Old Country Cures: Talking Out Fire

This weekend I was scrolling through Facebook when something stopped me immediately in my scrolling. It was a post from a group I had joined years ago called Clinton-Sampson County Local History. I had joined the group because the amount of Butler history there is in Sampson County.

The post they shared brought up some memories from my childhood. Someone had shared a news clipping from 1979 talking about talking out fire. For those of y’all not familiar with old country cures, talking out fire is a practice that is supposed to remove the pain of a burn and heal the area. 

In the post that was shared in the group, many people talked about how they either witnessed family members receiving that cure or a family member helping someone by talking out the fire from their burn. A few people commented that they were able to do it but they wouldn’t reveal how they did it because that would supposedly take away their gift. Thankfully in the comments, there was one gentleman, by the name of David Wright, that was willing to chat with me via Facebook Messanger.

Mr. Wright explained that he was born and raised in Roseboro and was a police officer for 32 years. He explained that he received this gift from his mother in his 20’s. Due to the nature of the gift, he is not able to receive any gratuity or reveal the process without losing the gift. He believes that the gift is bestowed by the Holy Spirit and he sees himself as a vessel to conduct God’s healing through this process. He has been asked many times to heal people and has been successful with that healing.

Mr. Wright went on to give me a couple examples of healings he had performed. In the first example, he stated that an owner of a restaurant in Clinton had called him requesting that Mr. Wright come down to the restaurant to help an employee there. The employee was a female cook who had accidentally overturned a large pan of hot grease onto herself. Mr. Wright said that the employee was burned from her crotch to her knees to the point that blisters had already started to form. He stated that the process was long and tedious because of the large areas burned and how deeply the burn went into the skin.

“I can sense this, smell the burn and feel the intense heat within the skin and exiting the wound. When I finished, the pain was gone although it is very intense during the process while the heat is being extracted. As far as I know, the employee never went to a doctor. She did return to work the next day with no pain and no blisters.” -David Wright

Another example he shared with me happened in Wilmington, North Carolina. He said that there was a family that lived in a subdivision behind his house with a child about six to eight years old. One day the mother had taken the child to mother’s father’s garage for a visit. While they were there, the child picked up a hot muffler which had just been taken off of a car. The mother immediately took the child to the emergency room but on her way home, remembered that Mr. Wright had told her about his gift of talking fire out. She brought her child to Mr. Wright saying that the child was still in terrible pain and she wasn’t able to relieve his pain or get him to stop crying. Mr. Wright asked if the hospital had covered the wounds or put anything on the wounds. The mother said that they had to which Mr. Wright responded that she needed to remove it all and wash his hands. The mother did as she was instructed to do and brought the child to Mr. Wright’s house. He said that the burns were terrible and that the child had even lost some skin on his hands. Mr. Wright helped the boy who eventually stopped crying. About thirty minutes after the mother had taken the child back to their home, Mr. Wright looked out to her backyard and noticed the boy was outside swinging on his swingset. The boy’s hand never scared and has had full use of them. Mr. Wright said the boy has since grown up, married and has had two sons of his own.

Seeing this article and post made me think back to when I was a teenager and Dad had taken me and Magan to the History Museum in Raleigh. They had an exhibit going on talking about the history of medicine in North Carolina. In one section they had one of those heavy wooden flip books on a podium that spoke about old country cures. Two of them stood out in my memory. One was about a woman who had the ability to stop bleeding who helped a child with excessive bloody noses. She was able to cure him of the bloody noses and a few years later when he was in a car accident, he didn’t have a bloody nose despite having an airbag break his nose. The other cure that stands out in my memory was the Fire Talker.

That day Dad explained to Magan and me that Nanny, his mother, was a Fire Talker. She would breathe on the burn while reciting a chant until the burn stopped hurting. He said that there would be no pain afterwards and that there would be no scarring or blistering. It was as if the burn never happened. He told the chant but I can’t remember all of it. What I remember is “Seven angels came from the East and Seven angels came from the West”. I’ve done some research but the closest I can find is:

“There came an angel from the east bringing fire and frost. In frost, out fire. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

I wish I had paid closer attention to what he had said. It would have been interesting to know what the whole chant was and more of my grandmother’s abilities.

What are some old country cures that you have heard of or use? Have you ever witnessed a Fire Talker working? I would love to hear about them. Let me know in the comments below.