cordell Howell is buried in an unmarked grave in Mingo West Virginia. Mother went on to have four more childern all OK. I believe she Marked the child, always will.
I had heard wives tales of this growing up, but never thought of it til while one day pregnant with my daughter, I had stopped in a Howard Johnson’s for a meal on my lunch hour from work. I saw something that was truly frightening, and the thought it could somehow mark my baby popped in my head, something I hadn’t heard about in almost twenty years just sprang into my mind, I dismissed it, but I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit I thought about it from time to time. My Annie was born healthy and well, thankfully.
I have a birthmark of a pork chop on my left leg that my Mommy said she marked me with, and I remember her telling me that she ran into a man one day who had really bad scars all over his body when she was pregnant with me and she was afraid it was going to cause me to be marked with them.
I never will forget her guarding me when I was pregnant with my son. She made sure I got everything I craved. I remember craving a Pepsi so bad but I was afraid to drink it because I was prone to kidney infections throughout my pregnancy and didn’t want to do anything to harm my baby. I finally gave into her pleading and drunk an ice cold Pepsi because she told me if I didn’t my baby would never be able to get enough of it. It did taste really good to me, and as far as I know my son doesn’t even like Pepsi! 🙂
Tipper, my cousin has a birth mark on her forehead and she just recently told me that when her mother was pregnant with her she watched a house fire that took the lives of her two young sons and her former mother and father in law. Her mother told her that she gotten her birth mark by her holding her stomach as she watched the house burn. I had never heard of this before. This was a very interesting read.
I grew up hearing about marking babies also. I was told not to go to a funeral and look at the dead body, not to raise my hands over my head because the cord may get wrapped around the baby’s neck and a few other things. Between my mama and my grandmama and my mother-in-law I told my husband we needed to live in a bubble, LOL. Tipper, I saw last night’s video. Here at home, it’s 2 different ways. Husband actually will make his own, mashes up 2 bananas, adds peanut butter and then some sugar and mixes it all together. As for me, I mash my bananas up, then add my Duke’s mayo and mix it in well. All are eaten on loaf bread. Have a blessed day!
I heard about a pregnant lady who got scared by a bear, and, sure enough, her baby was born barefooted. My mother was scared by an old record player but it had no effect…no effect…no effect…no effect…
very funny, i know this to be true, i saw my brother in laws spirit and my son was marked exactly where his uncle was shot, another friend is marked from his mother getting chased by a moma pig that got her pants leg before she jumped the fence and he has a patch of odd dark skin with hair similar to a pig, another woman was at the creek and a snake chased her and her baby was born with a snake pattern around its body. pregnant women should be careful in every way and think of lovely things for the good of the baby
Tipper, so glad you brought up “marking babies.” I have not thought of that term in many years. When I was pregnant with my son
(52 yrs ago), I was helping my Mom hang curtains & my grandmother told me to not lift my arms over my head or I would strangle the baby. It was interesting that rusties were mentioned. I’ve heard it said someone had cut a rusty all my life & I still use that word. Example: My neighbor told me the other day that her son-in-law had gotten drunk & wrecked his car. I told her if he cuts another rusty like that, your daughter is liable to leave him. Hope everyone is well!
I don’t remember where or when I read this, but it said scientific tests had been done to determine why women had cravings while pregnant. They concluded that the women were lacking certain minerals/vitamins that were needed due to pregnancy. The item being craved usually contained that vital mineral/vitamin and to certainly follow their intuition and eat freely of that item. It made sense to me – better than what had been devised by imagination due to not actually knowing the reasons for certain things. It is a human trait to try and protect ourselves so not uncommon to have these superstitions. God did give us everything we need to thrive in life so I think intuition can be important way to protect ourselves.
What an interesting subject! This post makes me so grateful for your blog and videos that keep our old ways, thoughts, and even our superstitions in alive. Upon reading this I realized that I had heard nobody mention this for years and years. All our family’s new little ones, and nobody ever mentioned them getting marked. It had become another tidbit of Appalachia folklore we were losing.
