Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/382

 316 along time. Then he "got hoppin' mad" and began to "work his mind," and get power again. The cause of this was that the jealous Ash-Tree poisoned many of his children, and the other creatures refused to allow their families to associate with the survivors. When he felt himself full of strength and poison, he called his enemies about him, he organized from them a Voodoo circle, taught them dances, taught them the healing properties of fire, taught them the fascination and cunning of the snake, told them his origin and the rites necessary in consequence, taught them the use of poisons and medicines. This he did to mock them, for at the end of his discourse he "thought death to them all."

After the death of the enemies, another circle was organized.

Long, long after, as my chroniclers state. Old Grandfather Rattlesnake saw in his trances that he must go away. Before he went, he made a solemn promise to "fling hisself outen his hide," as any high Voodoo can, and return at intervals to strengthen his adherents. This promise, I am solemnly assured, has been kept. Whenever a bride to his liking has been made ready—a terrified little "goat without horns" who is thrown into convulsions from fright and overdoses of whiskey and wormwood, and declared to be in an ecstacy—he has manifested his presence by emitting odors like boiled gooseberries. An ordinary rattler, as we know, has the odor of grasshoppers.

The little virgin above mentioned and the white kid slaughtered in her presence are both spoken of as "the goat without horns," and are both said to " seem to be something they stand for." What does this mean? There is a great, shadowy "boogger" in the form of a hornless goat, which is said to appear sometimes for the purpose of receiving a passing soul, but this surely cannot be the thing which the bride of the snake represents, and as for the white kid, it is merely the girl's ransom. As she lies twisting and shivering on the ground, the kid is killed and eaten as she would have been killed and eaten in "the old time."

Another puzzler in the Pantheon over which Old Sun and Grandfather Rattlesnake preside is the Old Boy, as he is familiarly called, an old devil whom we would consider an