The Annotated African American Folktales by Henry Louis Gates

Author:Henry Louis Gates [Gates, Henry Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2017-12-15T07:00:00+00:00

THE CONQUEST OF A HAG

There was a poor woman who had been ridden by a hag night after night until she had grown thin and weak from the horror of her nightly visitations. Feeling that she must die as others had died before her, from the torment of this unseen enemy, she resolved to be rid of her at any cost. She went to a hag catcher, who told her how to trap and conquer her tormentor. That night, before she went to bed she stopped every keyhole in the house except one, for the hag enters only by keyholes. She can not come in by the window even if that is left open and the keyholes all stopped. Directly inside of the door with the open keyhole, the woman scattered a quantity of wheat. Then she went to bed, to lie awake and listen for the approach of her enemy. Soon she felt the hag coming and heard at the keyhole the peculiar whizzing sound that told her that dreadful visitor had laid her skin upon the doorstep and was oozing into the house. She lay still and listened. Soon the gurgling noise ceased and she heard the hag utter a strange imprecation when she saw the scattered wheat upon the floor. She might well be disappointed; for she must collect and count every grain of that wheat before she could begin her ride. The listener in the bed heard her pick and pick at the wheat as she laboriously counted it grain by grain. Once, when it was all counted and collected, the hag by an accidental kick, destroyed her own work and scattered the wheat far and wide, and so it happened that she was detained at the door until the day began to break. At dawn her victim arose and went out to see if she had caught the hag, but she saw only a white chicken picking at the wheat on the floor. The woman had been warned that the hag, if caught, would take the form of some animal, so she spoke to the chicken, saying “I know you, Aunt Jane, but I don’t know what harm I have ever done you, that you should torment me so.” The chicken made no reply nor did she turn back to her true shape.

Then the woman caught the chicken and fastened it up in a coop, and ran around to the door-step to find the hag’s skin. There it lay on the step just where it had been left by its owner the night before. She took up the skin, peppered and salted it, and put it safely away, then went back to look for her chicken, but it had worked its way out of the coop and was gone. Then she knew that she had really caught a hag.

Her next step was to go down and visit her neighbor, Aunt Jane, whom she had all along believed to be her persecutor. She found that Aunt

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