Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2024 10:17:30 -0500 From: Jacob Schwann Subject: PEN&COB #6 bisexual incest P&C #6 PEN&COB Welcome! This revision of earlier Nifty bisexual incest et al. submissions is in the manner of Victorian erotica, being soft and slow as well as hard and fast. Herein are recounted the amorous misadventures of young Cobby, his sister Penny, and their family and friends. All communications read; and in the main answered: cobschwann@gmail.com Support Nifty! (using link https://donate.nifty.org/). + + Letter #6: GREEN GROTTO & NEWS CLIPPINGS Epistler: Jacob Cygnet Schwann Date: 1930's -1- Initial: The `Green Grotto' near Old Aunt Elsa's Red Brick Farmhouse, at Pike Lake Crossroads, close by Mount Forest town & -2- Later: Regarding `News Clippings' found in a family `Calf-Skin Chest' at The Parsonage by Shallow Lake Letter #6; Chapter I Green Grotto -1- Dear Uncle Doctor: Old Aunt Elsa..., ...welcomed us onto the veranda of the shaded, red-brick farmhouse at Pike Lake Crossroads. She sat on the slatted-wood porch swing with her hands folded upon her lap. All in black; she must have been a hundred years old. She was squat like a toad with weathered features, deeply lined skin and such piercing, iridescent eyes. Despite her many years and tribulations, that face always seemed young to us. She had a shy smile of welcome, a smile full of melancholy and resignation. Perhaps because of her tender look, we were warmed when she gave Penny and me wonderful hugs and tasty morsels. A peek inside the old farmhouse showed it to be dark, dusty, cool and cozy. The front hall was lined with worn caps and faded capes dangling from pegs in the old plaster. And that bamboo coat-&-hat stand. There was a huge aspidistra houseplant. Immense Cousin Max laughed and called that leafy flora, "A draggled old beast, creeping like an unclean beetle to the grave!" Down the long, dusky hall of the farmhouse and to the right was the darkened, hallowed library. We were told not to go in there alone. The walls were lined with bookshelves containing books, books, books -- I had never seen so many books - hundreds of volumes of herbal and medicinal lore. Other things could just be made out in the shadows. Old museum cases crammed with stuffed, mounted animals and strange, ancient objects of yore: fossils, rocks, meteorites, butterflies, birds, and skins. On one long, low, shelf-like table there were `THE BONES'. Bones set on a humble alter with tortured statuettes and half-burned candle sticks to either side. Bones - revered family bones wrapped in faded, shiny-black oilcloth. Sacred Cygnet Schwann family bones. To one's left of the hall was the shadowy parlor. The great fireplace and the horse-hair sofa looked out the wiggly glass of tall, double-hung windows toward a weather-beaten springhouse and ice-pond. There were the pair of small tundra swans and their goslings. From time immemorial, the male swan was called `The Cob', and the female `The Pen'. They grew up as sibling hatchlings from the same clutch of eggs. They found each other as young swans at their first coupling, and mated for life -- `semper fideles'. Old Aunt Elsa had us wind the ancient family `Grandfather Josiah wall clock'. We listened to its `tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock', and counted as it tolled the afternoon hours: `Ding...Ding...Ding...'. In time to come she had us take the sacred clock back with us to hang at the turn of the high stairwell in the crumbling Parsonage by Shallow Lake. The clock was to watch over us, she said. I was instructed to give the doleful intonation: ..."May I keep it ever wound. -May it tick the minutes and sound the hours for our dearly departed ever-young Grandfather Josiah. -May his bones find peace. -May his bones find peace. -May his bones find peace." One sunny day, Old Aunt Elsa sent the two of us kids out to play along by `The Flowing Waters', as she called them. I was not yet eleven and Penny but a year younger. Down the dusty road we went, a mile or so below the old farm, to a tributary of the Saugeen River. We had been told to keep down on the lower path, and stay to the 'sunset' side - the west side - of the watercourse. So, we went beyond the falls at the old salmon-hole, that deep swimming pool which older kids and big folks used with the silly sign: "!