Bibliography
Chesnutt, Charles W. The Conjure Stories. In Norton Critical Edition edited by Robert B. Stepto and Jennifer Rae Greeson. New York, W. W. Norton and Company Inc.: 2012. All page numbers below refer to this book unless otherwise indicated.
Allen, Richard Hinckley. STAR NAMES Their Lore and Meaning. New York, Dover Publications, Inc.: 1963. Abbreviated RHA below.
I. Background
A. The Frame Story
Frame stories are stories which have other stories embedded in them—something like a Russian doll. One of the oldest collections of framed stories is the Panchatantra from India. The stories in the collection are told by a sage who is trying to educate the sons of a king through the stories. It became known in Europe around the 8th century A.D. It inspired other works such as the 1001 Nights. In that collection, Sheherazade tells her husband stories night after night in order to preserve her life.
In the Decameron, written between 1348 and 1353, Giovanni Boccaccio tells the story of 10 Florentine residents who spend 10 days in the country to escape the plague. Each one of them tells a story every day, for a total of 100 stories. The frame of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 and 1400, is that 30 people are going on a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury. Each one is to tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two stories on the way back. Only 24 of the stories are around today.
The frame in Chesnutt’s stories is that a couple from Ohio, John and Annie, have bought a plantation in North Carolina after the Civil War. The smaller stories are told to the couple by Julius, a former slave who now works for them as a coachman.
B. Chesnutt’s Background
Charles Chesnutt was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1858. His parents were free people of color who had emigrated to Cleveland two years earlier from Fayetteville, North Carolina. The family returned to Fayetteville in 1866 after the war.
Chesnutt describes the free people of color (207) as composed of freed slaves, mixed race children born to poor white mothers, and the remnant of the Cherokee and Tuscarora Indians. You can guess that there were multiple streams of folk wisdom feeding into his tales of North Carolina.
In a journal entry in 1880 (167), he lists his qualifications for writing a far better book about the South than Judge Tourgee or Mrs. Stowe. They are:
· living among colored people all his life
· familiarity with their (“colored people’s”) habits, passions, prejudices, ambitions, moral and social conditions, and religious tendencies
· understood the modes of thinking of “the better class” of white men in the south from observations and conversations with them
· familiar with all phases of the slavery question
· a fair knowledge of the classics, a speaking acquaintance with modern languages, an intimate friendship with literature.
His own ambition was to write for “a high, holy purpose” (168).
C. The Conjure Stories
Altogether there were 14 conjure tales , written between 1887 and 1899. Strictly speaking, not all of them have conjuring in them. They were not all published together until 1974. The Norton edition prints all 14 of them in the order in which they were written.
The stories can be read from a number of different perspectives as illustrated by the critical articles in the Norton edition. My own perspective is to look for classical and astronomical allusions. Norton mentions the allusion to the Roman poet, Ovid, who wrote Metamorphoses and gives an example of one story from Ovid’s book. I won’t enlarge on that here.
II. The Actual Stories
A. The First Three Tales
“The Goophered Grapevine”—the first story—is about Henry. He was a slave who unknowingly ate some grapes from a vineyard that had been “goophered” to keep the slaves from eating the grapes. As a result of the goopher, Henry will die within a year. The conjure woman, Aunt Peggy, is consulted. She says Henry is to anoint himself with the sap from the grapevines every spring to keep the goopher off.
When Henry anoints himself in the spring, he gets young and strong. Although he was formerly bald, his hair grows out looking like grapes. In antiquity, Dionysos was often portrayed with grapes in his hair, or with grapes instead of hair, as in this clay mask from Pompeii.
Henry follows the ritual every spring until the grapevines are accidentally killed. Then Henry dies too.
“Po’ Sandy” is the story of a slave who is always being loaned to family members and friends of his master because he is such a good worker. It gets to the point that he doesn’t know where his home is and would like to stay put. Tenie, his second wife, is a conjure woman. Sandy’s first wife was sold while Sandy was on loan to another plantation. Tenie offers to turn Sandy into a pine tree and he agrees. This part of North Carolina had an abundance of pine woods.
