Program Notes
Skinny, Skinny, Don’t You Know Me? is derived from the Boo Hag folklore of the Gullah people. The Gullahs are descendants of slaves in the states of South Carolina and Georgia who, due to periods of isolation, were able to maintain a strong African cultural heritage.
The Boo Hag is a mythical creature that takes the form of a woman during the day, but at night sheds her skin and flies around with exposed muscles and veins searching for a victim to feed on. When she finds someone she enters their room as they sleep and “rides” the victim by sitting on their chest and sucking away their breath. If the victim wakes up the Boo Hag will kill them and take their skin. The Boo Hag must return to her skin before sunrise or she will burn to death when the sunlight touches her.
There are a number of tales involving the Boo Hag. Many feature someone finding a Boo Hag’s skin at night and rubbing it with salt and pepper so that the Boo Hag cannot put the skin back on. The Journal of American Folklore, Volume 35 (1922), contains a version where the woman is a shape-shifter:
“Once there was a woman that could turn into a witch. When the husband would go to bed, she would slip out… While she was gone, the husband missed her and got up. He saw her skin lying by the fire. He got some red pepper and put it inside of the skin… When she came back, she slipped through the keyhole and went to get into her skin. Every time she went to get in, the pepper would burn her. She would say, ‘Skinny, skinny, don’t you know me?’… She got into it, but could not stay. Then she was tarred, and burnt to death.”