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“Old Foster” - Strange Things Sometimes Still Happen
Collected by Isobel Gordon Carter from Jane Gentry, edited by Angela Carter
They use to be an old man, he lived way over in the forest by hisself, and all he lived on was he caught women and boiled ‘em in font of the fire and eat ‘em. Now the way my mother told me, he’d go into the villages and tell ‘em this and that and get ‘em to come out and catch ‘em and jest boil they breasts. That’s what she told me, and then I’ve heard that he jest eat ‘em. Well, they was a beautiful stout woman, he liked ‘em the best (he’d a been right atter me un your mother) so every day he’d come over to this woman’s house and he’d tell her to please come over to see his house. ”Why, Mr Foster, I can’t find the way.” “Yes, you can. I’ll take a spool of red silk thread out of my pocket and I’ll start windin’ hit on the bushes and it’ll carry ye straight to my house.’ So she promised him one day she’d come.
So she got her dinner over one day and she started. So she follered the red silk thread and went on over to his house. When she got there, there was a poor little old boy sittin’ over the fire a boilin’ meat. And he says, “Laws, Aunt”—she was his aunt—“what er you doin’ here? Foster kills every woman that comes here. You leave here jest as quick as you can.”
She started to jump out the door and she saw Foster a comin’ with two young women, one under each arm. So she run back and says, “Jack, honey, what’ll I do, I see him a comin’?” “Jump in that old closet under the stair and I’ll lock you in,” says Jack.
So she jumped in and Jack locked her in. So Foster come in and he was jest talkin’ and a laughin’ with those two girls and tellin’ the most tales, and he was goin’ to taken ‘em over to a corn shuckin’ next day. Foster says, “Come on in and have supper with me.” So Jack put up some boiled meat and water. That’s all they had. As soon as the girls stepped in and seed the circumstance and seed their time had come their countenance fell. Foster says, “You better come in and eat, maybe the last chanct you’ll ever have.” Girls both jumped up and started to run. Foster jumps up and ketched ‘em, and gets his tomihawk and starts upstairs with ‘em. Stairs was shackly and rattly, and as they went up one of the girls retched her hand back and caught hold of a step and Foster jest tuck his tomihawk and hacked her hand off. It drapped into whar my mother was. She laid on in there until next day atter Foster went, then Jack let her out.
She jest bird worked over to where the corn shuckin’ was. When she got there Foster was there. She didn’t know how to git Foster destroyed. The people thought these people got out in the forest and the wild animals ud ketch ‘em. So she says, “I dreamt an awful dream last night. I dreamed I lived close to Foster’s house and he was always a-wantin’ me to come to his house.”
Foster says, “Well, that ain’t so, and it shan’t be so, and God forbid it ever should be so.”
She went right on, “And I dreamt he put out a red thread and I follered hit to his house and there uz Jack broilin’ women’s breasts in front of the fire.”
Foster says, “Well, that ain’t so, and it shan’t be so, and God forbid it ever should be so.”
She went right on, “And he says, ‘What er you doin’ here! Foster kills every woman uz comes here.’”
Foster says, “Well, that ain’t so, and it shan’t be so, and God forbid it ever should be so.”
She went right on, “And I seed Foster a-comin’ with two girls. And when they git thar the girls their hearts failed ‘em and Foster ketched ‘em and gets his tomihawk and starts up stairs with ‘em.”
Foster says, “Well, that ain’t so, and it shan’t be so, and God forbid it ever should be so.”
She went right on, “The stairs was shackly and rattly and as they went up, one of the girls retched her hand back and caught hold of a step and Foster jest tuk his tomihawk and hacked her hand off.”
Foster says, “Well, that ain’t so, and it shan’t be so, and God forbid it ever should be so.”
She says, “Hit is so, and it shall be so and here I’ve got the hand to show.”
And they knowed the two girls was missin’ and they knowed it was so, so they lynched Foster and then they went and got Jack and bound him out.
 | twatwafflesyrup SAID: 1. vodka 2. cats 3. misandry 4. Five Guys french fries 5. photography |
hahahaha god
so true
I was about to say ‘hey tumblr remind me to type some stories up for folkloristik (poor neglected blog) later’ but I’m not doing anything rn what am I waiting for
what are the top five Things you associate with me
characters pairings shows objects jokes memes games etc
Gene Roddenberry, from personal conversations with Gene in 1990, at La Costa, CA
pattern notes for a dress of nettles
i.
spells have not broken for kisses
since your mother’s mother’s day,
but some things never change. learn to cook
from her cramped recipes. the ingredients are
strange and the instructions precise:
one half teaspon salt from heartbreak’s tears
100g milk warmed in the light of a new moon
hogwash, yes, but you may find it calming nonetheless.ii.
the woods will not swallow you alive, no matter how dark
but there is no shame in staying warm by the hearth
until it is spring, and the wolves less hungryiii.
you are under no obligations. choose carefully.
everything will be a test. follow instructions to the letter.
do not improvise. there are no guarantees.
begin to keep records of your own.iv.
weigh the truth in hand, hard and smooth
you do not believe in anything
hold the truth between your tongue and teeth
you must not speak
wear the truth in the constant screaming of your changed bones
you will accept consequencesv.
do not mark the passage of time. you may become numb.
you will not learn to hate your beloved,
nothing so maudlin. forgetting isn’t so bad. keep going.
you will no longer recognize your body.
if you have the skill, if you follow your grandmother’s recipes
exactly, you may now free yourself.
hearts are best stored in a bottle-green jar at the back of the pantry.
hide it well, and you will not miss it.
you never know who might be out there, trying to bring it back to you.
I hate thinking ‘oh I need to go do something’ and then immediately forgetting what it was I wanted to do
not mentioned in that post: the night maria and I spent copy-and-pasting 50 shades of grey quotes at each other