But Tenie is sent away on loan to a relative of the master and Sandy is cut down in her absence.
There are a couple of references to Dionysos in this story. In the frame story, before the tale of Sandy begins, John describes a schoolhouse on his land made of pine lumber. The lumber is from po' Sandy. The schoolhouse has a "huge brick chimney" on which a "creeping vine" is growing. The chimney could be intended to represent the thyrsos—a wand carried by Dionysos and the maenads. The thyrsos was made from a fennel stalk twined with ivy.
I mentioned the pine woods of North Carolina above. In Bacchae, a tragedy by Euripides, the rites of Dionysos are celebrated in a pine woods. Pentheus—one of the characters in the play—gets up into the top of a fir tree to spy on the rites. The maenads see him and uproot the tree to get at him. Then they tear him to pieces (lines 1041-1152). The moans of Pentheus and the cries of the maenads are paralleled by the groans of Sandy and the cries of Tenie as he is cut up.
In her article on “The Terrain of Chesnutt’s Conjure Tales,” Sarah Ingle (153) says that Fayetteville is the Patesville of the stories and that “pate” means head. In her words, this “suggests an anatomical reading of the landscape in which Fayetteville/Patesville serves as the head with the body unfolding to the south.” The name Patesville may be another tie to Bacchae, where the maenads are carrying around pieces of Pentheus after his ritual murder. His mother, Agave carries his head.
According to Ingle (152), “Big Sandy Run rises on the map from Rockfish Creek and crosses the Lumberton Plank Road like a finger pointing directly at John’s property.” This links the first two stories together geographically, as the place where the girl gave John directions in #1 could be the place where the finger of the Big Sandy Run points directly to John’s property. It also raises the possibility that the girl is a Naiad or water nymph.
To prove the veracity of his first tale, Julius offers to show Henry’s grave to John and Annie. Of course, that won’t prove that Julius is telling the truth—unless he can conjure Henry up from the grave. But it does establish that Julius is playing the role of a psychopomp. Conjuring up the dead, or a visit to the underworld was a feature of both the Aeneid and the Odyssey. Aeneas visits the underworld in Book VI with the Cumaean Sybil as his pscyopomp. Odysseus conjures up the dead in Book XI following the instructions which the goddess Circe, his psychopomp, gave him in Book X.
In the third story, Primus unwittingly carries off a pig belonging to a conjure man. In revenge, the conjure man turns Primus into a mule. The conjure man gets religion before the end of the story. As he is dying, he turns Primus back to a man—except for one leg which remains a mule’s leg.
Annie doesn’t like this story. “That story does not appeal to me, Uncle Julius, and is not up to your usual mark. It isn’t pathetic, it has no moral that I can discover and I can’t see why you should tell it. In fact, it seems to me like nonsense.”
Julius’s first two stories were tragedies with the protagonist dying at the end. The fourth story is also a tragedy. The third one looks to me like a satyr play. As a mule, Primus eats tobacco plants and gets drunk on a barrel of wine. Drunkenness was a characteristic of satyr plays. Also, Primus’s condition at the end of the story —part man and part animal—is characteristic of a satyr.
The satyrs were companions of Dionysos. And Primus’s name gives him a possible astronomical identity. RHA390 lists a star named Primus Hyadum (also called Prima Hyadum). This star is in the Hyades cluster, which is in the muzzle of Taurus the Bull. Ancient writers knew of seven stars in the cluster, but later writers only knew of six. Nearby is another cluster, The Pleiades, which has seven stars. In some myths, both The Hyades and The Pleiades were daughters of Atlas and together were called the Atlantides (RHA387). Zeus gave the infant Dionysos to them to be nursed. In the masculine form signaled by Primus Hyadum, they might have been satyrs. One of the satyrs, Silenus was the tutor of Dionysos.
In story #1, the girl at the crossroads was carrying a “piggin” of water on her head. “Piggin” is an unusual word which might be intended to link that story to the shote in #3 and the ham in #4.
