“Betsey and the Mole Skin” is a popular tale from the Ozark Mountains that tells of a young couple, an unnamed man and the “schoolmarm” Betsey. The character of Betsey, an educated but naïve young woman, is often used in Ozark folktales as a foil to a more cynical and often lascivious young man.
Such is the case in the tale of “Betsey and the Mole Skin,” in which Betsey is reluctant to engage in intercourse with her boyfriend, preferring instead to satisfy his urges manually. He protests, citing a mountain superstition that if a man doesn’t have regular intercourse, his penis will turn into a wild animal. Being an educated woman, Betsey dismisses this concern as a myth for the uneducated. The man then visits Gram French, an experienced older woman, who tells the man to kill a mole and skin it, and to place the skin over his penis, face and teeth at the tip, next time he and Betsey are together. The man does as he is instructed, and when Betsey reaches into his pants, she is shocked and devastated at having caused this transformation in her boyfriend’s member. He then tells her he must go to a specialist in town, then takes a short holiday, returning with his penis as good as new. Betsey then agrees that she has to change her attitude toward sex.
This type of bawdy story is surprisingly common in American folklore. While their R-rated nature may seem shocking to modern readers, these tales would have been told fairly openly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even in the presence of children. In addition, the meaning of the tales is far more nuanced than a simple sex joke, providing insight into the changes of gendered relationships with the onset of modernity. Betsey represents both the advent of enlightenment ideals of education and rationalism, as well as shifting ideas regarding sexual mores.
Gram French is a fascinating example of the wise elder character who is aware that the notion of a man’s penis turning into a wild animal is merely a superstition, and knows how to use this legend to manipulate Betsey’s naïveté. Gram French has no moral problem with helping the man deceive Betsey into allowing him to have sex with her, and her role as moral compass in the Ozark folktales suggests that this was seen, on balance, as an ethically acceptable act.
Ozark tales such as Betsey and the Mole Skin offer insight into the lifeways of early rural America, and the practical role that stories played in managing communal relationships at a time when the world around the small mountain communities of the Ozarks was rapidly and undeniably changing.
Kate Stockton Kelley
See also Farmer’s Daughter; Vaginal Serpent Theme; Women in Folklore
Further Reading
Legman, Gershon. 1962. “Toward a Motif-Index of Erotic Humor.” Journal of American Folklore 75 (297): 227–248.
Legman, Gershon. 1963. The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart.
Randolph, Vance. 1976. Pissing in the Snow and Other Ozark Folktales. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Steele, Phillip. 1983. Ozark Tales and Superstitions. Gretna, LA: Pelican.