The man stayed on, first as a handyman doing work for room and board. Eventually, the man and woman entered into a common law marriage.
One night, the man awoke in the middle of the night to discover the woman had vanished from where she slept. He figured she might have gone out to the outhouse because she was feeling bad. In the morning, he asked if she had slept poorly. To his surprise, she answered she had lain comfortably fast asleep all night.
The next night he pretended to sleep. After awhile, he heard the woman rise and say: "Tu'n and spin, come off skin."
He heard something get chucked under the bed, but still he lay quiet.
Then, he heard the woman say, "Lay dar skin, with dat fool sl'epin' in de bed, ontwel I come back. I gwine ter ha' some fum. I is!"
The man lay there a long time til he was certain the woman was gone. Then, he rolled over in bed and looked under the bed. Sure enough, he found the empty woman's skin lying there.
There was no doubt about it--his wife was nothing but a Boo Hag.
A Boo Hag is an evil haint that sheds her skin at night like a snake to travel as an invisible spirit. A Boo Hag will sit on someone's chest and steal their life-breath. A Boo Hag is a nightmare that sits on someone's back and rides them all night like a horse until they drop dead. A Boo Hag slowly dries up all the life around her.
She had tricked him into marriage by pretending to be a natural woman. He knew what he must do.
He pulled the Boo Hag's skin out from under the bed. It felt cold and nasty. Then, he went to the kitchen shelf and took salt and poured it in the empty skin. Then for good measure, he added in some red pepper. Then he threw the skin back under the bed, and laid down and pretended to sleep while he waited for the Boo Hag to return.
Sure enough, as the sun was about to rise that morning, he heard the sound of something on the floor--like the skin being dragged out from under the bed. Then, he heard the Boo Hag laugh and say, "I done ha m' some fum. Ma work’s done, so, skin, le' me in."
There was a pause. Then, he heard the Boo Hag say, a little more insistently: "Skin, le' me in!" Still, he waited, pretending to be asleep.
Then as the sun rose outside, he heard a yowl and a moan. Still, he waited, pretending to be asleep.
The salt had shrank the Boo Hag's skin. The red pepper burned. He heard the haint frantically scrambling to get back in the shrunken, salted skin before sunrise.
The Boo Hag started screaming, "Skinn-ee-y, Skinn-ee-y, don't ya know me?" He heard her hopping and around, making an awful ruckus, and howling, as the skin burned and stung.
Maybe the Boo Hag was trying by now to take it off, but it was too late to fly out to the swamp trees, because now the sun was fully up.
Finally, he heard a long painful groan and a loud thump. The Boo Hag fallen down and made no more noise.
Cautiously, the man turned around and there was nothing but salt all on the floor with little bits of shredded, dried old leather. He said, "Dat the end of dat ole Boo Hag."
Straight away, the man gathered up his things, took some salt, and left that old hainted cabin and never looked back.
Comments
There are versions of this tale all over the USA South about preventing a Boo Hag from returning to her skin. One version, which I read, was collected in Lousiana in 1905.
The following tale is from Alice Bacon, "Out of Her Skin," Journal of American Folklore 35, 1922, as quoted by Yvonne Patricia Chireau, Black magic: religion and the African American conjuring tradition 2003, 2006, p89.
Once there was a woman that could turn into a witch. When the husband would go to bed, she would slip out. ... While she was gone, the husband missed her and to up. He saw her skin lying by the fire. He got some red pepper and put it inside the skin. Then he locked the door to keep her from coming into the house that night. When she came back, she slipped through the keyhole and went to get into her skin. Everytime she went to get in, the pepper would burn her. She would say, "Skinny, skinny, don't you know me?" She then would try again: it would burn her still. She would say: "Skinny, skinny, don't you know me?" The husband woke up. She go into it, but could not stay. Then she was tarred and burnt to death.As you can see the story is almost exactly the same, except the term "witch" is used rather than "Boo Hag." This same type of Boo Hag folktale also appears under the name, Skinny, Don't You Know Me?
For another Boo Hag folktale see Boo Hag as retold by S.E. Schlosser from Spooky North Carolina.
copyright 2011 Myth Woodling