By the third story, a pattern is obvious in the frame stories. In these three and most of the others, John tells the frame story. It consists of stating where the tale was told at the beginning. At the end, John accuses Julius of deliberately constructing the story in order to get something he wants. Julius is nearly always successful. The interesting thing is that John credits Julius with forethought. John provides an afterthought to each Julius tale.
In Greek mythology, there were two brothers named Prometheus (forethought) and Epimetheus (afterthought). They were the sons of Iapetus, who was one of the giants in the battle of the gods and giants. Iapetus also had a third son named Atlas.
The name Iapetus also occurs in astronomy, as a moon of Saturn. The moon was “discovered” in 1672, so Chesnutt would have known of it. Iapetus is the outermost large moon of Saturn. In the book version of 2001 A Space Odyssey, Dave Bowman gets to Saturn through Japetus. Chapters 33-39 describe Japetus approaching from Dave’s point of view. He describes an “eye” in Japetus and looks for a “pupil.” There is one—a dark monolith like the one found on earth’s moon at the beginning of the novel. When Dave is close enough, the pupil opens to let him in. And guess what—it’s a stargate.
Enceladus is another moon of Saturn “discovered” in 1789. In Greek mythology, Enceladus was killed by Athena in the battle of the gods and giants. He is buried under Mt. Etna in Sicily, a parallel to Ingle’s suggestion of “an anatomized reading of the landscape.” Two other ties connect this story to Sicily. The only Greek satyr play known to us is Cyclops by Euripides. The play is set at Mt. Etna. Also, in the frame of this story, John notes that it was told on the “piazza.” It’s the first of many tales told there. This seems like an odd word to use: verandah or porch would be more common. “Piazza” is an Italian word, and the families in these stories are Scots-Irish or African. So “piazza” appears to me to be another tie to Sicily.
B. A Deep Sleeper #5
One of the characters in the frame story here is named Tom. Julius refers to him as one of the seven sleepers. Julius tells the story of Tom’s grandfather who was also a sleeper. The grandfather’s name was Skundus. The name was given to him by the owner of the plantation where he was born. It is the Latin word “secundus” meaning second. This ties him to Primus (first). Skundus had brothers named Tushus (tertius-third), Cottus (quartus-fourth) and Squinchus (quintus-fifth). In early Christianity there was a story about the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. They went into a cave during a persecution and fell asleep. They woke up many years later. The sleepers are also mentioned in the Koran Surah 18:9-26. They were two or three or four up to seven, and the dog added one to their number. Legend gives the dog the name Qitmir and says that he guarded the entrance to the cave.
Another dog in myth appears in the Mahabharata from India. This epic poem tells the story of a great war between two sets of cousins—the Kauravas and the Pandavas. They battle for kingship. At the end of the war, the five Pandava brothers, their wife Draupadi and a dog go on a journey. They are on their way to heaven. RHA391 mentions a star in the southern horn of the Bull (so, in the vicinity of the Hyades) which is called by some Tien Kwan (=The Heavenly Gate.)
At the end of the journey, the dog is revealed to be Dharmadeva—the god Dharma. Chesnutt brings the dog into his story by saying at the end, “but eve’body knew Marse Dugal’ bark uz wuss’n his bite.”
According to wikipedia, “dharma” derives from a root meaning stable or firm , and is associated with the concept of law. This includes cosmic law.
All of this might be related to this folk song about the burial of another giant.
C. Dave’s Neckliss #4
Dave, the protagonist of this story is a slave who has learned to read. He has read the Bible and is permitted to preach to the other slaves on Sundays.
Dave falls in love with a woman named Dilsey, but he has a rival named Wiley. Wiley steals bacon regularly from the plantation smokehouses. Eventually, Wiley steals a ham and plants it in Dave’s cabin. When the ham is found, Dave is punished. Part of the punishment is to wear a chain around his neck to which a ham is attached. It can’t be removed, not even when he is sleeping.
