|
One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression: A Snapshot Album (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996).
| "Out front was a clean dirt yard with every vestige of grass patiently uprooted and the ground scarred in deep whorls from the strike of Livvie's broom. Rose bushes with tiny blood-red roses blooming every month grew in threes on either side of the steps. On one side was a peach tree, on the other a pomegranate. Then coming around up the path from the deep cut of the Natchez Trace below was a line of bare crape-myrtle trees with every branch of them ending in a colored bottle, green or blue. There was no word that fell from Solomon's lips to say what they were for, but Livvie knew that there could be a spell put in trees, and she was familiar from the time she was born with the way bottle trees kept evil spirits from coming into the house--by luring them inside the colored bottles, where they cannot get out again. Solomon had made the bottle trees with his own hands over the nine years, in labor amounting to about a tree a year, and without a sign that he had any uneasiness in his heart, for he took as much pride in his precautions against spirits coming in the house as he took in the house, and sometimes in the sun the bottle trees looked prettier than the house did." --- Eudora Welty |
Eudora Welty--a snapshot into her art
Pinhole
photograph by Hal Rammel, 2002.
According to Mary Joe Clendenin, greasing the throats of the bottles helps the spirits slip into the bottles a bit easier. In addition, bottles were hung from fruit trees to protect against thieves, since the bottles would cause the thieves stomachs to explode from the stolen fruit they had eaten. Lastly, blue medicine bottles were hung from trees in Memphis, Tennessee, during the outbreak of yellow fever in 1878 to keep the outbreak from entering their homes.
Photographs
copyright Hal Rammel, 2003.
This is just a splendid piece of art, click on the picture and look at his other photos.
Sammie's Tree: Riverside
Mary's Tree: Waiting for the Spirits
Betty's Tree: The Snare
Felder's Tree: From San Antonio
Edisto Island, SC
The Bottle Tree
by
Eugene Field
(1850-1895)
|
A
bottle tree bloometh in Winkyway land
Heigh-ho
for a bottle, I say!
A
snug little berth in that ship I demand
That
rocketh the Bottle-Tree babies away
Where
the Bottle Tree bloometh by night and by day
And
reacheth its fruit to each wee, dimpled hand;
You
take of that fruit as much as you list,
For
colic's a nuisance that doesn't exist!
Heigh-ho
for a bottle, I say!
So
cuddle me close, and cuddle me fast,
And
cuddle me snug in my cradle away,
For
I hunger and thirst for that precious repast
Heigh-ho
for a bottle, I say!
The
Bottle Tree bloometh by night and by day!
Heigh-ho
for Winkyway land!
And
Bottle-Tree fruit (as I've heard people say)
Makes
bellies of Bottle-Tree babies expand
And
that is a trick I would fain understand!
Heigh-ho
for a bottle to-day!
And
heigh-ho for a bottle to-night!
A
bottle of milk that is creamy and white!
So
cuddle me close, and cuddle me fast,
And
cuddle me snug in my cradle away,
For
I hunger and thirst for that precious repast -
Heigh-ho
for a bottle, I say!
|
The Natchez Trace
Used by merchants that used the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers would take the Trace back up North after traveling down the rivers. Stands run by Native Americans were allowed until the 1830s. The most predominant Indians to use the trace were the Chickasaws. Many bottle trees existed along the trace, in the 19th century, and into the 20th.
Picture Submittal
If you would like to submit pictures for display on the website, then please send them to:
Please include your name, name of picture, and link to your website, if you have one. If we put the picture on our webpage, we will give proper credits, and link the picture to the website, as we have done above.