FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of interviewer: Watt McKinney
Subject: Superstitious beliefs
Story — Information (If not enough space on this page, add page)
This information given by: Tines Kendricks (C)
Place of residence: Trenton, Arkansas
Occupation: None
Age: 104
There is an ancient and traditional belief among the Southern Negroes, especially the older ones, that the repeated and intermitted cries of a whippoorwill near a home in the early evenings of summer and occurring on successive days at or about the same time and location; or the appearance of a highly excited redbird, disturbed for no apparent reason, is indicative of some imminent disaster, usually thought to be the approaching death of some member of the family.
Tines Kendricks, who says that he was born the slave of Arch Kendricks in Crawford County, Georgia, two hours before day on a certain Fourth of July, one hundred and four years ago, recalls several instances in his long and eventful life in which he contends the accuracy of these forecasts was borne out by subsequent occurrences. The most striking of these he says was the time his young master succumbed from the effect of a wound received at the first battle of Manassas after hovering between life and death for several days. The young master, Sam Kendricks, who was the only son of his parents, volunteered at the beginning of the War and was attached to the army in Virginia. He was a very impetuous, high-spirited young man and chafed much under the delay occasioned between the time of his enlistment and first battle, wanting to have the trouble over with and the difficulties settled which he honestly thought could be accomplished in the first engagement with that enemy for whom he held such profound contempt. Sam Kendricks, coming as he did from a long line of slave-owning forebears, was one of those Southerners who felt that it was theirs to command and the duty of others to obey. They would brook no interference with the established order and keenly resented the attitude and utterances of Northern press and spokesmen on the slavery question. Tines Kendricks recalls the time his young master took leave of his home and parents for the war and his remarks on departing that his neck was made to fit no halter and that he possessed no mite of fear for Yankee soldier or Yankee steel. Soon after the battle of Manassas, Arch Kendricks was advised that Sam had suffered a severe wound in the engagement. It was stated, however, that the wound was not expected to prove fatal. This sad news of what had befallen the young master was soon communicated throughout the entire length and breadth of the great plantation and in the early evening of that day Tines sitting in the door of his cabin in the slave quarters a short distance from the master's great house heard the cry of a whippoorwill and observed that the voice of this night bird seemed to arise from the dense hedge enclosing the spacious lawn in front of the home. Disturbed and filled with a sense of foreboding at this sound of the bird, he earnestly hoped and prayed that the cry would not be repeated the following evening, but to his great disappointment it was heard again and nearer the house than before. On each succeeding evening according to Tines Kendricks the call of the bird came clearly through the evening's stillness and each time he noticed that the cry came from a spot nearer the home until at last the bird seemed perched beneath the wide veranda and early on the morning following, a very highly excited redbird darted from tree to tree on the front lawn. The redbird continued these peculiar actions for several minutes after which it flew and came to rest on the roof of the old colonial mansion directly above the room formerly occupied by the young master. Tines was convinced now that the end had come for Sam Kendricks and that his approaching death had been foretold by the whippoorwill and that each evening as the bird approached nearer the house and uttered his night cry just so was the life of young Sam Kendricks slowly nearing its close and the actions of the redbird the following day was revealing evidence to Tines that the end had come to his young master which indeed it had as proven by a message the family received late in the morning of this same day.