Eat some Screech Owl Brain and Call me in the Morning

So I’m still reading Albion’s Seed, which was the topic of last week’s “Rogering” blog (hey, cut me some slack, it’s 900 pages long).

I’m onto the North England, Scottish, and Irish brutes that ended up populating the backwoods area of the South. Jesus is it ever enlightening. These SOBs were real louts, just scum of the earth. And violent as all hell. In fact, even some of their medical “remedies” were outrageously cruel. Here are a few of them:

- Against epilepsy wear a bit of human cranium

- For fever, cut a black chicken open while alive, and bind to the bottom of a foot.

- The blood of a bat will cure baldness

- Eating the brain of a Screech Owl is the only dependable remedy for headache.

- For rheumatism, apply split frogs to the feet.

- To reduce a swollen leg, split a live cat and apply while still warm.

- Bite the head off the first butterfly you see, and you will get a new dress.

Above: The good news? Carrie’s headache was cured!

Here’s another one from the book. Not making this up. This is an actual 18th Century Southern folk remedy:

- A small piece of shit worn in a bag round the neck will keep off disease.

In some parts of Kentucky, they still do this. And one final word about the backwoods hicks that came from England, Scotland, and Ireland in the 1700s and populated swaths of the South. They were some bawdy, funny people. Small children were affectionately called “Little Shits,” and they loved to use dirty names for places, such as (these are real river names) Tickle Cunt Branch and Fucking Creek. (Albion’s Seed, 654).

Nice