The last I remember hearing it was when I was carrying my daughter. I planned to go to a carnival and watch a freak show. Mom quickly and frantically warned me to not view the freak show, or I would mark my child. I often heard of birthmarks where the mother would give lengthy details about seeing something scary and touching some part of her body. I never quite bought that growing up, but I do believe in crazy cravings. Not proven, but I personally think our bodies will crave what we need just as it sometimes craves food we definitely do not need. My cravings were okra, grapefruit, and ice. I still love the okra, but never again ate grapefruit nor chomped on ice. One of the weirdest cravings I ever heard of in Appalachia is there were supposedly women who craved eating coal. I can’t imagine, but it was well known at one time. I never see coal anymore, so don’t know how this craving would be satisfied nowadays.
when my Momma was pregnant with me, she was scared by a diamondback rattlesnake. she touched her tummy. when I was born there was a birthmark on my tummy in the shape of a diamondback mark. certain times of the year it gets noticably darker. Momma always figured that’s when they would shed their skin.
my 2 grandkids have birthmarks on the back of their neck that’s the same as several members on their father’s side of the family. and my 2 great grandkids have the same mark.
pretty interesting if you ask me!
My mom always told us when she was pregnant she was visiting family, when her brother found a huge wooly worm and threw it at her. She said she screamed but got over it when she saw it didn’t reach her, but landed close to her ankle. When my brother David was born he had a huge mark on his ankle that looked just like a wooly worm. He still has it and oddly enough when it gets close to fall the extra hair on the mark gets thicker and darker, just like a wooly worm. My mom always said her brother had marked David by scaring her with that wooly worm.
My daughter had a little red line birthmark running down her forehead, that really stood out when she got up to wailing. Up here, we called that a stork bite! Its faded some. She has another large light brown birthmark on the underside of her arm. I don’t recall any bad scares, but it was a pretty miserable pregnancy. I craved peanut butter with both pregnancies & ate it profusely. Neither girl ever cared for it. They will only eat p.b. when we are down to the dregs of groceries. We had talks about WHEN you would have your baby. My mom was overdue with my sister & the family was all placing bets on when she would be born. Someone thought she would go into labor a certain day because so & so’s hogs were due to deliver. Very funny, but my mom was quite offended. I don’t think people mean any harm by this stuff, so I just laugh.
When my mom was over eight months pregnant with me a fire swept across the ridge and everyone was out fighting it. Her group stood between the grassfire and a copse of pines at the edge of the woods.
I was born with a birthmark on my calf in the shape of an evergreen tree. It’s still there to this day.
I’ve always thought it was interesting about how the old folklore has been proven correct time and again by science. The vocabulary and descriptions may not use scientific terms but the concepts are the same. These days doctors warn pregnant women against smoking, alcohol, various medicines, flying at high altitudes, etc. to avoid harming the baby. Expectant moms are also advised on their diets to provide better nutrition for their baby, both before and after birth. It echoes the “marking of the babies” lore.
So our Grannies were scientists too; they made empirical observations that were often quite correct. They simply used different language than institutional science.
That’s my soapbox for today. LOL.
I’ve always heard about certain things marking a baby. Seems I remember it being said that if you were pregnant you shouldn’t attend a funeral and look upon the dead body. In my book Mama’s Memories, during one of Lucy’s memories, she doesn’t look upon someone in a casket because she’s afraid it might affect her unborn baby. I have a birthmark, but I never asked my mom about it. Wish I had of. She, or grandma, might of had some story to tell me about why they thought I had it.