- No-Skinny-Dipping-ALONE -!" Penny and I trotted along and came to a sandy area. Then I figured we could just go wading in our shorts. But `little-sister' always acted `older-sister' and was the voice of authority. She said that we both must take all our clothes off, every bit, so as to keep them dry. She looked sideways at me with that cheeky smile of hers. "You wanna to see me nekked, don't you Cobby?" I reeled off, "Mother, may I go out to swim?" Penny sing-songed: "Yes, my darling daughter," -Hang your clothes on a hickory limb," -But don't go near the water!" I was half-again taller, yet young Penny was ahead of me in so many ways. So, we hung our clothes on a hickory limb and scampered about starkers. There was short, spunky Penny, amber-skinned with just her long black hair and nothing else. And tall, stringy me, all pale-freckly bare in only my wild red mane. On that hot afternoon we waded naked across to the forbidden `sunrise' side, the east side of the stream. We hurried past the huge old white pine that stretched towering high into the sky. That notorious conifer was so dark and tall - the legendary, hated `Rendering Tree' with its lateral lynching-limb. We hurried downstream to the ruins and high rock arches of the Old Stone Mill. Penny discovered a hidden, leaf-scattered, sort-of-cave where a stone wall had given way. Here beneath the sheltering boughs of pine, cedar and fir was a secret place within the old mill's dark, deep cellar. Beyond was fallen rocky debris and ruined cast-iron machinery. Yet the near entrance was carpeted in fine soft sand, moss, leaves and brushwood. In the center a slight, sinewy hornbeam sapling stretched tall among the encircling evergreen trees. The thin, bluish-grey bark was tight, smooth and fluted into muscular ridges like a strong man's arm. Laughing, my sister and I hunkered there on the sand among the dry leaves. Bits of sunlight came through all dappled. This was our perfect secret place. Our `Green Grotto', as we called it. Since we were at this shaded area all nude in our buck-naked birthday-suits, it was not long before the `I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours' thing came up.... ..."Hey, I'll show you mine if you show me yours." + + + + + Letter #6; Chapter II Green Grotto -2- We drew close.... ...Some part of me was going wide-eyed giving bare Penny the once-over. Such a mischievous, little pixie girl. Watching her scratch down her belly and finger her bare pen that way caused my cob to go all stiff. I stumbled aside and my rigid twig bumped against her leg. She looked at it. A smile turned up the corners of her mouth. She laughed, and was not shy about checking me out. I had not much of a `stick-out-stick' to show for starting puberty, but none-the-less my pulsing boy-juices were hot. The idea of me letting any girl inspect what I had down there, well.... And then maybe my handling and feeling a real girl's `kitty' place up close? Whew! It all made my little rigid ramrod super hard. "Uh.... Okay." To play our game I got behind a stone pillar and she got behind the young hornbeam tree. Penny peeked out at me. I remember her hands clasped about the brawny grey trunk. It was as slim and sleek and powerful as our Dad's muscular upper arm - his flexed bicep. She wrapped her hands around the bole. Then her legs hugged it and she rode it up and down like the ash-wood clothes pole we went sliding on in the back yard of the Parsonage. I stood there until she gasped, getting her breath back with a grin. "Who's first?" I said. "Dunno...," she murmured. "Well, you saw mine when skinny dipping. So, now show me yours!" "Okay. But then you gotta show again. I didn't get a good enough look." Little Sister stepped out all stripped and bare and blushing scarlet. She stood a few yards away, facing me. Penny had these suggestive breast bumps that rose in sweet mini-mounds from her body, with tiny pink nipples. She pushed out her chest and spread her knees. She peeled her hands away to allow me a good look. I came close and closer and closest and stared. My eyes could not leave her hairless itty-bitty kitty-pen, mounded like a small eggshell with a slight slit of glistening pink in the center. I swear I could smell a soft, sea-side aroma from that most secret place. It was, to speak the truth, an arousing moment in my young life. She quick covered back up with her hand and turned sideways. "Okay. Now's your turn," she said. I nodded, knowing she might touch me there. I crept around and took my own hand away. Her eyes hunted all over naked me. Most often my penis was but a squirmy, snail-like little worm. But having awakened to the excitements of the afternoon, my itty boner now popped out full-bore. Penny had no problem seeing it. It was as long and hard as it had ever been. Even more so, as we both could tell. It pulsed up and down of its own volition. She stared at my stiff, skinny dick. Penny grinned, with just the tip of her tongue held between her teeth. "Oooh Cobby, that's somethin'. Different from before, isn't it? Yet so very different from Daddy's one, huh?. May I?" she asked with stretched fingers. "Y-y-yeah...," I said, being bold. I popped my hips to stick it out. She stared at my rigid penis, which just added to its steeliness. Then her hands were at me. She clasped my tight, marble-sized balls. She rolled and pinched them much too hard. "OW...!" and I scrunched over with a yell. "Sorry...." It seemed dirty at the time, and we found ourselves snickering with each other. She ran her fingers along the underside of my thin dick, pinching the long foreskin at the tip to draw it back and forth. Of a sudden my woozy, `need-to-pee' feeling came upon me. All I knew was that it felt like a wonderful, dizzy, swimming and flying itch which made me weak in the knees. I held my breath