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Here’s something I found in my great aunt’s memoire. She states that my great grandfather could read weather signs that were amazingly true, “handed down from generations before him (He is grandson of my Blackfoot ID and son of another line that Bill traced to PA), so those generations include Eastern Blackfoot.
“The moon controlled the growing of plants and of people on earth, he was convinced as Gospel. If you killed a hog in the growing of the moon, the meat would be puffy and the lard wouldn’t fry out easily. If you cut hay in the old of the moon, it would dry half quicker than in the new. Plant flowers when the moon is in the first quarter; corn planted in the Leo sign would have a round, hard stalk and small ears; never transplant when the sign is in the head or heart, these are the “death signs.” In the 4th quarter turn sod, pull weeds and destroy; cut timber on the old of the moon for dry and not become worm-eaten. Potatoes planted in the dark (that’s old) or last quarter will make less vine. Plant beans when the sign is in the bowels and they will speck and rot. Dig a post hole in the new moon and it will never settle; the same hole in the dark and it will settle so tightly you’ll think it took root! Grave digging is the same. In the new moon, you’ll have dirt for a good mound; in the old, hardly enough to fill the grave. Watch the river; in the new moon, the water is full of sand, carrying pebbles and silt with the current. On the old; it’s clear and the sand stays on the bottom. So you don’t dig a ditch that might wash in the new moon.”
Does this sound like his Irish background or his native?
Cindy
Seems like it. I found something similar here: http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~omb00875/planting.html Also on a UK site, a PA site, and a Prince Edward Island site. Not something that my German farming father ever said though.
Cindy
That could be it. Your great grandfather might have been revealing his heritage by his preference for a more metaphysical view of reality. Your German ancestor, by that time, was looking to science.
With all the references to this month and that month and having looked a bit into the Shawnee calendar, I thought that it might be reflecting his native background.
On another note, though, my great aunt said that both my great-and great-great grandmothers were midwives. She goes on to say that they both worked with a doctor to deliver neighborhood babies. Then she adds that he was an herb doctor.
Cindy
Put a pole in the ground. walk oh 50 feet or so and every full and/or new moon put another pole or a big rock between your pole and the sunrise, at the point the sun rises. In a year, you’ll have one rock for a farthest north point and another for the point furthest south. Bisect that line and you will have due east and due west. Draw a line perpendicular to due east and west and you will have true north and south.
I think people all over the world knew how to do this, and hence developed a calendar, and knew the exact day to best plant their crops. They’d do it when the sun was at a certain angle from due east or west at sunrise or sunset.
Its pretty simple and people without calendars yet a need to grow crops would come up with this method pretty fast I think.
I think Indian were practical people and “planting in the moon” is European in origin, but I might be wrong.
vance
Vance:
Well, I threw out the superstitions thinking that they might sound familiar to someone who was more familiar with native traditions. I had never heard them as farming superstitions from Dad, and I hung out with him at the barn as a kid. Grandma (as in GGGrandpa’s daughter) was a great gardner, but I did not hang out with her, so if she had these superstitions, I did not know it. Mom certainly never said them.
I found some of the moon information here: http://www.shawnee-traditions.com/ShawneeMoons.html I know it is Shawnee, but I have found other similarities between other groups.
Anyway, I have found enough evidence to think these beliefs were from his European ancestors. Kind of interesting superstitions anyway.
Cindy
Hi Cindy —
Well I didn’t know that. There is a lot about old traditions I don’t know. . .
I have a bias towards practicalty and away from “the unknown”, but I sometimes forget generations ago people saw things differently.
I recall my parents jokin about an old man, “Ol man Ellsworth”, they said “he used to plant things in the moon, and they are still up there!”
They grew up on farms. But they didn’t believe in those things judging from that response. I remember them sayin he ws a bachelor, and he had snakes in his living room instead of cats, to get mice. Eventually he married grandma’s sister, my great Aunt Bea. They also said he was a doctor, had gone to medical school, but never got his degree because he refused to take the Hipocratic Oath, sayin his religious beliefs didn’t allow him to “take oaths”. I never knew him, but I think he would have been an interesting fellow, judging from the stories they told about him.
vance
Vance:
I kind of thought you assumed I was getting metaphysical. Nope; just trying to find out more about my mother’s family. Now ‘scuse me; it’s bedtime and I left my socks in my shoes. Gotta take them out.
Just kidding. I found that as a superstition from somewhere. It supposedly gives bad luck to leave your socks in your shoes at night. (Sounds like someone trying to train another to put their socks away at night.)
Cindy
Hey, that’s brilliant. I need to tell my kids it’s bad luck to leave their socks on the floor. And their shoes, and their clothes, and their toys. As a matter of fact, if you’re bedroom floor isn’t clear at night gremlins will play in the stuff you’ve left on the floor and mess it up, then you’ll get blamed for it.
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