After this, everybody shuns Dave, including Dilsey. Dave’s mind starts to deteriorate. He begins to think he’s a ham.
Eventually, Wiley confesses when he thinks he is dying. Dave is vindicated, but it’s too late. Dave continues to think he’s a ham and finally hangs himself over a fire in the smokehouse.
In the frame story, Julius had been eating ham before he tells the story. A couple of footnotes to the story compare this to the Christian Eucharist. The critic Glenda Carpio (336) quotes another critic Sundquist as saying the ham is transformed into the body and blood of Dave. I think there is another possible parallel to Dave.
In the Roman festival of Saturnalia, pigs were sacrificed to Saturn and then eaten by the participants. The Saturnalia was celebrated at the winter solstice—a few days before Christmas. That is also when Dave and Dilsey had planned to get married (36).
“Dave’s Neckliss” is the last of the group of four tales (three tragedies and a satyr play) which characterized the ancient Greek festival of Dionysos. It is also one of a group of three stories that I see as re-enacting the Saturnalia. The other two are “Lonesome Ben” and “Mars Jeems’s Nightmare.”
D. Lonesome Ben #6 and Mars Jeems’s Nightmare #10
Ben was a slave who decided to run away. He headed north with the North Star as a guide (54), but ended up going in a circle back to his starting place. Another story “Tobe’s Tribulations” features a runaway slave in the same plight. He heads south to get north (160) but he fails too.
Ben got so hungry while he was away that he began to eat clay. He decided to head north again, but he wanted to see his wife and son first. He succeeded in seeing them, but neither one recognized him. He even ran into his old master in the woods and the master didn’t recognize him. Ben had turned yellow from eating the clay. During the Saturnalia, masters and slaves changed places. The parallel is not perfect here because Ben is not a master, but he is no longer a slave. The other side of the coin appears in “Mars Jeems’s Nightmare.”
Before leaving lonesome Ben, I want to point out that Julius claims that Ben actually turned to brick from eating so much clay (59). A falling tree ground him to powder and then rain washed him into the creek. Later some of the clay washed up on the bank. For that reason, Julius “doan nebber lak to see no black folks eat’n it.” One reading of this is that the people who eat the clay are eating Ben. That ties in closely with the eating of Dave (the ham) in “Dave’s Neckliss.”
In “Mars Jeems’s Nightmare,” a slave whose sweetheart was sent to another plantation by his hard-hearted master appeals to Aunt Peggy for help. Aunt Peggy makes a goopher mixture that turns the master black and while he is away, he is picked up as a stray (95). He winds up on his own plantation in payment of a gambling debt and becomes a slave. The overseer who was Mars Jeems’s employee becomes his master and abuses him terribly. Julius comments (94) that the poor white overseer “wa’n’t no bettah ‘n a nigger.” Chesnutt chooses his words very carefully. I think he is at pains here to stress the reversal of the roles of master and slave that characterized the Saturnalia.
Aunt Peggy is keeping an eye on the situation. When she finds out what happened, she makes another mixture to turn Mars Jeems white again. After his experience as a slave, Mars Jeems fires his overseer and institutes a new regime of kindness on his plantation. Eventually he marries and there is a big feast with “fiddlin’ en dancin’ en funnin’ en frolic’in from sundown ‘tel mawnin.” (101)
Besides the connection of these stories to the Saturnalia, another link binds the three together. All of the protagonists have experienced a big change in their lives. Dave was shunned by all the slaves, even his girlfriend Dilsey. The overseer had taken his Bible and burnt it (38). He lost everything and later doesn’t even have a sense of self any more.
Ben’s family and master don’t know him. He doesn’t even know himself when he sees his reflection in the water (58). Mars Jeems is unrecognized by his slaves and overseer. He tells the overseer “I dunno my name…en I doan ‘member whar I come fum. My head is all kin’ er mix’ up.” (95) You might say there is a chasm or rift between their past lives and their present lives.
