Gerald Milnes is a folklorist, fiddler, author, documentary filmmaker, ethnomusicologist, amateur anthropologist and the former Folk Arts Coordinator at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, WV. He is the book author & documentary filmmaker of Signs, Cures & Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore. After an intro about milk witchery, Gerald talks about his passion-driven life as a self-taught folklorist. From there he lays out the history of the 18th-century migration of German settlers from the Old World to Pennsylvania and finally into the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia. Living in the region, Gerald befriended & interviewed many of the old timers who revealed to him a mysterious world of folk magic, superstition & occultism still alive on the mountain farmsteads. We hear of witch wars, witch doctoring, hunting magic, animal sacrifice, planting by the signs, selling one's soul to the devil, and the interplay between Christianity & the occult. For the last section, Gerald plays regional songs on his fiddle while telling a story about music's effect on the soul. In closing, he shares some music-lore about rattlesnake tails & a bewitched fiddle.
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