Charming the warts and quoting the Psalms

When I was grow­ing up, I heard a lot of things that did­n’t quite fit inside the ver­sion of Christianity I encoun­tered on Sunday mornings. 

Things spo­ken quietly. 

Things shared on front porch­es and around kitchen tables. 

Things peo­ple often pref­aced with, “Now, I don’t know if I believe this or not, but...” 

Someone knew a woman who could talk a wart away. 

Someone else swore a cer­tain prayer could stop bleeding. 

There were sto­ries about speak­ing scrip­ture over ill­ness, over live­stock, over crops, over chil­dren head­ed into danger. 

Nobody called it magic. 

At least not where I came from. 

It was sim­ply some­thing peo­ple knew. 
Or believed. 
Or remem­bered. 

Like so much of Appalachian folk­lore, these sto­ries lived in the space between cer­tain­ty and mystery. 

As we’ve explored through­out this series, moun­tain faith has nev­er fit neat­ly into cat­e­gories. The peo­ple of Appalachia blend­ed Christian belief with old­er cus­toms, prac­ti­cal wis­dom, and tra­di­tions car­ried through gen­er­a­tions. One place where blend­ing becomes espe­cial­ly vis­i­ble is in the impor­tance many moun­tain peo­ple placed on spo­ken words. 

Not just what was said. 
But how it was said. 
Who said it. 
And when. 

Long before mod­ern psy­chol­o­gy explored the pow­er of lan­guage, Appalachian peo­ple under­stood some­thing deeply human: words affect us. 

A kind word can heal. 
A cru­el one can wound for years. 
A prayer can com­fort. 
A bless­ing can strengthen. 

Perhaps it isn’t sur­pris­ing that com­mu­ni­ties shaped by hard­ship, iso­la­tion, and faith came to believe spo­ken words car­ried pow­er beyond what could be measured. 

In many Appalachian fam­i­lies, scrip­ture was­n’t sim­ply read. 
It was used. 

Verses from the Psalms were espe­cial­ly important. 

The Psalms con­tain prayers for pro­tec­tion, heal­ing, deliv­er­ance, com­fort, jus­tice, and courage. For gen­er­a­tions, moun­tain peo­ple turned to them not only for spir­i­tu­al guid­ance but as liv­ing words spo­ken into dif­fi­cult situations. 

A Psalm might be recit­ed beside a sickbed. 
Spoken over a wor­ried child. 
Whispered dur­ing a storm. 
Repeated while wait­ing for a loved one to return home safely. 

The dis­tinc­tion between prayer and prac­tice was often blurred. 

The words them­selves became part of the healing. 

I think that’s one rea­son the Psalms have endured so pow­er­ful­ly with­in Appalachian cul­ture. They are deeply human. 

They rage. 
They grieve. 
They plead. 
They hope. 

They sound less like for­mal the­ol­o­gy and more like con­ver­sa­tions spo­ken from the depths of ordi­nary life. 

Mountain peo­ple under­stood that lan­guage. 
Many folk tra­di­tions reflect­ed this same belief. 

There were sto­ries of “charm­ing” warts away through spo­ken rit­u­als passed from one gen­er­a­tion to the next. Certain heal­ers were said to stop bleed­ing by recit­ing spe­cif­ic words or prayers. Some peo­ple believed burns could be soothed, pain less­ened, or ill­ness­es eased through prayers known only to a hand­ful of trust­ed individuals. 

Today, these sto­ries often pro­voke strong reac­tions. Some dis­miss them entire­ly. Others embrace them with­out question. 

Personally, I find myself more inter­est­ed in what these prac­tices reveal about the peo­ple who car­ried them. 

Because whether or not one believes such sto­ries lit­er­al­ly, they tell us some­thing impor­tant about Appalachian faith. 

The women I grew up around under­stood this instinctively. 

They blessed meals. 
Prayed over chil­dren. 
Spoke com­fort at funer­als. 
Offered encour­age­ment to weary neighbors. 

When tragedy struck, they rarely arrived emp­ty-hand­ed. They brought casseroles, yes, but they also brought sto­ries, scrip­ture, prayer, and presence. 

In many ways, heal­ing and speak­ing were nev­er entire­ly separate. 

I think about my Great Gran often when I con­sid­er these old traditions. 

One of her favorite warn­ings was, “Don’t speak things into existence.” 

If some­one start­ed talk­ing about all the ways some­thing could go wrong, she’d stop them. 

If some­body pre­dict­ed bad luck, she’d shake her head. 

“Don’t speak things into exis­tence,” she’d say. 