In the constellation Cygnus, there are clouds of dust which form a band called the Great Rift. Also in “Po’ Sandy,” there was a split in the Sandy Run Colored Baptist Church (22). All of these splits might be pointing to the Great Rift.
E. A Victim of Heredity #8 and The Dumb Witness #7
I want to discuss two more stories because of their Biblical overtones and possible festival connections.
“A Victim of Heredity” tells the story of a plantation owner who wants to cut costs by feeding his slaves less while still getting the same amount of work from them. He appeals to Aunt Peggy and she gives him a “mixtry” that will enable him to cut the slaves’ rations in half. He gets carried away, uses the mixture a second time and cuts the rations down to a quarter.
There is another thread to this story. This same master was supposed to be managing the estate of his orphaned nephew Tom. But he converted all of Tom’s assets to his own use, leaving Tom destitute.
In Leviticus 25, God tells Moses that every seventh year is to be a sabbatical year for the land. The land was not to be planted or harvested in the seventh year. The produce of the sixth year was to be eaten during the sixth and seventh years—a cut to half rations for the people.
In addition, the fiftieth year was proclaimed a Jubilee year (25:11). “You shall not sow or reap that which groweth of itself.” So the produce of the 48th year had to last for three years — another cut in rations.
Also during the Jubilee (25:10) liberty was proclaimed to all the inhabitants of the land. In other words, the slaves were to be freed. And you “shall return every man unto his possession” (the land was to be restored to its original owners from 50 years ago.) The slaves were not freed in this story, but Tom, the orphaned nephew whose uncle defrauded him got the value of his estate back at the expense of his uncle (with the help of Aunt Peggy.)
“The Dumb Witness” is the story of a white man and his black (or rather dark) mistress. When the man (Malcolm Murchison) decides to marry, the mistress (Viney) carries a tale to the fiancée which causes her to break off the engagement. In retaliation, Malcolm cuts out (or perhaps just injures) Viney’s tongue. She does not speak after that. This story has literary ancestors in Ovid’s Metamorphoses VI:504-975, and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (which is so bloody you probably don’t want to read it.)
The story has several points in common with the Song of Songs. The bride in the Song is black but comely (1:5). Viney (64) was “a tall, comely young quadroon.” John notices (61) a resemblance between Viney and Malcolm. And a letter from Malcolm’s Uncle Roger (66) says of Viney, “she is of our blood.” In the Song, the bridegroom (4:9-5:2) calls the bride “my sister, my spouse.” The bride is a garden enclosed . . . an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits (4:12-15). The Murchison place has remnants of an enclosed kitchen garden and a pleasaunce or pleasure-garden (60). The bridegroom says to the bride (4:9), “thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.” Modern translaters usually translate as “one jewel or bead of your necklace.” The story (66) mentions the diamond necklace of Malcolm’s grandmother.
The Song of Songs is one of a group of five books in the Tanakh (the Jewish Bible) which are called the Festival Scrolls. At each of five major festivals of the Jewish liturgical year, one of these five scrolls is read. The Song is read at Passover.
“The Dumb Witness” was the last of a set of seven stories that Chesnutt wrote to be published together. They are the first seven stories in the Norton edition. The seventh story has connections to both the first and fourth stories. The seventh and fourth stories are connected by the presence of a necklace in both. The fourth story is the middle one of the series, so that is a good place to put a connecting link.
The connections between “The Dumb Witness” and “The Goophered Grapevine” are numerous. Story #1 is about grapevines; the main character in #7 is named Viney. Story #1 talked about Fayetteville making a point of the name change to Patesville; the name Murchison used in #7 has connections to Fayetteville (59note2). The girl carrying water would not speak at first; neither would Viney. In both #1 and #7, John arrives at a decayed gate.
The girl carrying water functioned as a way-shower for John when he was lost, then Julius functioned as a psychopomp for six stories. The fact that John tells #7 himself might be significant in showing that John has graduated or passed a test of some kind.
