Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/106

90 If a dog howls mournfully in the night it is a sign of death.

If a wine-glass break of itself on a table, it is also a sign of death, &c., &c.

After a person has been dead for three days it is believed that a cloud of smoke will rise out [of] the grave, which becomes the duppy.

This duppy is a curious being, capable of assuming various forms of men and other animals. This supernatural power which it is believed to have, enables it to turn into a shadow and vanish away. It is said that the duppy can attack and ruin both man and beast. For this characteristic it is utilised by obeah-men.

The duppy can do many things similar to a living person. It talks, laughs, whistles, sings, smokes, cooks, nurses the young, goes to market, to church, drives in a carriage with a reversed position to that of the living. It rides a horse with its head turned backwards, using the tail for a bridle. The duppy in human form generally moves along by spinning or walking backwards.

These are different kinds of duppies—"three-foot horse," "rolling calf," "long-bubby Susan," "whooping boy" (the rider of the "three-foot horse"), and the "mermaid," a kind of duppy that lives in the water.

If the duppy come at you and you call the name "God" it will not go away, but no sooner "Jesus Christ" is called than it vanishes.

You can run the duppy by turning your dress wrong-side, carrying a book, a rule, gunpowder, sulphur, frankincense, myrrh, a blade or smoke a weed called "Rosemary" in your pipe [sic].

In the case when the duppy is coming to your house and you want to keep it away you have to nail a horseshoe on the door, mark ten (X) with chalk (if it be the "long-bubby Susan"), put an open glass in the front of the doorway, &c. If the duppy is troublesome bum a mixture of cow's hoof and horn, sulphur, blue-stone, duck-ant ness [sic], &c.

It is said that a duppy can stone, can poison, beat, burn, can drown any one, set a house on fire, &c. The obeah-men use them largely for these characteristics.