"'The rolling exercise consisted in being cast down in a violent manner,
doubled with the head and feet together, or stretched in a prostrate,
manner, turning swiftly over like a dog. Nothing in nature could better
represent the jerks, than for one to goad another alternately on every
side with a piece of red-hot iron. The exercise commonly began in the
head, which would fly backwards and forwards, and from side to side,
with a quick jolt, which the person would naturally labour to suppress,
but in vain. He must necessarily go on as he was stimulated, whether
with a violent dash on the ground, and bounce from place to place, like
a foot-ball; or hopping round with head, limbs, and trunk, twitching
and jolting in every direction, as if they must inevitably fly asunder,'
&c."
The following sketch is from _Dow's Journal_. "In the year 1805 he
preached at Knoxville, Tennessee, before the governor, when some hundred
and fifty persons, among whom were a number of Quakers, had the jerks."
"I have seen all denominations of religions exercised by the jerks,
gentleman and lady, black and white, young and old, without exception. I
passed a meeting-house, where I observed the undergrowth had been cut
away for camp meetings, and from fifty to a hundred saplings were left,
breast high, on purpose for the people who were jerked to hold by. I
observed where they had held on, they had kicked up the earth, as a
horse stamping flies."
Every one has heard of the extraordinary scenes which took place in the
Cevennes at the close of the seventeenth century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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