Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/569

Rh Negro Superstition.—"When anything about a plantation is missing they [the negro slaves] have a solemn kind of oath, which the eldest negro always administers, and which by them is accounted so sacred that, except they have the express command of their master or overseer, they never set about it, and then they go very solemnly to work. They range themselves in that spot of ground which is appropriated for the negroes' burying-place, and one of them opens a grave. He who acts as priest takes a little of the earth and puts it into every one of their mouths; they say that if anyone has been guilty, their belly swells and occasions their death. I never saw any instance of this but one; and it was certainly a fact that a boy did swell, and acknowledged the theft when he was dying." (A New History of Jamaica, 1740, let. 11, p. 306.)