During slavery time, there was a powerful young man called, Big Sixteen. They called him Sixteen because that was the number of the shoe-size he wore. Sixteen was big and strong. The slave owner, "Ole Massa," thought Big Sixteen could do most anything and liked to brag on it.
One day "Ole Massa" called him and said, "Big Sixteen, I b'lieve I want you to move dem sills I had hewed out down in de swamp."
"I yassuh, Massa."
Big Sixteen went down in the swamp and picked up those 12 X 12's. He brought them up to the house and stacked them. No one man ain't never toted a bunch of 12 X 12 like that before nor since. Big Sixteen was a powerful man.
Another day the "Ole Massa" told Big Sixteen, "Go fetch in the mules. I want to look 'em over and no one else has been able to catch 'em today."
Big Sixteen went on down to the pasture and caught the mules by their bridles, but the mules were contrary and balky acting. The bridles were pulled appart with Sixteen pullin on them one way and the mules pulling back the other way. He kept saying "Cum on mules," but the mules just pulled and tried to kick and bite. Finally, Big Sixteen decided to treat them like couple of onry children. Big Sixteen was a powerful man, so he picked one of them up and tucked that mule under his left arm and then he picked up the other mule and tucked it under his right. Then he brought those onry mules up to "Old Massa."
The "Old Massa" was amazed by the sight and said, "Big Sixteen, if you kin tote a pair of balky mules, you kin do anything. You kin ketch de Devil."
"Yassuh, Ah kin, if you git me a nine-pound hammer and a pick and shovel!"
"Ole Massa" thought that was so funny. He actually went and got Sixteen a nine-pound hammer, a pick-ax, and shovel and, laughing, he told him to go ahead and fetch the Devil. Then the "Ole Massa" must have forgot about the whole thing because he thought it was one big joke.
But Big Sixteen was a powerful man. He went out in front of the house and started to digging. Sixteen dug nearly a month with the shovel and pick-ax before he dug down to where he wanted. It happened to be night time.
Then Big Sixteen picked up the nine pound hammer, and he went and knocked hard on the Devil's back door. The Devil himself answered by calling through door, "Who dat out dere?" You have to understand that the Devil was not used to folks digging down to his back door to see him. In fact, most folks tried mighty hard not to see the Devil.
But Big Sixteen was a powerful man, and he called back, "It's Big Sixteen."
"What you want?" called the Devil.
"Wanta have a word wid you for a minute."
Very curious, the Devil unlatched the door and poked his head to find out why someone had dug down to his back door to. Soon as he poked his head out, Sixteen wacked him over the head with the nine pound hammer.
Big Sixteen was a powerful man, and he picked up the Devil and carried him back, bloody and dead, to "Old Massa."
When he saw the dead Devil "Ole Massa" didn't laugh. He just looked shocked. Then he hollered, "Take dat ugly thing 'way from here, quick! I didn't think you'd ketch de Devil sho 'nuff."
Big Sixteen was a powerful man, so he picked up the dead Devil and threw him back down the hole and covered it up. After that "Old Massa" didn't give Big Sixteen too much grief and he didn't laugh so much. "Old Massa" acted like he might have been a little bit scared of Big Sixteen.
After a long while, Big Sixteen caught the fever and died.
First he went up to Heaven, but Peter looked at him out though the pearly gates and told him to go somewhere else, "You might git outa order and there wouldn't be nobody to handle it." Why old Peter acted like he might have been a little bit scared of Big Sixteen. Big Sixteen was too powerful.
But Big Sixteen had to go somewhere, so he went on down to hell--this time through the front gate.
Soon as Big Sixteen got to the gate, the Devil's children who were playing in the front yard saw Big Sixteen and ran up to the Devil's house. They hollered, "Mama, mama! Dat man's out dere dat kilt papa!"
She called her imps into the house and shut the door. When Sixteen got there the Widow said, "You ain't comin' in here." Big Sixteen was too powerful to be let in, so she handed him a little piece of fire and said, "Here, take dis hot coal and g'wan off and fine some place else t' start yo' own."
