Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/294

 284 Obeah in the West Indies.

except with such substances as would lead to his detection. He adds that when he first came to the West Indies in 1898 he thought it probable that these people had a know- ledge of African bush poisons handed down to them from their ancestors ; but experience had led him to modify that opinion, and to believe that any knowledge their ancestors ma)- have had had been almost completely lost so far as the Leeward Islands were concerned.

During one of my visits which I had occasion to make to Tortola on circuit duties Dr. Earl gave me the annexed copy of a letter, printed in St. Kitts, and circulated in Tortola by a woman whose house had been burnt down, and who distributed these copies (sold at six cents apiece) as the charm against the repetition of such an event. It is an extraordinary production, but, I believe, is not the only one of its kind in existence. Perhaps some member of the Folk-Lore Society may be able to afford us some informa- tion on the subject of letters supposed to have been written by our Saviour.

COPY OF A LETTER WRITTEN

BY OUR

LORD JESUS CHRIST.

This letter was found eighteen miles from Iconium, sixty-five years after our blessed Saviour's Crucifixion ; transmitted from the Holy City by a converted Jew, faithfully translated from its original Hebrew copy, now in the possession of Lady Cura's family in Mesopotamia. This letter was wri-tten by Jesus Christ, and found under a great stone, both round and large, at the foot of the Cross, eighteen miles from Iconium near a village called Mesopotamia ; upon the stone was written, or engraved, " Blessed is he that turneth me over ! " People that saw it prayed to God earnestly, and desired that he would make it known to them the meaning of this writing, that they might not attempt in vain to turn it over ; in the meantime a little child turned it over without any help, to the joy of all that stood by.