Western sentinel. [volume] (Winston [i.e. Winston-Salem], N.C.) 1856-1886, 1884-10-16
RANDOM "REMINISCENCES
OF OLD GAIT, ROWAN'S RETIRED
RESURRECTIONIST ESO1IANCER,
Roadster and Retailer of Rye---The
Spirit-Seller and Graveyard Ghoul
who was Sold by Ghost and De-
youred by WhippOorwills.


Special Correspondence of the Sentinel.
Mt. VERNON, n. c., Oct. IL
Riding past a wayside groggery down
on Sandy Ridge the other day, | over
heard that popular original soloist
and maker of machine-rhymes and
doggerel ditties, Dick Boteler, per-
forming on his ubiquitous banjo with
vocal accompaniment, to the wondrcus
delectation of small but very select
crowd of liquor-swilling loafers inside
the diminutive temple of Bacchus. l
reined my horse up to the rear win
dow, (Which chanced to be the one
nearest the road,) and listened just
long enough to hear the opening vers-
es of his song:
"Did you ever hear tell of Old Gait,
Who to speak to ghost wouldn't halt,
That into Galt's omnibus popped, sir;
Or rayther, got on his old ''slide,''
OF big whis'tey barrel astride,
And they say that Q. q. never stopped, sir;
When he was a-travelliag down
The road that leads to Wilkes town,
One moonshiny night III December,
Past the graveyard of Unity Church?
Oh not to be left in the lurch
By the ghosts, he was swift TO remember!
-'Did you ever hear tell of Old Gait,
Who couldn't somehow ever halt
In his trade, christened yulgarly lyiRgj
How he told EN- the day he was born,
On the day his teeth first could crack corn,
And cen on the day he was dying?
OF the deepest of mud he could tell,
Which his wagon SKINNED easy and well,
Somewhere away down about Camden
So thick that on top o. G. drove
The less snterprising above,
Hauling spirits again to his dram-den -
"Did you ever hear tell of Old Gait,
Who used to have one little fault,
Which was trading in private with niggers?
Wheat bought he from old nassa's barn
With some drams and, as they couldn't larn,
He would cheat 'em trife in figgers.
From the gallows he bought Trinlbles Joe,
With a gallon of whiskey SO,
For doctor way down about Camden;
And lashed the nigs corpse to his slide,
While merrily off he did ride,
Hauling ''spirits' again to his dram-den?
"Did you ever hear tell of Old Calf,
Whom the whippoorwills pepper and salt
Sprinkled over and over and over
Come down by the million in droves
On him, in the long lea pine groves,
Till him and poor Joe they did cover
Then Gait they deyoured piece meals
Made shout for the poor naked Niger;
And dug Joe a grave then and there
With their claws? Now, old white man,
beware,
The "Epithalamium" of Dicks dit
ty | did not wait to hear, as [ well
understood from its "Exordium," car
gumentum" and "Histrionic Bent"
what it would be; and | logged on
over the road referred to in the song,
rejecting upon the queer doings of
Old Gait, Of whom from my child
hood / have SO often heard.
Between two and three miles from
the aforesaid spiritual shanty is long
sandy stretch in the public highway,
lthe Salisbury and Wilkesboro mail
route,) fankea IN one side by the
graveyard of nifty Church, and on
the other by forest Of gnarled and
venerable oaks. The neighborhood
chroniclers relate how Old Gait had
been up the Wilkes road some miles
late one evening at still-house, wait
ing for the manufacturer to finish him
out fresh barrel Of the essence of
rye for has groggery, which then stood
In the lower corner of Potneck and
close to the confines of Sodom and
Gomarrah on the Yadkin. He had
been telling the biggest kind of tales,
as usual, to the still-house loungers
for instance, that he had hogs at home
SO enveloped in fat that he had to
kick 'em and make 'em squal to find
which end the head belonged to-that
his father was shot, at the battle of
Kings Mountain, through the body,
and they drew seven silk handker-
chiefs through him to wipe out the
bruised blood, and he got well and
shot and killed fifteen Britishers in
less than month-that when he was
down to Camden with his wagon last
winter the mud was very deep and
powerful thick; and, seeing hat ap-
parently lying in the road under him
as he drove along, he stopped from his
seat on his saddle-horse to pick it up,
when, on closer inspection, the hat
proved to be on the head of the driver
of another. team Immediately beneath
him, and in a lower layer of mud from
that which upheld him and his wagon
and horses. Giles Connors, who was
among the listeners, was heard to say,
as he rode off some time before, Old
Gait was ready to start, that. ''he
would make the old romancer see
worse than, that tonight
1t was near midnight when Gait came
whistling along the afore mentioned
sandy stretch in the road, astride of his
old horse's back, and dragging the whis-
key-barreI upon his "slide," when out
stepped Giles, wrapped in a white
sheet, from behind one of the big oaks
and took seat on the barrel. Now,
notwithstanding Old Jerry Gait was
said to have. ransacked graveyards
and stolen corpses to sell to the doc
tors to. anaton,ize. his heart failed him
when he felt the additional draft on
his slide, and, turning his head, be-
held his ghostly passenger. The chron-
iclers asseyerate in. the most solemn
manner, that Calf took orc look at
the apparition and no more-that his
whistling ceased and he spake not a
word-then resolutely turned his gaze
in the direction of Potneck, and -hur-
ried homeward, homeward, homeward,
breathlessly, relentlessly, neuer looking
behi,ad 1im an y more !; while whack,