Cattle Bats and Candle Bats

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi Martha.

This is Jimmy Prophet.

I’m from East Tennessee.

Hi, Jimmy.

We’re glad to have you from East Tennessee, one of my favorite parts of the country.

What’s up?

Well, I actually grew up in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

Mm—

One of my other county in in particular, I know I’ve heard you mention it before.

And my mom used to say a word and my grandmother s used the same word many times to describe a moth that was in their in their presence.

And my mom was scared to death of them, and she would yell cattle bat.

And we knew that when she yelled cattle bat, it was time to get out of her way because she was going to do whatever it took to get away from it.

And I don’t know why she called it a cattle bat, and my grandmother did the same thing.

And I didn’t know if it was something that was maybe just a a version of candle bat maybe or you know I’ve heard of a horse fly so why not a cattle bat I don’t know right oh this is wonderful.

So two generations of people calling moths.

We’re talking about the dark fluttery insects, M O Tround a light or something.

Cattle bats.

And for the listeners, we want to spell that to make sure it’s clear what you’re saying.

C A T T L E.

Yeah.

B A T S the Flying Mammals.

What’s so interesting about this, Jimmy, is that usually the word is candle bat, just like you suggested.

C-A-N-D-L-E, the you know, the the cylinder cylinders that you light so to put some illumination in the room.

And there’s a bunch of things happening here, a bunch of things happening here, but usually it’s not cattle bat, it’s candle bat.

But I can totally see how phonetically because those two words are so similar similar and they begin the same, they end the same, they’ve got two syllables, they’re stressed the same, just easy, easy to call to for cattle to come out of candle.

But a couple of interesting things have happened here.

When you look into folklore of language, you’ll often find that That things are swapped around.

So, moths, for example, have been long been a source of folklore and folk names because they kind of seem like this mirror-world version of butterflies.

They’re dark or neutral where butterflies are colorful or Or they come out at dusk or night when butterflies usually appear during the day.

So this kind of off and on black and white, just reverse thing there.

But but you will sometimes find in various English dialects that moths are called bats and bats are called moths.

For example, in the Caribbean, there’s more than a few countries, including Jamaica and Barbados, where they do this.

Where sometimes bats are just called moths and moths are just called bats, depending.

And there’s a kind of moth in Jamaica that’s usually called the Black Witch.

It’s a very big dark moth.

But it’s also sometimes called the Duppy bat.

Duppy D-U-P-P-Y means spirit or ghost.

So you’ll just find them swapped back and forth.

And the history of moths is like that.

They are often just called some version of butterfly.

In Spanish, they might be called the Mariposa de Luz butterfly of light or Mariposa Nocturna, which is a butterfly a nighttime butterfly, nocturnal butterfly, which isn’t the same as the bat moth swapping, but it’s a it’s a moth butterfly swapping.

Again, it’s a weird thing happening in the taxonomy where categories are a little shifty, right?

They me they mush around a little bit.

They’re not always as clear cut as you’ll find in in science itself.

You know, that’s funny.

My mom was not scared of a butterfly.

But I remember one time she actually ripped the door handle off the inside of the car trying to get away from a moth that had gotten in and was flapping around the light in the the dome light inside the car when we were kids.

Yeah.

So like I said, we we knew to get out of the way ’cause she was Yeah.

Yeah.

But my grandmother wasn’t the same way.

My mom did say one time when she was a little girl that that her brothers, when she was walking home from school had grabbed a cricket or grasshopper or something and put it in the sleeve of her dress and it was hopping around and it freaked her out and things like that that would move quickly.

Yeah.

Yeah, because moths are erratic, right?

They’re not necessarily not quite sure where they’re going next and it could be on you.

Yes.

But that’s that’s kind of the gist of what we know.

It’s an interesting connection to the the way folklore isn’t always so clear cut and bats and moths so anything that flies at night even if it’s not the winged mammal might be called might be called a moth.

So vice versa.

But sometimes you might also hear candle fly or candle bug.

C A N D L E.

Okay.

Well that’s interesting.

I always thought maybe it was Candle Bat that they were that they were saying, but just came out Cattle Bat.

Well Jimmy, thanks so much for sharing this story.

I d I didn’t know that people were that afraid of moths, but I guess there are some people out there who are.

But you know, a c a cattle bat sounds a lot bigger than a candle bat.

That you know It does, it does.

And like I said, if there’s a horse fly, maybe there is Well, thank you all so much for for including me.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, sure.

Call us again sometime, all right.

Huh.

Bye bye.

Bye bye, Jimmy.