The Trials of Betsy Bell

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the story of the Bell Witch had already escaped the boundaries of Robertson County, Tennessee.

The strange events surrounding John Bell, his daughter Betsy, and the mysterious entity that tormented their family had entered Southern folklore. Stories were repeated in newspapers, histories, oral accounts, and eventually poetry.

One particularly interesting example appeared in 1907.

“The Trials of Betsy Bell” was published in Southern Lyrics: A Series of Original Poems on Love, Home, and the Southland, compiled by Robert Paine Hudson and published in Nashville, Tennessee.

The poem itself is dated July 1906.

Its author was not identified.

The Bell Witch in Early Twentieth-Century Folklore

The poem is valuable because it provides a glimpse of how the Bell Witch story was being remembered less than a century after the events supposedly occurred.

Rather than concentrating primarily upon John Bell, the anonymous writer places Betsy Bell at the center of the haunting.

The spirit attacks her physically, hides her belongings, torments her at night, interrupts her relationship with Joshua Gardner, and repeatedly insists that she abandon him.

The poem also identifies the entity as Kate, a name that later became inseparable from the Bell Witch legend.

Perhaps most intriguingly, it introduces Richard Powell as the man the spirit wants Betsy to marry.

Those details make the poem more than a supernatural curiosity.

It preserves a particular version of the Bell Witch tradition as it existed in 1906.

Betsy Bell and Joshua Gardner

According to the traditional story, Betsy Bell and Joshua Gardner were childhood sweethearts.

Their relationship became one of the haunting’s recurring targets.

The spirit supposedly followed them during walks, interrupted their conversations, and repeatedly commanded Betsy not to marry Joshua.

In the poem, this becomes the central conflict.

Betsy loves Joshua.

The spirit refuses to allow the marriage.

And for three years, the entity supposedly works to separate them.

Eventually, Betsy surrenders.

The Many Forms of the Bell Witch

The anonymous poet also preserves some of the stranger physical manifestations associated with Bell Witch folklore.

The entity appears as a small woman dressed in green.

It combs long dark hair.

It becomes a two-headed black dog.

It appears as a talking hog.

Strange birds fly overhead.

Most of the time, however, the spirit remains invisible.

That inconsistency is characteristic of Bell Witch accounts. The phenomenon was never simply a traditional apparition wandering through a farmhouse.

It spoke.

It sang.

It prayed.

It attacked people.

It moved objects.

It produced animals and strange figures.

And apparently it had very definite opinions about whom Betsy Bell should marry.

Kate and Richard Powell

The poem’s treatment of Richard Powell is particularly interesting.

After the death of John Bell, the spirit again pressures Betsy to abandon Joshua Gardner.

This time it recommends Powell instead:

“Take Powell, he’s the man of men.”

That detail would acquire increasing significance in later interpretations of the Bell Witch story.

Whether the poem reflects an already established local tradition, information derived from earlier published accounts, or simply the anonymous writer’s interpretation is uncertain.

But by 1906, the connection between Betsy’s romantic difficulties, the Bell Witch, Joshua Gardner, and Richard Powell was clearly part of at least one surviving version of the legend.

The Original 1906 Poem

The following poem appeared in Southern Lyrics: A Series of Original Poems on Love, Home, and the Southland, published in Nashville in 1907. It was dated July 1906, although the author was not identified.

The Trials of Betsy Bell

’Tis scarcely yet one hundred years
Since came and went the things I tell,

Since lived and loved, in direful fears,
The blue-eyed beauty, Betsy Bell.

’Twas in the land of Tennessee,
Beneath those skies of deepest blue,

Where rarest things are wont to be,
And all I tell is surely true.

Now, Betsy was in gladsome youth,
Just bordering on fair womanhood,

When Love, young Love, in sweetest truth
And pleading smiles, before her stood.

Josh Gardner, whom she met in school,
Had wooed and won that pulsing heart;

They met and loved in spite of rule,
And pledged they nevermore would part.

But ere the nuptial knot was tied
A spirit came, a goblin sprite,

Who talked and sang and plead and cried,
And gave to Betsy greatest fright.

It begged our Betsy not to take
Josh Gardner, yet no reason why;

At last this elf in firmness spake:
“You shall not, or you surely die!”

Kate was the name they gave the sprite,
And, oh! what sorrow none can tell

It brought in anger day and night
And heaped upon poor Betsy Bell!

Sometimes it struck her face a blow
And threw her shoes no telling where;

Then all her hairpins next would go
And leave a mass of tangled hair.

Sometimes a host of pins were stuck
Into her flesh while Kate would scoff;

On coldest night ’twas Betsy’s luck
To have the bedclothes all stripped off.

Sometimes this mystic sprite would sing
The sweetest songs or pray a prayer;

Again its hidden hand would bring
The daintiest things to eat or wear.

But, oh! so often in the night
Kate came just like a drunken beast;

Poor Betsy, in her awful fright,
Ran screaming till Kate’s anger ceased.

Then Kate would plead, “Sweet Betsy Bell.
Don’t marry Josh, I beg you so;

Don’t marry Josh, just go and tell
Him I have bid you answer no.

Once in the evening Betsy walked
Beneath an oak, and, strange the scene,

There swung before her, as it talked,
A little woman dressed in green.

Again one day the spirit stood
Before her, combed its long, dark hair,

And, talk as much as Betsy would,
It did not see her standing there.

She saw it next,—a big black dog
Went laughing by, its heads were two;

Sometimes it passed as talking hog,
Oft strangest bird above her flew.

