Charms in the Hills

OZARK SUPERSTITION (367 pp.)--Vance Randolph-Columbia University ($3.75).

Only a sympathetic and delicate work of fiction could do complete justice to the quirky beliefs of backwoods Americans in western Missouri and Arkansas. In this book, the quirks are set down as fact, exhaustively and entertainingly, by an Ozark scholar who has lived in the mountains for 30 years and kept a card file that eventually filled a trunk. He writes without condescension and also without the solemn intensity of the sociologist. Some of the Ozark signs and sayings he found:

Weather. When horses' tails are large, when horses scratch themselves against trees or fences, when chickens or turkeys stand with their backs to the wind, when whirlwinds lift the dust on roads, rain is coming. A sunny shower means that "the Devil is a-whuppin' his wife." A mild Christmas means a heavy harvest, but "a green Christmas makes a fat graveyard." When a cat sits down with its tail toward the fire, the hillman looks for a cold spell.

Household. When a woman drops a dishrag she knows someone dirty is coming; when two roosters fight in the yard, two young men will soon arrive. A child who eats candy in the privy is whipped for "feedin' the Devil an' starvin' God." Soap should be stirred by a member of the family, because "a strange hand skeers the soap." A menstruating woman can't pickle cucumbers and "a bad woman can't make good applesauce."

Courtship. Dirty water from a blacksmith's tub, or the touch of a dead man's hand, will cure facial blemishes. A girl should never comb her hair at night, for this will "lower a gal's nature." On the last night of April, a girl may wet a handkerchief and hang it out in a cornfield. Next morning the May sun dries it and the wrinkles will show the initial of the man she is to marry. When a girl sleeps with her legs crossed, she is dreaming of her sweetheart.

There are thousands of items as curious as these. Author Randolph says that although the old notions die hard, many of them are in fact dying: "Wherever railroads and highways penetrate, wherever newspapers and movies and radios are introduced, the people gradually lose their distinctive local traits and assume the drab color which characterizes conventional Americans elsewhere."

An old man in Arkansas, whom Randolph asked about witchcraft, put it differently: "Them things are goin' on same as they always did, but it's all under cover nowadays. The young folks lives too fast an' heedless. More than half of 'em are bewitched anyhow, so they don't care what happens. It looks like the Devil's got the country by the tail, on a downhill pull!"

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