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Chapter XIX
Manners And Customs.
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Near these poles were great kettles containing melted tallow, which floated on the top of hot water, and into the kettles the women would dip the strands of tow and hang them, each in its place, on the stick to dry. Before the proper amount of tallow was deposited by this slow process on the wick - for the thicker the candle the more brilliant the light - the weary dipper would walk many a mile before her work was finished. After the candles were made they had to be carried on the poles to a dry, sunny spot in the garret, where they could harden and become thoroughly dry. The good wife, however, had to see that the best room was sprinkled with clean white sand, and it was a matter of pride to draw various figures thereupon with the broom. The high-backed walnut, and (after the introduction of the wood as appropriate for furniture during Queen Anne's reign) mahogany chair and tables were waxed and polished till they reflected like a mirror. In every house there were the warming-pans of brass, which must be kept scoured and hung in easy reach, so that they could be used to take the chill off the sheets in bedrooms that were as cold "as Greenland's icy mountains." And when flax was prepared for spinning the matron sat early and late; particularly during the long winter evenings the humming noise of the big wheel was constantly heard.
To be sure, the lads and lasses of that day had their merry-making, although their sports to us seem somewhat like hard work. Flax-pulling, when the boys and girls pulled along together and bound it into small sheaves, was regarded as fun, while the "husking" parties at night were looked forward to with great expectations and much preparations; quilting and carpet-ball sociables - the latter after the Revolution, when people discovered that from rags a strong, serviceable covering for floors could be made - were much in vogue, and were concluded usually with dancing and boisterous games. Evening Amusements. - Usually at night, when the winter evening meal was ended and the room had been put to rights, the family would assemble round the open-mouthed fireplace in the kitchen, where on the hearth the massive andirons sustained a crackling mass of hickory-wood, lapped by the flaming tongues as the blaze "went roaring up the chimney wide." Along the heavy, unplastered joists of the floor above, darkened with age and smoke, from iron hooks were suspended a goodly number of portly hams, dried beef, long ropes of onions, and dried apples. On the deal table; without a cover, a tallow candle shed a dim, uncertain light around the apartment, and often the black and crisped wick required to be snuffed, while not unfrequently a thief would get in the candle, and the tallow on one side would run to the base of the stick in a rivulet of melted grease. In one of the angles of the room a large corner cupboard afforded through its glass doors glimpses of an array of blue china which at this day would have been the idol of the collection craze, and an eight-day clock in a tall mahogany case ticked in the chilly hall, while the moon moving along the opening in the dial, represented usually by a cherub's face, plump and florid-cheeked, told the farmer when and when not to plant his crops. Around the cheery fire the family, seated on hard, uncushioned chairs, gathered, the females spinning, or perchance Miss-in-her-teens, who had paid a visit to her relatives in the city, would be busily employed working in crewel geometrical figures of a dog, sheep, or other fabulous animal or plant, the like of which never existed "in the heavens above, the earth below, or the waters under the earth." The hunting- or watch-dog, curled close to the fire, dozed as his owner smoked, talked of the weather, the crops, the state of the market, his or others' stock, or laid out the next day's work. Perchance, when a neighbor dropped in, the conversation would relate to the social happenings of the vicinity, or at intervals of that great world, the city, but it usually drifted into recollections of the old people, narrations of hunting adventures, and marvelous tales of witches, goblins, and haunted places. The old people would relate traditionary stories of Margaret Mattson, the witch of Ridley Creek, and her divers ill-doings; they would tell how it was recorded by Hesselius, the Swedish priest, that in the early time of the settlement rain fell on a particular black oak for fifteen days, while not a drop of moisture touched the other trees in the neighborhood; and how a captain of a certain ship, noted for his profanity and crimes, while sailing up the Delaware, was seized bodily by the devil, who hurled him into the river, where he was drowned, in full sight of many lookers-on.1 But, strange as it may seem, no stories of men suddenly and mysteriously changed into wolves, the were-wolf of Swedish folk-lore, seem ever to have taken root in this soil. There would be, however, narration of the terrible and supernatural. It would be told how Blackbeard, the pirate, used to anchor his vessel off Marcus Hook, where, at the house of a Swedish woman whose name, Margaret, he transformed into Marcus, because of the locality of her dwelling, he and his crew held mad revels there, and the expression "Discord Lane" became so connected with the town's story that it has ever since been preserved as the title of one of its streets. So, too, would they describe the Bloody Tree, near Chester, on the King's Highway, whose leaves were spotted with gore, and from whose branches, if a twig was cut or broken off, oozed a sap-like blood,2 - the indelible mark of a brutal, un- |
1 Acrelius, "History of New Sweden," pp. 279-80.
2 This story is really of Maryland origin, and was transplanted here, as such narratives are usually transitory in character. The legend of the "Bloody Holly-Bush" is as follows: "There is also a legend current among the old citizens of Elk Neck, which may properly be called the legend of the 'Bloody Holly-Bush,' which originated from a murder committed on the Ferry farm while it was occupied by Hans Rudolph, the proprietor of the ferry. Rudolph had a negro slave, who for some reason was confined in jail at the point, and who made his escape and | ||