The “belled buzzard” fable is giving a welcome punch to news stories throughout the state founded upon a report coming from Marlinton. The mysterious bird prophet of evil has been seen hovering over some of the farms adjacent to Marlington if credence can be given to the word of a couple of farmers living there. Harvest usually keeps farmers so busy this season of year that there is little time left for telling of tall tales, but a rainy day is conducive to yarn spinning, and there has been a lot of rain lately.
Just why a bell on a buzzard should invest the bird with supernatural distinction has never been explained, but, according to the tale, a couple of idle union soldiers caught the buzzard sometime during the Civil-War, and put the bell upon it, and since then the buzzard only appears at long intervals to spell disaster soon to fall. The story is peculiarly, a native fairy story, other countries have ghosts, banshees, and blood curdling happenings of mystery, but to the southern states belongs the “belled buzzard” and to them alone. Melville Davisson Post, built a story about the belled buzzard that would be difficult to equal in its hair raising suggestion, and its brooding, gripping development. The superstition provided Post with a theme that inspired the writer of weird stories to one of his best efforts.
The buzzard is a grewsome bird, even the ordinary everyday variety; it would be hard to conceive any other live object to which superstition might more readily attach; some fertile mind has some time appreciated this, and the “belled buzzard” has been the result. The buzzard is one haunting note of melancholy ever present in the landscape of the south. To the stranger this scavenger bird is a loathsome touch that might well be exterminated, but the law protects it since it is the “garbage man” of a territory where decay is rapidly induced by heat, and where it performs an indespensable duty in ridding the country of matter that would breed disease is left to lie exposed.
It is quite probable that the current “belled buzzard” is the product of some rainy afternoon in the hay mow, or some young farmer boy’s idea of a huge joke which might have involved the real belling of a buzzard. As for calamities and disasters; this mundane sphere has always had such visitations and always will, whether there is a belled buzzard around to proclaim their arrival; or not.
From— The Fairmont West Virginian. (Fairmont, W. Va.), 11 July 1922. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
