<TITLE>06. Par 43-48</TITLE>L-43   Now, we was very poor, just the poorest of poor. And we did not even have a window in this little cabin. It had like a little wooden door that you open. I doubt whether you ever seen anything like that. A little wooden door that opened instead of a window, you keep it open in the daytime and you closed it at night. We couldn't turn on the electric lights or even burn kerosene in those days, we had what you call "a grease lamp." Now, I don't know whether you ever know what a grease lamp was. Well, what do you... And did you ever buy... burn a pine knot? For just take a pine knot and light it and lay it upon a lid, it'll burn. And that's... smoked up a little bit, but they had no furniture, anyhow, to smoke up. So it just... the cabin got the smoking. It drawed good 'cause there was plenty of roof up there for it to draw through. So it...

L-44   And I was born on April the--the 6th, 1909. Course, you know, that makes me a little over twenty-five now. And so, the morning that I was born, Mother said that they opened up the window. Now, we had no doctors, there was a midwife. Just... And that midwife was my grandmother. And so when I was born and my first beginning to cry, and--and Mother wanted to see her child. And--and she was no more than a child herself. And when they opened up the little window, just at the break of day, about five o'clock. And the... There was an old robin sitting by the side of a little bush. As you all have seen. the picture of it in--in my book of my life story. An old robin was sitting there just singing for all that was in him.

L-45   I've always loved robins. Now, you boys out in radio land, don't shoot at my birds. You see, they're--they're--they're... Them's my birds. Did you ever hear the legend of the robin, how he got his red breast? I'll stop here a moment. How he got his red breast... There was the King of kings was dying one day on the Cross, and He was suffering and no one would come to Him. He had no one to help Him. And there was a little brown bird wanted to take them nails out of the Cross, and he kept flying into the Cross and jerking on those nails. He was too little to pull them out, and he got his little breast all red with blood. And ever since then his breast has been red. Don't shoot him, boys. Let him alone.

L-46 He was sitting at the side of the window, a-chirping as the robins sing. And--and Dad pushed back the window. And when they pushed the little window door back, that Light that you see in the picture come whirling in the window, says my mother, and hung over the bed. Grandmother didn't know what to say.

L-47   Now, we are... was not a religious family. My people are Catholic. I'm Irish on both sides. My father is strictly Irish, Branham. My mother is Harvey; only, her father married a Cherokee Indian, so that broke the little line of the blood of the Irish. And Father and Mother did not go to church, and they married out of the church and they had no religion at all. And back there in the mountains there was not even a Catholic church. So they come over in the early settlers, two Branhams come over, and from that sprung the whole generation of Branhams; is the genealogy of the family.

L-48   And then she opened... When they opened this window and this Light stood in there, they did not know what to do. Dad had bought him (Mama said) a new pair of overalls for this event. He was standing with the... his arms in the bib of the old overalls, like the woodsmen and loggers used in those days. And it frightened them.


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