“People of every age, sex, sect, and condition appeared to be more or less affected with the disagreeable operations of these exercises, not only at their meetings, but in their daily employments….”
“Dr. Hambleton had the Jurks five time[s] in meeting….”
“She…said the Jirks came from the Devil & wou’d go Back to him again. I told her to pray or [I] Did not know But the Jirks wou’d Kill her & she’d go to hell & she said she wished I might to go Hell above all people….”
“These strange exercises that have excited so much wonder in the western country came in toward the last of the revival, and were, in the estimation of some of the more pious, the chaff of the work. Now it was that the humiliating and often disgusting exercises of dancing, laughing, jerking, barking like dogs, or howling like wolves, and rolling on the ground, manifested themselves….”
“I have frequently thought that a history of the singular exercises, called the “Jirks,” and other strange operations which affected the subjects of the great Kentucky Revival, would be interesting to my readers….”