while I floated and sank until I got blue and about fell over. To have it handled was to want it rubbed more and more and more. I ended up having to take a giant pee. Except I could not pee. Everything went tight and it ached deep below. Penny squeezed again, and yet again. I jumped. Penny sensed how good it felt for me, and then..., ...it went soft. + + + + + Letter #6; Chapter III Green Grotto -3- Sister Penny grinned..., ..."Now Cobby, feel me!" She was foxy and close, pushing forward, thrusting everything of hers at me. I was afraid. Here it was. I knew it. The image of it all was etched into me. From the past by our change-the-baby game. And exploring after the bath with Mom. And the Japanese `rocket art' picture book in the bottom of Dad's closet. Yet here it was all so different. Here. Now. Before me. She pushed close, placing her naked hip tight against my own skinny thigh. ~Wooo~..., wondrous! And so then my trembling fingertips slid low, lower on her beckoning bare belly - and just grazed the smooth rising soft lift of her kitty-pen. Pink and springy and feeling warm, the sides were puffy, swollen, almost bursting, looking ripe. As she wriggled, Penny let me know when I was not doing it right. She grabbed my finger hard. "I've put things in there before," she said in a whisper. "A little jiggly carrot and a toothbrush handle - but I'll like your finger best." She had me push it at her. She seemed to want it. Like pillows parting, there was the tiny pee hole with its hood. We remembered from the pictures in Old Aunt Elsa's medical texts: the `urethra' and `prepuce'. I touched the wet. It was moist and juicy, like thick syrup from canned peaches. It made me lick my lips. Ever so soft and slow my finger jittered at her. My sister giggled and gasped and sighed. Penny snuggled closer and put her hand on top of mine to make me push harder. Then harder still. She bugged her eyes out, threw her head forward then back. She stuck together with me there, side by side -- her and me - her body stiff as a board. Then.... Then she subsided, sighing, softening, succumbing. She slid down all limp onto the leafy sand with a grand grin on her face that grew to a wide smile. With soft chuckles she gave me a wink. So, then Penny wanted to play house. " 'Hansel and Gretel'?" I asked. "No," she said. " 'Mommy and Daddy'." We had seen our mother and father under the bedcovers, of course. And we had watched bulls hump at cows in the meadow, and dogs tied into bitches by the barn, and roosters set on hens in the yard. So, we played at doing the same - sort of. We wrestled wiggling, stripped naked about each other on the sand and dry leaves in our Green Grotto. Not having the essential details down, Penny wanted to be the rooster and have me be the hen. So we did that, grappling and rubbing and tickling - being naked and rolling around on each other; on the sand and on the leaves beneath the flexing, narrow hornbeam. I had no idea what to do for real with my cob. All this was fascinating. Yet frustrating. And somehow unfulfilling. "Kiss me." she giggled, "and I'll kiss you." "NAH...! Unh-unh! No way! Ugh!" It all was little more than nude wrestling. As we grappled, my hardon just got more so. I felt that itch, that exquisite unpleasant fullness in my throat and deep in my naughty bits. Choking and gagging, like wallowing in a murky marsh - swirling-shaking-seeing-stars.... I got terrified. A caption from that old hometown newspaper picture from the calf-skin chest in Dad's closet came back to me: "Boy Lynched -- Commits Incest, Molests Own Sister." Was that what I was doing now? Would Penny tell? Would they hang me up on the great tall Rendering Pine with a rope? Would they cut my `it' off down there. Would they set fire to me? I could not breathe. My sister gave a nasty laugh and said, "More! Let's do more." That was to make me go all pale and look scared again, which it did. I pulled away. To my surprise she said she liked our game. And she wanted to do it again someday. That was unexpected. She was to be 'The Girl' - all weak and helpless. And me to be 'The Boy' - all strong and knowing. We giggled at the silliness. This was to be `sandbox sex' - about learning to share - about sharing one's toys. But I was afraid. Afraid to report back to the farm. I thought Penny would talk and cry and tell all that I had done to her. I begged her not to. She thought I was stupid, but agreed to keep everything private. Then we turned away from each other. And so we headed back across to the `sunset' side of the stream, got our clothes down from the hickory limb, and skipped back along... ...toward the farm. + + + + + Letter #6; Chapter IV Green Grotto -4- Later..., ...Old Aunt Elsa knew what she did not let on she knew. Penny and I nestled on either side of her on the wood-slatted porch swing. Here she was in her black woolen dress and old-fashioned bonnet. She was solid, placid and strong with her crinkled rosy face, well-fleshed and well-boned. She always smelled of the earth. She washed her long, wispy, white hair with garden root, combing