We have all heard them. If you step on a crack, you break your mother’s back. She breaks a mirror and brings seven years of bad luck. She never opens an umbrella in the house.

These are some of the most popular, but did you know that the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas are full of families that still believe in certain weird superstitions? Superstition, which can also be called magical thinking, is a term used to describe causal reasoning that looks for correlations between acts or statements and certain events.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the first white man to chronicle the interior of the Ozarks, referred to the early settlers in his 1818 book as having “onerous superstitions.” It cannot be proven whether these came from their ancestors or were beliefs assimilated by their close contact with the Osage and Cherokee.

Schoolcraft wrote: “Among all classes superstition prevails. Witchcraft and the belief in the sovereign virtue of certain metals so prevalent at those periods in the history of the progress of the human mind which reflect the misfortune of our species still have here their defenders.” “. She wrote of a “hunter who was so convinced his rifle had been bewitched that she couldn’t kill anything with it and therefore sold it on that account.” The hunter suspected that a malicious neighbor had put a spell on the rifle. The wife of another hunter was convinced that his brass ring was an infallible remedy for the cramp, “that she was bothered a lot before she put the ring on, but she hadn’t had the slightest return since.”

Vance Randolph was a prolific researcher and writer who combed the Ozarks in the early 1920s in search of superstitions, stories, and songs from the old men who were first-generation descendants of the first settlers. In his 1947 book titled Ozark Superstitions wrote: “The Hillman is reserved and sensitive beyond what the average city dweller can imagine, but he is not simple. His mind moves on a tremendously complicated system of esoteric signs, omens, and omens. He has little interest in the mental procedure moderns call science, and their ways of organizing data and evaluating evidence are very different from those currently preferred in the world beyond the hilltops.The people of the Ozark Hills have often been described as the most superstitious people in America”.

Most of the older people Randolph interviewed scoffed at the idea of ​​being superstitious and then counted as a “gospel truth” a strange and wild belief they personally held dear. Often these “gospel truths” conflicted hill and valley depending on the clan of people interviewed.

Moon signs are a great example. Every Ozark resident was sure they knew when to plant spring potatoes to ensure the best harvest. March 17th was the tried-and-true date, unless you were one of the family who knew it was “absolutely OK” to plant in the moonlight. Of course, other families scoffed at “those nonsense superstitions” and planted every year in the dark of the moon.

The moon controlled many of the old colonist’s actions. Looking through the branches of trees to see the full moon was considered a way to “confuse” the brain. On the other hand, the moon could help carry the future couple. If a girl heard a dove and saw the new moon at the same moment, she had to repeat this verse:

“Bright moon, clear moon,

bright and fair,

lift your right foot

There will be a hair.”

She would then remove her right shoe and naturally find in it hair like her future husband’s, Randolph wrote.

Physical characteristics had a lot to do with success, according to many of the early settlers. In both Arkansas and the Missouri Ozarks, people repeat the saying “a man with a lot of hair on his legs is always a good hog farmer.”

Small ears are supposed to indicate a stingy personality. Green-eyed women did not fare very well in early Ozarks culture if the following verse about a woman’s eye color is any indication:

If a woman’s eyes are gray, listen carefully to what she has to say.

If a woman’s eyes are black, give her space and plenty of room.

If a woman’s eyes are brown, never drop yours.

If a woman’s eyes are green, hit her with a switch that is sharp.

If a woman’s eyes are blue, she will always be faithful to you.

Time was a topic of great interest. A rainbow in the afternoon meant clear weather, but a rainbow in the morning indicated a storm within twenty-four hours. The people of the hills watched and listened to their animals and chickens to know if it was going to rain. “If a rooster crows when he lies down, he will wake up with a wet head.”

A rain on Monday, according to some, meant that it would rain more or less every day of that week. Others said that if it rained on Monday there would be two or more rainy days, but Friday would be bright and beautiful. However, if the sun “turns clear” on Tuesday, it will surely rain before Friday. Many Ozarker natives still believe that rain during a funeral is a sign of the deceased person’s eternal destiny. “Blessed are the dead on whom the rain falls,” the saying goes.

Certain household items and accessories had distributive properties. Eggs carried in a man’s hat would hatch all the roosters. If a pregnant mother wanted a girl, she could place a frying pan under her mattress. Of course, she could carefully check her husband’s side of the bed under which he may have hidden a razor which was a sure sign that she was looking for a child.

The numerous, complex, and often convoluted superstitions of Ozark natives are sometimes ridiculed by “outsiders,” but that hasn’t dampened their enthusiasm for these deeply held beliefs. In fact, a bruise just flared up in my mailbox. If I can go out and sing “money is coming” three times before it flies away, I’ll have money in the mail before the end of the week.

Ozark Superstitions

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