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CHAPTER V. Superstition of the Slaveholders—Slaves’ Party—Reckoning up the White Folks. The slaveholders, as a body, are very superstitious, and are continually haunted with fears of ghosts and goblins. No one ought, therefore, to wonder at the poor ignorant slave being imbued with fear of what he considers supernatural; but an anecdote, which I have omitted to relate, will best illustrate what I mean. Superstition of the Slaveholders. It was a common practice among our slave-women to say to their children , if they shouted out, “Ole boy, I’ll pully your ears!” the old boy would answer, “Ha! ha! Ha!” You might often, therefore, hear the children calling out these words in the fields in their play. One day when they were returning from the bush, crying out, “Ole boy, I’ll pully your ears!” I got behind a large hogshead, and cried out as dismally as I could, prolonging the sound through my hands, “Ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! Ha!” They instantly ran with all their might, shouting, “We didé hear someting, we didé hear someting.” They after a few minutes, as if to assure themselves, returned, calling the same words again, “Ole boy, I’ll pully your ears,” and I gave the same reply as before, “Ha! Ha! ha!” They scampered off as quickly as their legs would carry them, half frightened to death. I looked round the hogshead, and saw them running towards my master’s house, and then observed them standing by him, as if telling him, and then the horn gave three or four quick blasts for all hands to return from the fields. Soon I saw the slaves hastening towards the house, and my master motioning to the women to come from the spinning-rooms, and calling out (  ) Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky  all his own family. He then, with the children in front, came towards where I was, and I heard him say to the children, “Whereabouts do you think, he was when you heard him answer?” They said, “We no ideah yet, its waysh, uppé yonder.” He said, “When near the place you must holla again.” So very soon they hollered again, “Ole boy, I’ll pully your ears.” Then I shouted as loudly as I could, “Ha—a—a,” and I heard a tremendous running and screaming, “Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!” some tumbling over one another. In about five minutes I heard them talking and returning, and my master asking the slaves if they did not hear something ; the slaves said they did, and my mistress said she was sure she did. “Well,” thought I, “if you didn’t you shall; only holla again.” He told the children to cry out again, and this time, with all my might, like some wild beast, I replied, “U—U—U—h!” and men, women, and children, hand over head, scrambling in terror, ran back, evidently nearly out of their senses. I kept quiet some time, and then secretly hastened to the cabin. My mistress was laid up some days from the combined effects of fear and running. The devil was now known to be at hand. After this, I never in my life saw such a change as there was on my master ’s plantation; he spoke to every one so kindly, and went about crying, “Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do? I heard the Old Boy, I did, I did!” and crying, “O Lord, O Lord, don’t let him take us; oh, don’t, oh, don’t!” He called out to my uncle on the Saturday, about two o’clock, when the slaves were coming out of their cabins from dinner, “My good fellow, my good fellow!” in a most piteous tone, “come here! come here! I hope you all have had plenty of dinner; I told the missis to give more meat; I hope you all have had enough!” “Yers, sir, yers, sir,” the slaves said; “we have enough to-day, we have enough to-day.” He, in the utmost anguish of tone and manner, said, “Because I want you all to have enough; to be better fed and not to work so hard. Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!” Crying, he said, “You know to-day is Saturday.” My uncle said, “Yers, sir, to-day is Saturday .” “Go and make all the hands get their wood chopped for Sunday: they must not do any work on Sunday. Let the slaves get all their chores39...

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