it with broom stalks. Old Aunt Elsa embodied the ancient village matron talking to her grandchildren, using few words. Yet she consulted seers, and made vows and sacrifices to the 'Great Mother Goddess'. She thought a big sneeze to be the most favorable of all consummate omens - the harbinger of some most glorious, generative and procreant animal climax. "Bless Thee!", she would cry at someone's full-bodied ah-choo, her thankful eyes lifting toward heaven. Neighborhood ladies came on the sly after dark to the back kitchen door. They were in search of potions, remedies and tonics, cures, concoctions, charms and counsel. She was known as a medium, an astrologer, a sorcerer -- cards and palms read, the evil-eye averted, talismans and amulets prepared. They said Old Aunt Elsa had eyes in the back of her head and could look around corners and would see right through you. That last was true enough. Her slow wrinkled lids opened on all-seeing lynx-eyes, bright and luminescent. Old Aunt Elsa leafed through a scrap book of family lore. Here were pen and ink sketches, ancient photographs from glass negatives, and the fresh Kodak prints of our dad's box camera. She drew her crinkled fingers across one frail antique watercolor drawing. In her quiet, breathy, hypnotic voice she told us that this was our family's long-ago matriarch from the earliest eighteen-hundreds. Here, with the pines and craggy peaks about Red Lake in Newfoundland behind her, was a diminished Native figure. She was clad in wind-blown ragged robes, dyed in reds of every imaginable shade - one presumed. Her wizened, ochered face, lined and creased by crevasses of wrinkles, shone forth with two dark, bright-centered ox-eyes - piercing and illuminating - just like ours! Here was an original mother of our Nordik-Native band of outcasts. She had sung songs of pale Viking lads cast adrift upon the sea and washed ashore up on the new-found-land. And of the round, red-tinted maids from the rivers and mountain lakes; ruddy supplicants who tended to the pale outcasts. So Old Aunt Elsa sang to us. She chanted that love song about an ancient Nordic brother and Native sister fulfilling passion in what sounded just like our `Green Grotto': ..." `Take me by the hand. Let us run away together. -Where shall we lie down at noon or midnight? -Look at you! How right it is that your young sister loves you. -You are handsome, my beloved brother, so pleasing to me. -The leaf-scattered ground will be our couch, our luxuriant bed of green. -The pines will be the walls of our house. -Our roofbeams are cedar, our rafters fir.' " (Canticles of Cainan: 1:4, 7, 16-17) We gazed at the farm pond with the pair of small tundra swans - the cob and the pen -- `semper fidelis', united for life. I thought about Penny and me. In truth I could never bear to be long apart from her. Even as children we would creep into each other's beds and sleep snuggled up together. I tried to listen close to Old Aunt Elsa's story to see what else happened to the brother and sister. But Penny and I fell asleep against her before she got to any good parts. We kids were so close then. Nothing more happened between Penny and me after the Green Grotto, and that was the last time we played that way together..., ...for a long while. + + + + + Letter #6; Chapter V Green Grotto -5- I might not think about my sister..., ...when I rubbed myself at night. I lived for the catalog from `Monkey-Ward' [Montgomery Ward & Company mail order house], the `Christmas Wish Book'. I rubbed myself to the pictures of boys my age, and younger, and older boys and men. I studied their provocative poses in underwear and pajamas and swimsuits and bath towels. I thought how they might sigh and moan if I snuggled all bare among them. I wished to give their wienies a tongue lapping just like a slobbering dog. Then their bodies would twitch and convulse and the older ones would have sperms. Of course, I knew from a young age that playing that way with boys was wrong, even in make-believe. Penny was a great swimmer, a true baby otter. Later when we had to move from the Parsonage down to Old Aunt Elsa's farm, Penny became the littlest one on the girls' swim team at the Old Drill Hall gymnasium pool in Mount Forest town. Under that soft exterior she was kind of stringy and strong. Not long and skinny like me, but petite ice-skater or swimmer-sturdy. She sprung cartwheels with the best and wrestled me or anyone to the mat. She could stand and walk on her hands. She could arch her head backwards and touch the floor with her hands and then walk in that position, hands and feet. She could do flying summersaults off of Dad's shoulders. Of course, I did those things too - but she was a girl. Everything changed when she walked into a room. She was `IT'. In time, even our disinterest and our disgust became our desire. Yes - sympathy and desire. The truth is I just loved her. And - would you believe it? - her me! My sister Penny and I had our mortal battles as well. We could not keep our worst sides inside and hidden. Nor our best sides. We became enemies - `Best-Enemies' for sure, but enemies. Yet there was some form of `Hate-Flirting' going on. We danced together when Dad sent new jazzy records home from the Hamilton Inebriate Asylum. He said he had bartered his `services' for them with the jiving orderlies and aides. Penny and I would sneak into Dad's side of their bedroom closet. There on the top shelf was the old Newfoundland-Native elk-horn headdress. It was furry and dusty and moth eaten, and the curved horns arched up on either side. We stared at it to see if it would come alive. It was later to play a momentous role in our lives. (Letters: #24 et al) Piled in the back of the closet were some of Dad's naughty books which had not been confiscated: "Fanny Hill", "Teleny", "Moll Flanders" and more. But we were there with a purpose - to get that wooden box out from behind all the clothes and mess. This was a solid-looking, round-lidded chest about two feet long, studded with iron hobnails. It was known as `The Schwann Family Calfskin Chest', being covered in once fine-tanned calfskin hide. Over the years it had been passed down from generation to generation. Inside were odds and ends, some documentary stuff, printed matter, newspapers and pamphlets which were yellow and gritty with time. But we were after what we called Dad's `Rocket-Art' book, which was in truth `Erotic-Art'. Herein were old Japanese woodblock prints of strange, Oriental people holding each other. A favorite page that Penny and I often went back to showed a circle of junior monks with their penises out and sticking one another in their bottoms or sucking each other with their mouths. One smaller monk was in tears and being held by some others on top of a crouching little girl who had a smile. They held his itty stiff penis to her crack and laughed. The book made us tingle. We looked at it a long time without speaking. Mysterious splatter -- soon to include mine - had made some of the pages stick together. On the following visits I would have to pry those apart to separate them. One night I slipped into the closet with a fitful old battery-torch. Of a sudden there was my kid sister Penny beside me in her nightie. "Penny! What the...? Hey, turn away. Gotta pull my pj's back up. ...And as your big brother I don't think it's right for you to see this stuff anyway...." "Shh...!," she shushed, ignoring me as if I were but a naughty boy. I gulped when she sat beside me and stuck her hand under her nightie. She fingered herself. I felt the blood rush to my cock again. So what did all of this say about me? Was this to be the way of my life? To sit in a closet with filthy drawings? Holy Cainan! Was I only able to `make love' to a bunch of dirty pictures? That, and maybe my dog? [Letter #11 ] The bitter futility of my `love-life' was before me. So, back in the closet and `rocket-art' for yet another night..., ...and another, and another, and another. + + + + + Letter #7; Chapter VI News Clippings -1- Alone on my own..., ...I dug deep in the depths of the small Schwann-Family Calfskin Chest. Within was a packet secured by string. I fiddled with the knot. Attached was a handwritten Cainan Faith Community plea from an early spiritual father: . +++ "Beware the local Black Coat Incest Vigilantes! Whelped of Hellhounds, swathed in shiny black oil-cloth cloaks, they wield knives and wave torches. They take a dim view of our wandering Cainan Faith Community. In fact, they look down upon us all with ill will and lethal intent. This they confirm by knife and noose. . "What holds our Cainan Faith Community together is not any central command structure like the Black-Coats. But ours is a radical-society-communal ideology that advocates extreme democracy, pluralism, and spiritualism. We practice an interbred family style that seeks to counter fundamentalist moral panic and paranoia. We work against partisan conflicts that promulgate conflagrations -- such as cross burnings, lynchings, or 'the end of the world' determinism. Quiet, out-of-sight living -- admittedly with illicit lineage-loving -- is the lifeblood of our movement." . +++ ~There were also news clippings and papers of legend. One had been torn out of a magazine: . "CAINAN FAITH COMMUNITY", `Hamilton Spectator'; published May 3, 1907: "Cainan Faith Community members follow their traditional practices, believing themselves to be the children of the biblical Cain and Canaan, and hence outcasts -- literally the `red-headed stepchildren' of society. While charges of practicing `black magic' have never been proved in open court, nonetheless many communities shun these people. In addition, they are accused of being `eaters of their own blood', an arcane term for committing `holy incest' and becoming breeders and life-mates with the closest family members. It has been claimed that the resultant higher birthrates of these transients would eventually give them too much political power, a situation some liken to `competitive breeding'. . "Their heathen ways and bizarre consanguineous rites led to what they themselves call `The Great Persecutions'. In the 18th century Cainan