THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
A Mother's Love
Defied the Bonds of Death: A Mountain Story
This
morning is cloudy and dark. The overcast
sky puts me in mind of days in the mountains in my childhood when the
clouds
hung low and fog rose like a giant shroud hiding the majestic peaks
that stood
like sentinels over
Then I thought of the tradition of
mountain storytelling, and how we were entertained as children by
hearing
stories that had been passed from generation to generation by our
Scots-Irish
forebears. My favorite storytellers from
my childhood were my first cousin, much older than I, my mother’s
nephew, Earl
Hood and his wife Allie Winn Hood. This
delightful couple had no children of their own, but they seemed to be
very
pleased when Earl’s nephew and nieces and his young cousins went to
spend the
night. With no electricity then in that
mountain home and the only heat being from an open fireplace, we
settled down
to a wonderful night of entertainment provided by master storytellers,
Earl and
Allie Hood.
The recipients of this rich
legacy of
mountain tales, many of them about ghosts and haints, were Little Ed
and Bertha
Hood Dyer’s children, our cousins Wilma, Genelle, Harold and Sarah
Ruth, and my
younger brother, Bluford Dyer and I, Ethelene.
We all got permission in advance to go to Allie’s and Earl’s to
spend
the night on certain Friday nights, and walked the distance from
After the evening chores of milking
and feeding and getting in the wood were finished, Allie served us a
wonderful
meal of hot cornbread, vegetables and country-cured ham, topped off by
dried
apple stack cake. We quickly washed the
dishes and then settled down for an evening’s entertainment, the likes
of which
has never been surpassed, even with the advent of television years
later.
One ghost tale I remember them
telling—and they had a way of making us “see” the scene they laid out
before us
with their words---was one about a mother’s love for her baby. Allie would warn us that we should not try to
match the names in the stories to people, living or dead.
This had happened so long ago it would be
hard to remember them exactly. The
story went something like this:
Years ago, when sawmillers first
came to
our mountains to cut down the virgin trees and saw them into lumber,
there
lived far up near Round Top Mountain, a couple named Sexton, Eliza and
John. They loved each other dearly. And in the course of time, Eliza had a
beautiful baby girl whom they named after her mother but called her
Liza. The midwife or “Granny Woman” named
Mary had
attended little Liza’s birth. Things
were going along well until two days after Liza’s birth her mother came
down
with a raging fever. Granny Woman Mary
administered her herbal remedies, but none had any effect on the fever. Eliza grew worse.
John told Granny Mary that he
was going to
Blairsville, some fourteen miles from his home, to get the doctor. He took off down the rutted mountain road,
made worse by the snaking out of the saw logs and the rough treatment
from big
trucks, just then coming into the mountains, hauling out the sawed
lumber. John finally arrived in town in
his buggy
drawn by his horse. But the doctor was
out on a call delivering a baby and was not expected back until the
next
day. John decided to stay in town and
wait for the doctor, because he would have to take the doctor in his
buggy back
up to his cabin on Round Top. John
didn’t get much sleep that night, trying to rest in his buggy. Fortunately, he had brought along a blanket
to protect himself from the night’s cold.
All he could think about was how sick Eliza was, and even how
still the
newborn baby seemed in the large basket that was her crib.
About daybreak the doctor came
back from
his all-night call, tired and sleepy.
But he agreed to go with John to examine Eliza and little Liza. After a hot breakfast and coffee which the
good doctor’s wife prepared for her husband and for John, the two men
got into
John’s buggy and took off at a lope, as John urged the horse to a trot.
Finally they arrived at the John
Sexton
home. Granny Woman Mary met them on the
porch. “I’m afraid you’re too late,” she
said. “Both Eliza and little Liza died
during the night.” John, gripped
with
deep grief, went inside his cabin where he saw his beautiful Eliza and
the
little baby laid out for burying. How
could this have happened? If only the
doctor had been at home, maybe his wife and child could have been saved.
The doctor and Granny Woman Mary
tried to
console John. Neighbors came, and made a
casket. They placed the bodies together
in the homemade casket, the baby in Eliza’s arms.
They were buried in the cemetery near the
little log church called
The next morning John’s
neighbor, James
Collins, went to his barn before daylight to milk his cows. Times were hard in those days, and there were
always people on the road dropping by farmhouses and barns to beg for
food. James realized someone was in the
barn with him. He turned and saw a woman,
dressed in black, the sort of finer dress like the women in the
community wore
to church. She sat a tin cup down on a
bale of hay. James knew she wanted it
full of milk, so he took the cup and soon filled it with warm rich milk. The woman nodded her thanks but did not say a
word. The next morning and the next, the
same woman visited James as he was milking, begging with her cup. On the fourth morning, James decided he would
follow the woman who would not give him her name. Maybe
he could find out where she lived.
He saw her dark form disappear
into the
woods, but, running, he was able to follow her to the cemetery. Then it was just as though she disappeared
into one of the newly heaped graves.
This frightened James, but he knew he must do something.
James quickly returned home, got
his shovel
and ran to his nearest neighbor’s house.
He told Lish Hunter what he had seen.
“Get your shovel,” James said, “and come with me.”
Lish wondered what had come over his neighbor
James Collins, but he grabbed his shovel and the two men went in that
early,
foggy morning to
They
removed the baby, and covered the grave.
They went to John Sexton’s home.
The door was still barred with the grieving husband and father
inside. “Open
up,” James ordered. “We have a
gift for you. Here is little Liza, alive
and well.”
John could not believe his eyes
or the
story James told him about the baby’s rescue.
What rejoicing he had as the baby, safe in his arms, began to
cry.
“Come
down to my barn and I’ll give you some milk for the baby,” Jim Collins
told
John. And he did. Nevermore
did James Collins see the woman in
a black dress with the tin cup come to his barn begging milk. But you can be assured that he
remembered it the rest of his life, and
told the story again and again.
Little Liza grew up to be a
beautiful young lady. Her daddy, John, married
again and had more children. But Liza
always held a special place in his
heart because she was the miracle baby, his first-
born rescued from the grave by his neighbors James and Lish.
“Is that true?” we kids asked Allie
and Earl. They only smiled and told us
it was time for bed. But every time we
climbed the hill to
c2004 by
Ethelene Dyer
Jones; published May 20, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville,
GA.
Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Updated August 23,
2009
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