We can now say more about astronomical allusions in the work. There is a constellation named Sagitta or the Arrow which lies between Aquila and Cygnus. The way-shower in #1 “walking straight as an arrow” could be an allusion to this constellation. Within the arrow is a cluster of stars called the “Necklace Nebula,” which was “discovered” in 2005. I don’t know how Chesnutt knew about it in the 1890s, but he did have a hoard of folk wisdom at his disposal. Another name for Sagitta is the Spear (RHA351). Sagitta and the Necklace Nebula are probably at the root of the story of the old German god Odin hanging himself and being pierced with a spear. The story is told in the Havamal.
I think the arrow and necklace tie together the first, fourth and seventh stories, and by extension bind all the first seven stories together. I pointed out above other stories that are bound together by common threads or cross currents. That brings me to:
F. The Sargasso Sea
The Sargasso Sea is an area of seaweed in the North Atlantic. It lies between Bermuda and the coastline of the United States. The white arrow on the map below indicates North Carolina’s coast. There are four currents surrounding the Sargasso Sea. These currents form a gyre—a ring or necklace.
There are old stories about ships being trapped in the Sargasso Sea, unable to get out. Two of Chesnutt’s stories, #6 and #12 tell of runaway slaves who were unable to get away to the north. In the case of lonesome Ben, he heads north but ends up back where he started. In “Tobe’s Tribulations,” Tobe heads south to get north (160-61), but he doesn’t make it either. I think they might have been caught in a gyre and can’t get out.
The stories suggest to me that there are currents running through this section of North Carolina that duplicate the currents in the gyre off the coast. The stories might pinpoint the locations where the currents intersect. A lot of conjuring and working of roots goes on in the stories. The Guinea conjurer and Aunt Peggy work the roots in the Free Black Settlement near John’s vineyard in Cumberland County. Cindy uses a special root from a swamp in Sampson County to restore her health and enable her to get together with Skundus in “A Deep Sleeper.” In “A Victim of Heredity,” Aunt Peggy has to go to Robeson County to work a special root that only grows there. I’ll have to leave it to someone with knowledge of the geology of North Carolina to determine whether any of these locations are significant.
Patesville/Fayetteville is also important. The necklace might sit around this head. “The Dumb Witness” could be pinpointing a specific location of interest in Fayetteville. It might have a Greek colonnade, a pleasure garden, a gate. “Piazza” can mean public square as well as porch. It might have a public square.
Candace J. Waid (324) notes the “emphasis on legal rights and property law” in the story. The father of Roger Murchison the elder was a judge (63). The location of interest could be the courthouse. But again, only someone who knows Fayetteville can figure it out.
G. More on Viney
Astronomically, Viney could represent the constellation Cassiopeia—the Ethiopian queen.
Viney is a fascinating character. What motivates her actions in the story? Is her refusal to give Malcolm Murchison access to the papers that would prove his right to the estate just an act of revenge? Why does she tell young Roger Murchison about the papers?
Is she the mother of young Roger Murchison? That would explain both her action to sabotage Malcolm’s planned marriage and her refusal to let Malcolm access his uncle’s effects. She would have been acting to ensure that her son, young Roger, inherits the estate. But Roger Murchison the elder says she doesn’t know the content of the papers, only that they are important.
There’s a third possibility. The name “Roger” comes from the Old English “Hrothgar” meaning fame-spear and another name for Sagitta is the Spear. In the Old English epic Beowulf, the Danish king is named Hrothgar. The bard (lines2173-4) has heard that Hrothgar’s queen gave Beowulf a gold necklace. The spear and the necklace are linked. It might be that Viney is constrained by cosmic law to “pass over” Malcolm and wait for an heir named Roger to receive the inheritance. Julius says she could speak all along, but chose not to. But she reminds me of Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist whose story is told in Luke 1:5-23 and 1:59-65. Zachariah had lost his power of speech before John’s birth, but he regains it afterwards when he writes “His name is John” on a tablet. Sometimes there is power in a name.
Whatever her motives, Passover is coming. It begins on April 12 this year. So, I dedicate this song to Viney.