Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/388

322 and branches covered with gum, were made ready to receive the fire. The flash of light was perceived by the boogger. She turned and saw the fire fiaming in the rift and the fire dancing as Frog leaped. She closed the rift, she pressed the sides of it shut with her hands, then, she ran after Frog. She almost caught him. He jumped into a river. She lifted her knife as he swallowed the fire to save it from the river, and brought it down with great force to split him in halves and allow the spark to be quenched by the water; but only his tail was cut away, his beautiful bushy tail, finer than Fox's. He spat the fire into the fuel made ready, and all the Voodoos danced with joy.

Here the story very improperly ends, with no mention of a reward bestowed on this humble Prometheus.

Let us recapitulate:—The great gods of Voodoo are Old Grandfather Rattlesnake, who in America takes the place of the Green Serpent of African tradition, though according to Mr. Leland the sacred snakes of Dahomey are brown or yellowish-white; Old Sun; the Old Boy; the Old Boy's wife, who has no name, but is sometimes spoken of as Old Mistress; and the Moon,—if a god and his wife are one, four deities, the sacred number.

Below these are innumerable hosts of "hants," "booggers," "rubber-devils," "free-jacks," and the immortal sorcerers. Old Woodpecker, Old Rabbit, Old Blue Jay, Old Wolf, Old Perarer-Chicken, Old King Catfish, etc.

Voodooism is of these, but what is its inner nature? It is hypnotism, it is telepathy, it is clairvoyance—in a word, it is. Its motto is, "Control yourself perfectly and you can control the rest of the world—organic and inorganic," or as Alexander expressed it, "Make up your will strong against yourself, and you will soon have it strong enough to put down everything and everybody else." He added that no conjurer needed tricks, balls, or luckstones for himself if he had a strong head and good learning. He ought to be able to look a man dead, or make him see things that were not before him, or do what his heart despised. "I'm the snake man," he boasted, "and my enemies are flapping, squeaking birds." This has an imposing sound, but it is a matter of fact that Alexander wore a luck-ball for thirty years. The time was, he said, when he needed it, and after he had gone through all