Whippoorwills IV

There are few folklore scholars as diligent and hard working as the now retired William Lynwood Montell formerly of Western Kentucky University. His Ghosts Along the Cumberland: Deathlore in the Kentucky Foothills set a new standard in scholarship. He also quotes the Frank C. Brown collection of North Carolina Folklore , Durham, 1952, which is noted in the brackets below when there is a parallel.

Whippoorwill death lore:

The cry of a whippoorwill is a sign that someone is going to die. [Taylor County, KY, 1966. The informant, female, born 1909 in Green County, KY.]

Montell states that Brown (coded #5330) also collected this logia “If a whippoorwill alights near a house and sings, it is a token of death. " Brown also mentions that this logia has traces in Europe and the United States. This same logia was located in Adair County, KY in 1963.

When a whip-o-will {sic} calls out at night, the number of times he calls will be the number of days before a death in the family. [Barren County, KY, 1966, female, born 1946 in Barren County]

If a whippoorwill stays near your home, there will be a death withing twenty-four hours. [Taylor County, KY, 1965, female, born 1937, Taylor County - - Brown #5332 states “If a whippoorwill cries at you back door, you will hear of a death within twenty-four hours."]

If a whippoorwill hollers close to the house, there will be a death in the family. [Taylor County, KY, 1966, male, born 1938, Taylor County.

If a whippoorwill lights on a sick persons’ bed post and sings, death will follow. [Green County, KY, 1967, female, born 1895, Green County].

Soo… we see that in both North Carolina and Kentucky the whippoorwill death legend was pronounced.

p. 40, 41, Ghosts Along the Cumberland: Deathlore in the Kentucky Foothills, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1975