Faith Community members had been driven first south out of Newfoundland into the Green Mountains (present day Vermont). And then north again in the 19th century to be dispersed in vastly diminished numbers across the Niagara escarpment of Ontario. They settled here and there in scattered households and clung to the old ways at their peril. . "Even today they are stalked by the feared `Black Coat Moral Society,' that self-proclaimed ultra-conservative religious alliance dedicated to eradicating the behaviors of such incesting groups as the Cainan Faith Community peoples." . +++ ~Pages taken from law books: . "Commonwealth Law Library, Vol. 4, `Torts, Damages, Domestic Relations', by Albert H. Blackstone, 1836. Section 14. Incestuous Marriages: "Incest is sexual intercourse (either with or without the assumption of the marriage relation) between persons within certain degrees of consanguinity; such as those contracted between brother--sister, father--daughter, mother--son, cousin--cousin, aunt--nephew, uncle--niece, and other combinations of relations. Such relations or marriages are against Natural Law, are against the Laws of God, are prohibited by the Levitical Law, and are considered as incestuous by the Law of Christianity. They are immoral, and destructive of the purity and happiness of domestic life. They are to be forbidden, outlawed, punished and forever eradicated in the manner of Capital Crimes." . +++ ~Scraps from a government sponsored study: . -"Followers of the Cainan Faith Community practiced the doctrine of `consanguineous mating' or `holy incest'...." -"...a recently discovered 1841 diary of spiritual ecstasies revealed that one Cainan Faith Community church father began his incestuous relations with his mother as a pubertal youth of an exceptionally early age, then with his older sister, and eventually with his three daughters, and also a granddaughter, reportedly siring offspring with each of them. Other entries refer to his many loving liaisons with close male relatives." -"...note was made of another church father having died from being tarred and feathered for similar practices." -"...even though purportedly only a minority of Cainans practiced such `holy incest', many church leaders were reluctant to abandon the custom. They argued that it derived from the Patriarchs of the Holy Book, and to abandon it would destroy the very fabric of the Cainan Community way of life." -"...in defiance of any qualms, and to assert their tribal right, in 1852 the Cainan Community church elders publicly confirmed and proclaimed that `Holy Incest', inter-generational and otherwise, was indeed, then and forever, a central and even necessary Cainan Community belief and practice in perpetuity." -"...however, in 1890 the federal government initiated legal action to seize all material property -- farms, barns, livestock, produce, machinery, etc. - belonging to those deemed to be in violation of moral law." -"...faced with the imminent destruction of their church and economic way of life, the Cainan Faith Community leaders publicly reversed themselves and reluctantly issued the so-called `Cainan Declaration' of that year in which they commanded all community members to uphold the existing anti-incest laws of the federated nation." -"...the Cainan leaders had been given little choice: If they did not renounce and abandon the practice of so-called `holy-incest', then they faced federal confiscation of all their property and sacred meeting places, and the revocation of basic civil rights for all Cainan community members, including withdrawal of `habeus-corpus' for imprisonment." + + + + + Letter #7; Chapter VII News Clippings -2- Also in the Calf-Skin Chest... ...was a copy of that infamous hometown newspaper photograph, brown and brittle with age. It was from the `Mount Forest Confederate', Thursday, September 13, 1905. Many years later I saw it reprinted in Life Magazine, the image forever etched on my brain. It was a night picture showing the old stone grain mill below the falls and salmon hole on the Saugeen River tributary near Mount Forest. It was lit by a bonfire with leering vigilantes in shiny black cloaks looking at the camera. There in the background was the Rendering Tree, the great, tall white pine with the big lateral "death branch". And up close a naked boy hanging limp from it by a rope, his privates cut and mutilated, the blood black down his legs, his skin scorched by fire. He had been hung by his neck until dead. I was not a great reader, but this one grabbed me - - the caption said: "Boy Lynched -- Commits Incest, Molests Own Sister." We understood that the boy was Josiah Cygnet Schwann, our very own grandfather who had died young - at most age fifteen. What my sister and I did not yet know was the intense hatred of the oh-so-proper and prudish townspeople in the escarpment counties toward us Cainan Community wanderers. A hatred so deep that we wondered if every so-very-righteous person in the county, when they planted a tree, did not see one of us Cainan folks 'hanged-until-dead' from the branches. `The