Oft Josh and Betsy walked about
On flowery bank beneath shadowy oak;

But Kate was sure to find them out—
“Don’t marry Josh,” she always spoke.

“Don’t marry Josh, just answer no;
My Betsy Bell, Kate speaks to you;

I’ll make your life a scene of woe;”
Then off her dainty slippers flew.

It killed her father, then it said
To Betsy, “Josh you must release;

Old Jack, your father, now is dead,
And you must live, but not in peace.”

And then in pleading tones again,
“Don’t marry Josh, my Betsy dear!

Take Powell, he’s the man of men,
And never have you aught to fear.”

For three long years this spirit strove
With Betsy Bell her vow to break;

It could not once suppress her love,
But Josh, it seemed, she must forsake.

So one day beneath a giant oak
Whose shadows weirdly, densely spread,

To Josh with tearful eyes she spoke,
“My dear, I know we cannot wed;

A spirit bids us separate,
A wicked fiend we can’t control;

But long I’ll rue our helpless fate,
A fate that wrecks my mateless soul.”

“And must we part,” said Josh, “and go,
No more to meet beneath this shade?

O, Betsy Bell! the grief I know
Can never from my bosom fade.

Yet we must part, the spirits say,
And I must bid you now farewell;

Apart we take our silent way;
Adieu, adieu, my Betsy Bell!”

Then came a laugh from out the tree,
A chuckle as from deepest Hell:

“I told you, Josh, it could not be;
I told you so, sweet Betsy Bell.”

What the Poem Preserves

Taken as poetry, “The Trials of Betsy Bell” is a melodramatic piece typical of its period.

Taken as folklore, however, it is far more interesting.

The anonymous writer knew a surprisingly detailed version of the Bell Witch story.

The poem includes Betsy and Joshua Gardner’s courtship, the spirit’s campaign to separate them, physical attacks against Betsy, missing shoes and hairpins, pins driven into her flesh, bedclothes being pulled away, the spirit’s ability to sing and pray, manifestations as animals and human figures, the death of John Bell, and the recommendation that Betsy marry Richard Powell.

Those details allow the poem to serve as a snapshot of the legend at a particular point in its development.

A Little Woman in Green

One image deserves particular attention.

Betsy supposedly encounters a little woman dressed in green swinging beneath an oak tree.

That is an unusual description for a ghost.

Green clothing has a much older association with fairies and other supernatural beings in British and Irish folklore. Whether the anonymous poet deliberately drew upon that tradition is impossible to determine.

The poem itself calls the spirit an elf, a goblin sprite, and a mystic sprite rather than simply a ghost.

That vocabulary is significant.

At least in this version of the Bell Witch story, Kate was being imagined as something stranger than the spirit of a dead human being.

The Two-Headed Black Dog

The poem also describes one of the Bell Witch’s manifestations as a large black dog with two heads.

Black dogs occupy an ancient place in supernatural folklore, particularly in Britain, where phantom hounds became associated with death, roads, graveyards, storms, and other ominous events.

Again, there is no way to know whether the anonymous writer deliberately incorporated older folklore or simply repeated a detail already circulating in Tennessee.

But the image contributes to the unusual nature of the Bell Witch.

Kate isn’t merely invisible.

She appears capable of becoming almost anything.

Why Did Kate Oppose Joshua Gardner?

That remains one of the central mysteries of the Bell Witch story.

The entity supposedly tormented Betsy relentlessly over her relationship with Joshua.

It interrupted their meetings.

It threatened Betsy.

It demanded that they separate.

And according to this 1906 poem, it explicitly promoted Richard Powell as an alternative.

Eventually, Betsy and Joshua ended their engagement.

Betsy later married Powell.

That sequence has encouraged generations of speculation about why an invisible entity would have been so deeply invested in the romantic life of a teenage girl.

The poem offers no explanation.

Kate simply insists that Joshua must go.

The Trials of Betsy Bell

The poem’s title is appropriate.

Betsy was not merely another member of the Bell household who happened to experience strange events.

In many versions of the legend, she became one of the phenomenon’s primary targets.

She was slapped.

Pinched.

Scratched.

Her hair was pulled.

Pins appeared in her body.

Her belongings vanished.

Her bedclothes were removed.

And her relationship with Joshua Gardner became the subject of an extraordinary campaign of supernatural interference.

Yet the entity could also show affection toward her.

That contradiction appears throughout Bell Witch folklore.

The spirit could be vicious one moment and almost protective the next.

It behaved less like a conventional ghost than an unpredictable personality living invisibly among the family.

A Bell Witch Story Preserved in Verse

By 1906, the Bell Witch haunting was already nearly a century old.

The people directly involved were gone.

Memories had become stories.

Stories had entered books.

And somewhere along the way, an unidentified poet decided that the trials of Betsy Bell deserved to be preserved in verse.

The resulting poem does not prove that the supernatural events occurred.

It does something historically different.

It shows us what people were saying about them.

More than a century later, the identity of the poet remains unknown.

But the writer left behind a remarkably detailed portrait of Betsy Bell, Joshua Gardner, Richard Powell, and the strange entity that supposedly refused to allow two young people to marry.

And even in verse, Kate gets the final word.

“I told you so, sweet Betsy Bell.”

Source

Southern Lyrics: A Series of Original Poems on Love, Home, and the Southland, Robert Paine Hudson, Southern Lyrics Publishing Company, Nashville, Tennessee, 1907. “The Trials of Betsy Bell,” dated July 1906.

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Laura Wright

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