Mountain Healer "Tried for It," Succeeded

In her 1902 article "Incantations and Popular Healing in Maryland and Pennsylvania," Baltimore writer Letitia Humphreys Wrenshall profiles a "most accomplished weaver of quilt pieces and spells" whom she repeatedly visited and interviewed in Western Maryland. Today, we might call her unnamed interviewee a "wise woman," a "traditional healer" or "folk doctor."

Wrenshall neither names nor precisely locates this healer, but neighbors might well have recognized her, in the unlikely event they had perused The Journal of American Folk-Lore:

She was a gentle, quiet-spoken woman, living in her own thick-walled stone house, very comfortably surrounded, and supplied by all that was yielded from a well-cared-for place of several acres. (268-269)

Moreover, the woman "was pretty, rosy, and plump," and had been raised by an aunt "who had married a 'German man'" (270-271). It was this man who taught his not-quite-niece all he knew of the healing arts -- unsurprising to Wrenshall, who declares, "There is no doubt that the Maryland incantations are borrowed from the German." She also declares that South Mountain is "the home of magic (of this species) in Maryland," which may further locate her informant (268).

The not-quite-uncle had taught the girl, according to Wrenshaw, "how to use the words, how to speak them, how to move her hands (much value is attached to the movements of the hands)" (271). On his deathbed, as a final gift and a sort of graduation ceremony, he bequeathed her his book of spells, a handover of profound importance:

My witch would not part with her book. No, she must leave it to her daughter. She could not sell it; money could not buy it. If she had no daughter, she would give it to me, but could not sell it. I might study it all I wanted, but she could not part with it. All blandishments failed, and I came away without the book, but she told me of an old man who had another copy. A long drive to his home yielded the same result. Since then I have instituted a search, but no other copy has yet been found. I am still looking for it. (271)

This may provide further information about Wrenshall's informant: Though living alone and self-sufficiently at the time, she planned to have a family one day, which suggests a still-young woman of childbearing age. Granted, she may have been thinking of an adoptive family, like the one she had been raised in. She also may have invoked a theoretical daughter simply to avoid telling Wrenshall, "Please stop asking for my book, because you can't have it."

Wrenshall does not name this "precious" book, but she briefly describes it:

She showed me the book, which had been translated from the German in 1820. The preface stated that the translator had put it into English greatly against his wife's wish, but he was old, he had no one to leave his book to, and he did not wish his wonderful knowledge to die with him, and accordingly translated it into English, which was generally spoken about him. (271)

With reasonable confidence, we can identify this book as some version of John George Hohman's The Long-Lost Friend, originally published (in German) in Reading, Pennsylvania, circa 1820, translated into English by 1850, and endlessly pirated, excerpted, expanded upon, bowdlerized, and otherwise modified, in a bewilderment of editions, ever since. The editor of the definitive English edition, Daniel Harms, notes that the blood-stanching spells quoted by Wrenshall are "identical" to ones in the Friend. It's important to add, however, that many, perhaps most, of the spells in Hohman's book were not original to him in the first place, and that Hohman's preface -- which denounces his critics, threatens them with lawsuits, asserts his right to publish and sell whatever he likes, clearly assumes copies will be sold rather than given away, and makes no mention of his own age or health -- is much spikier than the sanctimonies claimed by Wrenshaw. Harms calls the Friend "perhaps the most influential and well known of all the grimoires, or books of magic, to originate in the New World. Indeed, the book might be the most influential American work that has eluded the literary canon, and an essential document of the occult tradition in North America" (1).  

Wrenshall refers repeatedly to her informant as "my witch." This seems hurtful as well as patronizing, because Wrenshall also tells us the woman completely rejects the W-word. In fact, "Nothing hurt her as bad" as being called a witch. She's not doing witchcraft, she insists; she is merely "trying for it." She seems to associate witchcraft with arrogance, with a defiance of God's will, whereas "trying for it" involves, in Wrenshaw's words, "submission and supplication." Indeed, the woman's spells are overtly Christian, as we will see. Yet, like any skilled worker, she's proud of her abilities and successes: "She had perfect faith in her powers and her formulas, and told me instance after instance where she had 'tried for it,' and accomplished the cure" (269).

She "was especially proud of her ability to stop hemorrhages," an ability that worked even over long distances. "Only the first name must be known and pronounced exactly, also the side of the body from which the blood came, the right or left side; this was essential" (269-270).

Wrenshaw quotes three spells for stanching blood, apparently from her informant. The first:

On Christ's grave grows three roses; 

The first is kind,

The second is valued among rulers,

The third stops blood.

The second:

Stop, blood, thou must, and, wound, thou must heal. 

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

The third must be said "as soon as cut":

Blessed wound, blessed hour, blessed be the day on which Christ was born.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. (270)

Life-threatening hemorrhages were not typical cases, the healer explained. More commonly, she removed "wheals" -- that is, cinders or other intrusive bits -- from the eye; or cured horses afflicted with "the botts," that is, botfly maggots; or "blew the fire out" of burns. Most of her cases were children who were "liver-growded." Asked to explain the term, she replied, "when they are cross and peaky, and don't grow, and just cry all the time." A 21st-century reader may read these as signs of malnourishment.

Nowhere does Wrenshall ask what payment, if any, the healer received for her services; nor does the healer volunteer this information. Surely some sort of payment, even of bartered goods or services, contributed to the healer's "comfortably surrounded" and "well-cared-for" homestead.

Wrenshall describes other spells in some detail, but they are either attributed to others or, at least, not clearly attributed to her rosy-cheeked informant. One section of the article, for example, describes the procedure for selecting dowsing rods; we'll save that for a later post. But after introducing us to these fascinating wonder-workers, Wrenshall throws cold water on all of them: "The examples which have been given serve to exhibit the prevalence of credulity and superstition" (272).

Her remaining pages are devoted to recent examples of scams, assaults and wrongful deaths from all over, none of them Western Maryland, that can be blamed on the credulous and superstitious. This passage would well fit a contemporary secular, reason-preaching magazine such as Skeptical Inquirer or Free Inquiry.  

But the real value of Wrenshall's article is her brief snapshot of a remarkably independent and self-possessed healer in Western Maryland. I wonder what her name was, and how long she practiced, and where, and to whom she eventually passed her book of spells.

Sources:

Hohman, John George. The Long-Lost Friend: A 19th-Century American Grimoire. Ed. and annotated by Daniel Harms. Woodbury, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 2012. Kindle edition.

Wrenshall, Letitia Humphreys. "Incantations and Popular Healing in Maryland and Pennsylvania." The Journal of American Folk-Lore Vol. 15, No. 59 (Oct.-Dec. 1902), pp. 268-274. Accessed online via JSTOR 19 Sept. 2021: https://www.jstor.org/stable/533200