Rendering Tree' -- 'The Hangman's Tree' - gave a message that required nothing more to be said. The image of `The Rope and Gibbet' evoked the early practice of hanging traitors, and the continent's dark history of lynchings and violent attempts to terrorize the native and enslaved peoples. `The Gallows' were embraced by ones who fancied themselves `Citizens Pure of Blood'. The dramatic emblem of `The Scaffold' was favored by societal and racial supremacists; as it led to the mass hangings of social and political enemies. `The Halter and Drop' held a prominent place in the language and belief system of those such as the Black Coat Incest Vigilantes. Above all - `The Noose' was intended to instill fear. Lynchings were not mere public hangings, but community ceremonies where the Black Coats - frenzied men, women and children - inflicted unspeakable cruelty on their helpless victims. Later I was shown the manacles nailed and grown into the bark of the Rendering Tree. Long ago, two handcuffed Cainan community cousins had been chained to the tree, mutilated with burning sticks, doused with kerosene and set fire. It was a shabby reversion to primitive brutality. . . Dismayed, I hid the notebook back in the small calf-skin trunk and ran. But I was drawn to return many times to that picture. And another old postcard of the same boy, hanging by the neck, blackened from being burned. On the back, crude printing in pencil noted: "He dangled beneath the tallest pine. He had been stripped and bound and was swinging slowly by the neck, naked as the day he was born. He had fought, kicking and struggling, while the noose tightened steadily around his throat. We watched him dangle - his pale skin turning dull red by the flames." . . Once, when I was going through that box of old letters, papers and stuff in the closet, I pulled out a heavy manilla envelope that had some bulky objects inside. I opened it up. Out slid a broken, rusty knife blade and a short length of grimy rope. The rope, a note said, was from Mount Forest's one-time lynching, kept as a gruesome souvenir. The knife, in faded black ink written on the blade, was labeled "T. H. Davy, Sheriff" along with the date "September 1 -- 2, 1905." I thought perhaps it was the knife used to cut Grandfather Josiah down. Or was it used to cut him up? . . In another envelope there were a number of newspaper clippings. The words never left my mind once I read them: . +++ "MOLESTER IS LYNCHED AT MOUNT FOREST" "Brutally Attacked His Own Sister" "Special to the Mount Forest Confederate, Thursday, September 6, 1905: "Josiah Schwann, the 15-year-old boy who attacked and viciously raped his younger sister near here last year, was found guilty by `Judge Lynch' and therefore hanged by a mob outside of town after midnight on Saturday night, once it was learned that a bastard child had been born of the unholy union. About 40 men were in the party. The lynching was conducted in a quiet fashion." . +++ There were undated eyewitness reports -- recorded in a smudged and faded typewritten carbon-copy on crinkled, onionskin paper: . " `THE MEN OF OUR BLACK COAT SOCIETY HAVE WREAKED VENGEANCE' " "Words to describe the awful torture inflicted upon the young deviant Josiah Schwann cannot be found. One witness noted: " ~`When he said many times that he did no wrong, his clothes were torn off piecemeal and scattered in the crowd, people catching the shreds and putting them away as mementos.' " . +++ Others at the scene provided a more detailed account: . " ~`The pervert Schwann was stripped of his clothing and a rope placed around his neck. He never denied committing the abominable deed. Instead, he shouted over and over: --I did no wrong! --We did no wrong! --What we did do was not wrong. It isn't wrong!-- ' " . +++ A sympathetic observer wrote: . " `Note the morbid curiosity which gathers about an execution, the strange but thoroughly human pleasure which so many feel in the misfortunes of their fellow beings. And that lingering fondness for the dire and terrible -- when it happens to other folks! -- which men inherit from a barbarous ancestry. Yet these too are sensibly diminished every time a man in a shiny black oilcloth cape approaches a criminal with a knife and rope.' . " `When the 15-year-old was stripped of his clothing and left standing naked with his arms pinned behind him, many in the crowd suddenly craned their necks to see. This striking young man drew the fixation of all. He was smooth skinned, yet well-formed beyond his years, being trim and neat, athletic, slim and stalwart. A veritable many-great-grandchild of the beautiful Olympian God Apollo - or of some like inbred-prepotent parent - given the symmetry and rhythm of his slender, young, tender nude body, and his fierce ox-eyed countenance below his long, tousled, dark mane.' . " 'Tall for his tender age with high cheekbones, piercing black eyes, as well as that well-turned youthful physique and a proud air -- he might have led the finest `Death or Glory' cavalry charge. Surely our fairest maidens and well-reputed matrons may even now keep