Tipper, I just love this! I’ve heard of marking a baby when I was growing up. My late father was born with a large brown oval birthmark on his right calf. My late Big Mom (his mother) said it was because she was frightened by a cow in her pregnancy with him. I have the same colored small dots on my right thigh and so does my daughter. Out of 7 grandchildren she is the only one with any form of this birthmark. I don’t recall being frightened when I was pregnant with her tho. And my late Momma never said anything about a fright when she was carrying me. Folklore is beautiful to me. =)
I have read about the “marking babies” belief in books. When I was very young, a pregnant lady was reaching up into a cupboard, and I heard an elderly lady tell her not to reach her hands above her head because it would kill the baby. That stuck in my mind for a long time, and when I was old enough to understand, I learned the elderly lady had believed that by reaching above her head, the pregnant lady was going to strangle her baby with the umbilical cord. It amazes me the old wives tales and superstitions that still follow us even in our modern age. How many of us still avoid stepping on the sidewalk crack? Who wants to be the one responsible for breaking their mother’s back? Not me!!
Donna. : )
Seeing me outside, an elderly woman came over to warn me that I shouldn’t hang my clothes to dry since the umbilical cord of the baby I was caring would strangle it. That was 55 years ago and he was fine! She also told me she heard an owl and saw it outside her back window on the telephone wire and new either she or her husband were about to die. They both lived many years afterward. She usually just scared me but later I thought that when she was growing up, there was little really effective medicine to care for sick people and they had to try any possible thing to keep safe. I imagined she had been traumatized in her youth and I tried to always be extra kind to her after that.
Oh my gosh…I have not thought about that in years. I also heard that if you craved something…Good thing I didn’t. However, when quite a bit pregnant, some of us craved strawberrys and actually went to a U-pick strawberry patch and low and behold the one I was carrying had a faint strawberry on her lower back. Please keep those gems coming as it is so refreshing to heard lore and stories of old. God Bless
Good thing I am going back to eye doctor this morning, I misread today’s title, I didn’t see the letter “r” in the word marking. I thought what in the world is Tipper up to today! I have heard and know of birthmarks but I don’t remember hearing the superstitious reasons for them. I am sure if we had asked the older generations they would have told of the same superstitions.
This has nothing to do with superstitions about birthmarks but maybe similar. I just thought of this and it is something my father in law really believed and thought about. When he was young, a man in the neighborhood raised a large number of hogs. One time he had some that kept rooting out of their pen and instead of putting a ring in their nose, he made his sons put their eyes out with pitch forks. All of his sons that did this went blind later on in their life.
Randy, sure hope your eye appointment goes well today. My husband woke up Monday morning with pain in his right eye, just awful looking but found out it’s pink eye and hasn’t a clue how he got it. The doctor has him using drops in it for a week. Better today. I found the story about the hogs incredible. Daddy raised hogs and I know how they can root but that’s awful what that man made his son’s do. And what happened to them later in life, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
Randy, we also thought when we first looked at today’s title it said “making babies” 🙂
Praying your eye dr appointment goes well today.
I, too, thought it said Making Babies. Must be I need to get my eyes checked! I do this often, actually, and wonder if its a little bit like a dyslexia. For 2 years I was buying a special shampoo for my daughter & swore the name of the product was Demerset. And to be honest, that really never made any sense to me, but that is how my eyes saw it. In reality, the product is called DermaRest (which makes a lot more sense, because its a psoriasis treatment) I got a bit scared by this post thinking Tipper was going to be instructing us in the Birds & the Bees!
I can ‘t say it scared me, but I thought it is sure going to be interesting today! Glad to know I wasn’t the only one to think that was the title. I have company with me if anyone thinks my mind was in the gutter.
Just got back and there has been a slight improvement, just being told it will take time. I appreciate everyone’s prayers. I go back in 3-4 weeks, I have got to look at the appointment to be sure.
Randy, I misread it also!!
I also find the idea of marking a baby fascinating. My dad used to tell the story about a woman he knew when he was a boy growing up in the mountains of VA who had a bad temper. While she was pregnant, she became angry with a cow and began beating it. Her baby was later stillborn and very deformed, and it was said that it looked like a calf. Everyone said that she had marked her baby by getting so mad and abusing the cow.
When I was pregnant with my first baby 34 years ago, I was talking with my mom on the phone when two mice appeared and were running around my living room. I’m terrified of mice, and started screaming. My mom told me to settle down or I would mark my baby, and I think she really believed it. (Fortunately my daughter was born perfectly healthy!)