As a child, I took it as one of those say­ings old­er folks repeat­ed with­out much thought. But as I grew old­er, I began to under­stand there was an entire world­view hid­ing inside those five words. 

My Great Gran believed words mattered. 

Not in the dra­mat­ic way movies por­tray mag­ic. Not in a way she would have ever described as supernatural. 

But she believed bless­ings car­ried weight. She believed prayer changed peo­ple. And she believed there was wis­dom in being care­ful about what we con­tin­u­al­ly invit­ed into our lives through our speech. 

Looking back now, I real­ize how deeply Appalachian that belief was. 

She was­n’t some­one who talked end­less­ly about faith. 
She lived it. 

She had a way of speak­ing that made peo­ple feel stead­ier. Safer. She knew when to offer a scrip­ture and when to sim­ply sit beside some­one car­ry­ing grief. 

And if Great Gran embod­ied the qui­et pow­er of words, my Great Papaw Aut was known for some­thing else entirely. 

He charmed warts. 

Growing up, peo­ple would come from all around if they need­ed a wart removed. I nev­er ques­tioned it as a child. It was sim­ply some­thing Papaw Aut did. 

When some­one came to him, he’d ask for a penny. 

He would take the pen­ny and hold it between his hands, whis­per­ing some­thing so soft­ly that nobody could hear it. Then he’d rub the pen­ny over the wart while his lips con­tin­ued to move in words too qui­et to catch. 

Afterward, he’d hand the pen­ny back and tell them to put it some­where safe where it would­n’t get lost. 

And before long, the wart would disappear. 

All my life, I heard the same expla­na­tion. 
Papaw could­n’t tell any­one the words. 
If he revealed the secret, he would lose the abil­i­ty to per­form the charm. 
Instead, the knowl­edge would be passed on when the time came. 

And it was. 

Before he died, he passed it to my mother. 

I watched her per­form the same rit­u­al through­out my life. 

Then one day, in my ear­ly twen­ties, I devel­oped a stub­born wart on the bot­tom of my foot. Instead of reach­ing for an over-the-counter treat­ment, I did what gen­er­a­tions of my fam­i­ly had done before me. 

I went to my mom. 

She fol­lowed the same rit­u­al Papaw Aut had taught her. A pen­ny. Whispered words. A hand pressed gen­tly against my foot. 

Then she hand­ed me the penny. 

“Put it some­where safe,” she said. 

So I did. 

At least, I meant to. 

As the weeks passed, I for­got all about it. The pen­ny dis­ap­peared into some for­got­ten draw­er, box, or cor­ner of my life. 

And the wart dis­ap­peared too. 

Maybe for­get­ting about the pen­ny was part of the mag­ic all along.
Or maybe the pow­er was nev­er in the pen­ny. 
Maybe it lived in belief. 
In hope. 

In par­tic­i­pat­ing in a rit­u­al car­ried through gen­er­a­tions by peo­ple you trust­ed completely. 

I hon­est­ly don’t know. 

What I do know is that I still don’t have that wart. 
And I still don’t know where that pen­ny end­ed up. 

Whether some­one sees sto­ries like this as folk­lore, faith heal­ing, coin­ci­dence, rit­u­al, or some­thing else entire­ly, they are unde­ni­ably part of Appalachian cul­ture. They reveal a peo­ple who believed bless­ings mat­tered and that heal­ing could arrive in ways that did­n’t always fit neat­ly into mod­ern explanations. 

As for me, I’ll always be a believ­er in Appalachian folk­lore and moun­tain magic. 

After all, there’s still a miss­ing pen­ny out there some­where with my name on it. 

Whether spo­ken from a church pul­pit, a front porch rock­er, or a grand­moth­er’s kitchen table, words have always car­ried weight in these mountains. 

The peo­ple who came before us under­stood that. 

They blessed. 
They prayed. 
They com­fort­ed. 
They healed. 

They spoke words intend­ed to draw peo­ple clos­er to one anoth­er, clos­er to com­mu­ni­ty, and clos­er to the Divine. 

But words can do more than heal. 

They can also wound. 
They can cre­ate belong­ing — or exclu­sion. 
They can offer com­fort — or inspire fear. 

As Appalachian Christianity evolved, the same sacred lan­guage that once soothed grief and strength­ened weary hearts some­times took on a dif­fer­ent tone. In some com­mu­ni­ties, mes­sages of grace became inter­twined with mes­sages of shame. Reverence gave way to fear. Questions became dan­ger­ous. Doubt became suspect. 

The sto­ry of Appalachian faith is not only a sto­ry of heal­ing and belonging. 

It is also a sto­ry of what hap­pens when fear begins speak­ing loud­er than love. 

And that sto­ry deserves to be told, too.