bits of his hair or clothing - or even a brine-cured fragment of his tanned skin - in a sacred envelope or pressed between the pages of a small private bible. Perchance they lament the lack of their own `brotherly amours'. They may yet whisper in the privacy of their boudoirs that the affair was less an execution of a grotesque monster, and more the martyrdom of a comely if lubricious paladin.' . " 'The young lad stood defiant, not cowed by public nakedness as he was to be by the cruel and extreme torture awaiting him. His actions indicated that to the very last instant he expected that from some source, and in some way, relief was yet to come. He seemed not afraid of death, but on the contrary anxious to prolong the moments of his existence. The speed with which the sands of his life were running out seemed to overwhelm him.' . +++ The report went on: . " `Then another wave of sound passed through the crowd: somebody up front could see something, and word was hurrying back to those who could not. Necks were craned, and youngsters were lifted to the shoulders of patient, dirty-faced mothers. They brought up the defiled girl, the sorry lad's very own younger sister, with the issue from that perverted union, their new-born infant swaddled in her arms.' " 'Few saw the unfortunate brother look at his sister, and fewer still heard the words he called to her: " `--You are my girl. Are you not? You are my favorite girl in the whole world!--" `--Yes! Yes I am!--", she answered. " `We saw young Schwann's final salutation, a nod of his head, down and then defiantly up toward her as his eyes met and held hers. I had not known that any gesture could be so eloquent of farewell. The girl and child were quickly led away into hiding. After this, the girl would not venture out for many months.' " . +++ "A different attender noted: . " `Someone pulled the noose over the naked young man's head. It did not fit correctly and it was removed, waxed, and placed for the second time, being tightened with the knot at the nape of the neck. A man in a shiny black oilcloth cape called for an iron pincer and Schwann's testicles were placed therein and mashed to a bloody pulp. As a knife was applied, the boy's shrieks for mercy could be heard clearly by those present. The black-caped man juggled his grisly spoils of victory, burst and slimy with blood, oozing and slippery with seed. Laughing, he pulled back his arm and hurled the package of junque far, far from sight. Some reported that the lad screamed, "--Where the h**l are my b***s--? --What did you do with my b***s--?" ' . +++ >From a separate eyewitness account: . " `I watched a boy, Josiah Schwann, burned at The Rendering Tree outside Mount Forest, late Saturday night. I stood in a crowd of people as the flames gradually crept nearer and nearer to the helpless boy. I watched the blaze climb higher and higher encircling him without mercy. I heard his cry of agony as the flames reached him and set him on fire: " ` --Oh Great Mother, Oh Great Mother--' , he shouted, `--I did no wrong. We did no wrong. Have mercy--.' " " `Desperately he fought the rope. He strangled and burned. The writhing slowed as he choked except for an occasional twitch or spasm. Then the body of young Schwann leapt into the air. The jerk of the rope upon falling did not yet break his neck. Rather, he then dropped and began violently trembling. There was a sharp `CRA-CK-LE' as the neck finally broke. The rope dangled slightly, then all was suddenly still. His body got left suspended, twisting, twisting in the wind, until dawn when it was finally lowered.' " 'All attending had the satisfaction of knowing justice having been served. Spectators ambled up to the body. The Philosophical may have contemplated `-The -Ultimate-Punishment-'- . While the Morbid may have plucked a souvenir such as a shirt button or a few strands of hair. Bits of rope likely ended up as macabre museum exhibits.' " . +++ Later a partaker pondered the deed: . " ` --A dying boy? You feel the last bit of breath leave his young body. You look as his eyes close. You are God! You possess him. And he shall forever be a part of you. And the ground where you slayed him becomes sacred to you. And you will always be drawn back to him. And call for more...!' " +++ Also: " ` He done got himself hung up -- with his head snubbed back, his eyes popped out, and his neck stretched to about four feet with his legs doubled back under him like a shot rabbit.' " +++ And a final newspaper clipping: +++ "MOLESTATION and a LYNCHING" "A Mob In Mount Forest Lynch A Boy For Incest Rape -- `Suicide' is the Coroner's Verdict "Coroner's Report: The coroner's jury held an inquest today in the case of Josiah Schwann, who was lynched last week for committing incest. The verdict was that he came to his death by suicide." The Mount Forest Confederate, September 11, 1905 . . . In fear, I cried myself to sleep over all this for many, many nights. I had nightmares. The idea of being cut up and hanged terrified me.... ...I must never, ever, touch my sister! Yours truly, JACOB SCHWANN +++++ +