There were two old women, sisters.
One of the two sisters was a witch. "I'm going now, sister!" she would say, and then the witch would turn herself into a hoot owl and fly up the chimney out into the night, perching in a tree near their house.
Inside, her sister could hear the owl hooting in the darkness, and she hooted back, making the sound of a hoot owl: hi-khi-kh-hoo-hoo hi-khi-kh-hoo-hoo.
The witch became an owl to steal chickens.
That was how the sisters lived: the witch hunted in the night and brought home chickens for them to eat.
I never would have noticed, but the photographer points out that the owl has just fed; you can see a tiny drop of blood on the beak:
This is another one of the stories told by Mrs. Margaret Brown, a Catawba woman who was born around 1835; she died in 1922. I really appreciate the emphasis on the sisters supporting each other, and the practicality of what the witch did: she became an owl so that they could have food to eat.
You can see the other stories I've retold by Mrs. Brown and by her daughter Sally Gordon whose tales are transcribed and translated in Frank Speck's Catawba Texts. Here is the text of this story:
This is a recording of the call of a female hoot owl; in my story I added in the hoo-hoo part in addition to the screech sound used by the storyteller:
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