The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-02-25
AT A GANDER PULL.
Not a Nineteenth Century Kind Of
Fun, But Interesting.

Julian Ralph Attends an old-Time
Sport in virginia-A Great Deal to
Keep the Women Laughing-Misery
for the Gander.
Julian Ralph, in Harpers Weekly.
A gander-pull was once the only essen
tial for the making of a countryman's
Christmas in parts of Virginia, Nothing
more except a little today to develop
enthusiasm was needed a century or even
two centuries ago The inroads of time
are slow on the western borders of Vir-
GINA, where the mountains link the
mother of Presidents to West Virginia,
/ Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina.
! Old customs die hard in those businesses
of the forest and hill, or else Mr.. Reming
! ton and l would never have seen the gan
der-pull from which we have just re-
! turned, for it is a sport that is all but
| dead. If ever there was an old-fashioned
sport, or one more redolent of primitive
conditions, it woulH be hard to name it
without going as far back as it goes itself
away back to English greens, and TO a
people simpler and more rude than the
| Observation-Disclosures of Cromwell's soldiers.
| Why the gander-pull should have sur
| viYed in the mountains of Virginia is part
of quite another story But let the reader
| be the Judge of it, and as he reads let him
consider it bit of social bric-a-brac, a
relic of our great-grandfathers' rude and
| primitive tastes.
For the invitations imagine half sheet
of note paper tackled on the door of a
country store-a simple looking declara-
| ton that there was to be free gander-
pull at 1.-The old Sweet" on such an after
noon; but only simple in appearance, for
in reality it was clarion call to whole
country side. For the scene Tor seat of
war, as the gander might have called it,,
| fancy a lovely valley of farm land
hemmed all around by tall mountains,
some of which are wooded so thickly as
! to look like mounds of fur. Set up in a
meadow is a gallows-frame of rough tim
Der sixteen feet high. Two upright poles
and cross piece compose it. The coun-
| try folk are in groups when the hour
arrives one group in front OF
the general store, and another
| before the barrOom across the
road, and third, mainly COM
posed of boys, around the gallows-frame.
| The horses that brought the men are in
| evidence everywhere, Tor 1T is horse
back country, region of rough roads
| and trails. There are few vehicles, in
GLIDING a buggy and a surrey and farm
wagon or two, and these have been set up
| like Impoverished galleries along the front
! edge of the field, without their horses.
| The ''gander," which had been tied by
one leg to a wagon wheel in the yard of
the tavern, was in this instance beauti-
| full snowhite and fat goose, but consum-
mate fool after the manner of her kind,
for it was said that she was % years old,
and yet she was waddling around at the
end of her tether looking for food on she
| eve of a tremendous tragedy in which
| she was to suffer the fate of DesdemOnla.
Every now and then a group of men
would go into the yard and looked at the
| gander, always approvingly, and after
| time the master of ceremonies stalked up
! to her, plucked her screaming, from the
lawn, took her to the general store, and
with the help of several men got er into
| a gunny bay. 1t is fair to her to say that
her folly and gluttony left her at this
stage, and she behaved like tragedienne
| of the first magnitude, protesting nightly,
struggling like a Sabine girl, and inhict-
| ing wounds on every hand that dealt her
violence. Nevertheless, she was presently
| done up in the bag with her long 1.-THE
white neck, black eyes and red bill with
| ing like so much of a snake besond the
roselike pucker of the bag where it had
| been tied in front of he breast and wings
| Her neck was left out, because the COM
| ing game was to see who could pull her
| head off. The true and time-honored
! plan was to pluck out all the neck feath-
| ers, and then grease the skin, and this
| had been commanded of the woman
| who sold this particular bird
but she did not do it for some reason, and
now remained for one of the men to re
pair the omission. Two centuries, or one
| century, or half century ago no one
would have stopped short of this bar
| barity; but now some one suggested that
it might be as well merely to grease the
! feathers. The neck would be quite slip
perry enough, he said. There was no pro-
| test, no demand for full observance of
! the old ritual. At the suggestion a man
| came out with a pailfui OF the most I'M
| prepossessing- looking grease, the color of
| burnt lumber and smeared it all over Des-
| demona' S Snow-white neck till it looked as
a barber pole might if it had been painted
! with water cOlOrs ana left out in a rain
storm. The goose has as yet suffered no
physical harm, but it had evidently re-
! ceiVed moral shock, for its supple neck
shot out whenever citizen passed it on
the store porch, and it viciously nipped
! the boots of the men, and the bare feet of
the luckless boy who stopped with his
| back to it to converse with a chum.
1t was long past the advertised hour for
! the gander-pull, but no one was impatient
We who fret II a curtain falls to rise at
! sharp o'clock, or train rolls into a
| depot five minutes later than it should,
| could learn from these Virginians a lesson
| that would prolOng our lives and make US
all happier. A o'clock gander-pull got
| of at 4 80 or 3 o'clock is a great deal more
satisfactory to them than it would be if
| it went off on the minute, like a Ginning
clock or u slave that has no will of his
own Therefore in good and easy time
the master of ceremonies threw the bag
! full of "gander' into a rattletrap farm
wagon, whose qUarrelsOme parts formed
an orchestra or chorus that went with il.
and driving under the gallows-frame,
/ proceeded to tie the bag to the cross
piece Of the gallows. And Desdemona did
! better than merely declare her innocence
or wall her fate. She bit the man hand
with tiashiike strokes that set the crowd
roaring with laughter-that Earnv pic
! turesque crowd of long-limbe3 r.atain-
GERS, at ease in their bea titut vaueY, Sud
! forming picture wor.sF Is raining of
the purple and blue a.. sreen Allegha-
MES.
The while the people laughed the "Can-
der squawked. Meantime the poor bird
was left hanging in the shapeless bag, and
the managerial man took down a list of
the men who volunteered to ride, fast as
their horses could be made to run, from a