mighty ni run every time you
went out atter dark; even iffin you didn't see nothin'. Chile, don't axe
me what I seed. Atter all dat killin' and a burnin' you know you wuz
bliged to see things wid all dem spirits in distress a gwine all over de
land. You see, it is like dis, when a man gits killed befo he is done
what de good Lawd intended fer him to do, he comes back here and tries
to find who done him wrong. I mean he don' come back hisself, but de
spirit, it is what comes and wanders around. Course, it can't do
nothin', so it jus scares folks and haints dem."

Source: "Aunt" Millie Bates, 25 Hamlet street, Union, S. C.
Interviewer: Caldwell Sims, Union, S. C.

Project #1655
Mrs. Genevieve W. Chandler
Murrells Inlet, S. C.
Georgetown County

FOLKLORE

VISIT WITH UNCLE WELCOME BEES--AGE 104 YEARS

The road is perfectly camouflaged from the King's Highway by wild plums
that lap overhead. Only those who have traveled this way before could
locate the 'turn in' to Uncle Welcome's house. When you have turned in
and come suddenly out from the plum thicket you find your road winding
along with cultivated patches on the left--corn and peas--a fenced-in
garden, the palings riven out by hand, and thick dark woods on the left.
A lonesome, untenanted cabin is seemingly in the way but your car swings
to the left instead of climbing the door-step and suddenly you find you
are facing a bog. The car may get through; it may not. So you switch off
and just sit a minute, seeing how the land lies. A great singing and
chopping of wood off to the left have kept the inmates from hearing the
approach of a car. When you rap therefore you hear, 'Come in'.

A narrow hall runs through to the back porch and off this hall on your
right opens a door from beyond which comes a very musical squeaking--you
know a rocking chair is going hard--even before you see it in motion
with a fuzzy little head that rests on someone's shoulder sticking over
the top. And the fuzzy head which in size is like a small five-cent
cocoanut, belongs to Uncle Welcome's great-grand. On seeing a visitor
the grand, the mother of the infant, rises and smiles greeting, and,
learning your errand, points back to the kitchen to show where Uncle
Welcome sits. You step down one step and ask him if you may come in and
he pats a chair by his side. The old man isn't so spry as he was when
you saw him in the fall; the winter has been hard. But here i