Note: This is the type of tall tale that is not about a hero of superhuman size or strength, but describes a highly exaggerated incident about objects and animals, told in a deadpan way as if it really happened in the daily lives of ordinary people. "The Snake-Bit Hoe Handle." Told by Tennessee storyteller Doc McConnell. In Peck, Catherine, ed. QPB Treasury of North American Folktales. Illus. Charles Blake. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1998, pp. 72-73. In the section Tall Tales, Brags, and Other Lies. Reprinted from Homespun: Tales from America's Favorite Storytellers, ed. Jimmy Neil Smith, 1988. Peck calls this "one of the many fantastic stories settlers told to exaggerate the size and scope of the American land and the creatures who inhabited it." This is a fairly lengthy version of the tale in which the narrator is accused by his father of trying to get out of hoeing corn when he sees a big copperhead snake. The hoe handle swells so big from the snake bite that they cut it up for 22 wagonloads of lumber. They build a chicken house, but after the narrator puts turpentine in his paint, it makes the swollen lumber shrink until "it wasn't no bigger than a shoe box." Luckily, their chickens were not inside and thus were not killed. Also in this book: "Tall Hunting Tale" from Leonard Roberts' South from Hell-fer-Sartin, "John Henry," Maud Long's "Jack and the Giants' Newground," "The Three Sillies," "David Crockett Meets a Bear," and other Appalachian tales. (Also published as A Treasury of North American Folktales, Norton, 1999.) "The Swollen Hoe Handle." In Leonard Roberts, South From Hell-fer-Sartin': Kentucky Mountain Folk Tales. U of KY Press, 1955. Rpt. Berea, KY: The Council of the Southern Mountains, 1964, p. 153. In the section Jokes and Anecdotes, this is a one-paragraph version. The narrator is chopping cotton when the hoe handle is bit by a rattlesnake and swells so big he gets lumber to build a hog-pen. Later the wood shrinks and "chokes all my hogs to death." "The Swollen Tree" is another short anecdote (pp. 153-54) about a rattlesnake biting a tree which swells so large that the hunter who sees it builds a five-room house out of it. Later his son spills some turpentine off the mantel. "And his house drawed up small enough to make a birdhouse out of it." Roberts identifies these as tale type 1962, The Poisoned Timber, and Motif X 929, Timber bitten by snake swells to great size. "The Snakebit Hoehandle." In Richard Chase, American Folk Tales and Songs, and Other Examples of English-American Tradition as Preserved in the Appalachian Mountains and Elsewhere in the United States. Illus. Joshua Tolford. 1956. Rpt. New York: Dover, 1971, p. 105. "From many sources in the Southern Appalachians." This short version is almost the same as Doc McConnell's above, without so much detail about the amount of wood obtained and with no father in the tale. Justus,
May. Eben and the Rattlesnake. Illus. Carol Wilde. Champaign,
IL: Garrard Publishing, 1969.
Justus, May. The same tall tale with a doghouse at the end is woven into the realistic story The Right House for Rowdy. See details at AppLit's Books by May Justus for details. "The Hoe Handle, Snake, and Barn." Told by Tennessee storyteller Dianne Hackworth in Mountain Tales. "This video includes 2 hours of tales from the Appalachian Region," by Hackworth, Orville Hicks, and Charlotte Ross. Watauga County Library and High Country Yarnspinners Storytelling Guild, 1998. Ramsey, Gwynn. Telling Six Tall Tales from the Southern Appalachians. 199? VHS videocassette. 30 min. color. 1. The Split Dog. 2. The Norther and the Frogs. 3. Pat and the Mule Eggs. 4. Pat and the City Billies. 5. The Snake Bit Hoe Handle. 6. The Big Toe. Told by Gwynn Ramsey, Professor of Biology Emeritus at Lynchburg College. This information is from the Randolph Macon Women's College Video List. See also: Appalachian Picture Books: Tall Tales AppLit's Tall Tales and Jack Tales: Literature and Writing Activities Harley's Lonesome Pine Knives, Bristol Tennessee, sells real knives but the web site offers a free story about a battle axe with an incredible history going back to the Vikings (under the battle axe photo). The handle is a splinter off a hoe handle the owner's grandfather was using, when it was bitten by the world's deadliest snake, the "Broadviperlancetcottonmouthrattlemoccasin." The wood started to swell so much that the owner started a saw mill that his sons still run. Compare with: "Hoopsnakes." Beartown News, August 1, 2000. Edited by Claude Dern, a Vermont author who claims this paper reports only area news, but it is full of humorous stories and jokes. This story says hoopsnakes were different colors depending on what the storyteller had been drinking, that their bite could kill an oak tree, and that they would roll in a hoop chasing people. Then it tells about the farmer hoeing corn who sees a snake die after all its poison drains out into a tree. He makes a house from the swollen tree but later a huge rain washes out the poison and the house shrinks. Nothing But the Truth . . . page in Dave's Garden, a web site for gardeners. Submitted by a subscriber, Bud, from Batchelor, Iowa, Jan. 19, 2001. Bud's version tells of an old couple hoeing their cotton field, who build a chicken house out of wood from their snake-bit hoe handle. They are drinking before and after they find their flock of chickens killed because the swelling in the wood subsides. "Unfortunately, there are no witnesses." Rexroad, William. "Snake-Bit Hoe Handle." A Kansas storyteller tells the tale in the Audio Stories section of Storytelling.net. Carver, Renee. The Snake-Bit Rake Handle. Illus. Elizabeth O. Dulemba. Houghton Miffline, forthcoming in 2008. Top of Page |
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