Wednesday Wives Tales

Ouachita and Ozark mountain folk have always enjoyed a good ghost story~especially at Christmas. I found this little tale that was probably enjoyed by a lot of youngsters huddled up close to the fire on crisp, cold evenings.

It seems that two men heard that the Devil was visiting at the local buryin' ground. Being just a little bit curious, the two hurried down there about dusk to see what they could see. They settled down behind a stone wall and waited.

Unbeknownst to them, two little boys, carrying a sack of paw paws they had gathered, arrived a few moments later and stopped on the other side of the stone wall. They spread the paw paws on the ground and began to divide them. "You take this one, I'll take that one; you take this one, I'll take that one," one boy repeated, placing the paw paws between them.

Finally, the other boy spoke: "Well, that's all, 'cept them two big ones over there. You take the dried up one and I'll take the fat one."

This seemed to describe the two men pretty well, and they broke out of hiding and ran, yelling all the way home. They had presumed some Evil Spirits had been dividing up the dead, and somehow, they had managed to be counted with them!

Merry Christmas!