If you see a Jack O'Lantern fire in de woods at night, you know that it is Big Sixteen with his piece of fire still looking for a place to go.
Comments
The American folklorist, writer, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston collected an interesting African American variant of the Irish Jack O'Lantern tale in Mules & Men, 1935.
In many versions, Jack/Jacky/John was a blacksmith in life, and thus the Jack O' Lantern story is often labeled among folklorists as tale type 330, "The Smith and the Devil." Jack was condemned to wander as a ghost, carrying an unearthly light.
In this story, the main character, Big Sixteen, was identifed with the wandering Jack O'Lantern light. Yet, Big Sixteen was not a blacksmith. Big Sixteen was one of the slaves, who was such a big man, he wore shoe-size sixteen. Interestingly, Big Sixteen still has the smithy hammer, which he used not only defeat the Devil, but to actually kill him.
Like the Irish Jack, Big Sixteen was also forced to wander between Heaven and Hell, carrying a light.
However, the story of Big Sixteen is almost slyly subversive. Big Sixteen was refused entry into Heaven by St. Peter--not because Big Sixteen was too immoral, but because Big Sixteen was too powerful.
All Christians are exhorted to struggle with and defeat the whiles of the Devil. Jack in the Jack O' Lantern tales does struggle with and trick the Devil, but in the end pays a price for it, because he is an immoral man.
Compare the story of Big Sixteen (1935) to Jacky-My-lantern (1880). In Southern tales, Jaky/Jack defeated the Devil, but not in a way anticipated by mainstream Christianity. Jack did not defeat the Devil because he was pious and humble, but because he was a "hellraiser" in his own right. Jack was often sent away from hell with a lit coal and an admonishment, "I won't be letting you in, because I've had too much experience with you. Take this fire and go raise hell somewhere else."
In the Christian South, the Devil was a figure that was often used to compel people to be good. Fear of the Devil has often been used to keep the poor, especially the black poor, in line. Wherever the Devil is used as a control mechanism, there are folktales depicting him as a buffoon--someone easily tricked.
This sociological fact brings me back to the tale of Big Sixteen. Big Sixteen was the most virtuous incarnation I have read of any of the humans who became transformed into the Jack O' Lantern spirit.
Big Sixteen had no vices. He was not a gambler, nor drunkard. He was not lazy; he was a hard and capable worker. Since Big Sixteen was a slave, he did not own anything and could not hoard his wealth like a miser. Furthermore, Bit Sixteen succeeded in defeating the Devil largely by his own strength and tenacity.
Big Sixteen's only possible character "flaw" was he was too powerful. In being that powerful, he frightened "Ole Massa," St. Peter, and the Devil's Widow.
Often the Devil provided Jack with the light for his lantern. When the Devil's Widow refused Big Sixteen entry to Hell, she provided him with the Jack O'Lantern fire before sending him away. Apparently, Big Sixteen was too big and powerful to fit into the white Christian power structure, which permitted slavery.
In my retelling of the story Hurston collected, I decided to emphasise how powerful Big Sixteen was by repeating, "Big Sixteen was a powerful man," throughout the tale.
Big Sixteen's story was also in direct opposition of the story attached to the Brown Mountain Lights in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. In local folklore, fire-like balls of light can be seen at night and move and bob around the mountainside. A song about the Brown Mountain Lights attribute their frequent appearance on the mountainside as an oil lantern being carried by a "faithful old slave come back from the grave" still searching for the body of his lost master. The Brown Mountain Lights folktale is a Southern white post-slave era folktale, which romanticizes the figure of the faithful negro slave.
The African American Big Sixteen folktale carried an entirely different post-slavery message to the African American community: The slaves were people who were far more powerful and competent than the whites ever knew.
Copyright 2013 Myth Woodling
This should be Big Sixteen's epitaph.
"Hell don' want me and Heben's afraid Ah take over." --Big Sixteen |
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