For those wishing to delve more deeply into folk beliefs, all five volumes of Harry Middleton Hyatt's massive compilation, Hoodoo--Conjuration--Witchcraft--Rootwork, are available on the Internet Archive.
The continued importance of dreams in folk culture is suggested by the persistence of lucky dream books. These are used to translate dreams into "lucky numbers" in order to play the lottery, or "policy" as it was called back in the day. Aficionados of early Blues music will be familiar with this through songs such as "Playing Policy Blues" by Blind Blake.
Gregg
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Dr. Gregg D. Kimball
Director of Public Services and Outreach
804.692.3722 804.909.4501
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800 East Broad St. | Richmond, VA 23219
www.lva.virginia.gov
-----Original Message-----
From: Henry Wiencek <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, May 15, 2023 10:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Black Religious Beliefs in Williamsburg
Looking through the earlier notes on this thread, I was struck by Lois Leveen writing that Munford documented: "They have less superstition, less reliance on dreams and visions.” In the 8-9 years of my work on the Hairston story, from 1989 to 1997-98, I was tormented by sweat-soaked dreams. One of those dreams was prophetic, but I didn't act upon it, a wasted chance -- when the book was done I found that the voice in the dream had tried to lead me to something.
But another time I was granted a vision of three people standing in my bedroom saying their names “Mary, Frank, Ephraim.” I jumped out of bed and recovered their story from documents I had put aside months earlier – they were children sold to Mississippi. It wasn’t a dream, it was a vision.
Because it was real I put it in the book. Another time I was tormented by a voice, daily, night, just saying a name over and over. The voice would not stop for three days as I tore through every list I had – the enslaved on farms and plantations, sharecroppers, cohabitation registers, Freedman’s Bureau petitions, decades of death records -- literally hundreds of pages of documents strewn on the floor. My poor wife knew I had at last gone mad.
When will the book be done? I couldn't tell her I was obeying a voice. Then I found the name in a stack of papers I had stored in a closet, and the voice left me. I had found the list that proved a long-hidden blood tie between the whites and the Blacks – the voice had led me to a single page of paper I’d found in Bristol which neither the Black or White Hairstons had known of but it was the missing link in their two chains. Years earlier, I had been tormented thinking “lists of names, that’s all you have, lists of names.” The voice made me read those lists again and again and again. There was no way I could have put all of this in my book because I would have been written off as a crackpot.
In the section of my book about Daniel Hairston he tells of his enslaved great aunt who got smacked by Ol’ Miss; in anger she ripped Ol’ Miss’s dress, and in terror she ran away into the forest for two years. And then she heard a voice: “And the Lord said to her – ‘go on and go back.’ He would be there. And Ol’ Miss didn't bother her. Having faith unlocks the door.” Daniel himself in a time of terrible crisis: “And a voice spoke to me. Twelve o’clock in the day! I started to ask somebody: ‘Did you hear that voice?’” And the voice directed him what to do.
When the book was done a group of southern Virginia Hairstons came to my house and when I was alone with one of the elders I confessed to her I had heard voices and she said, “we hear them too.”
Dreams and visions, voices.
Henry Wiencek
Charlottesville
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