Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/389

Rh the degrees and ordeals of Voodoo he wore it for "old times' sake." The degrees he referred to are four. The primary instruction in the use of poisons, remedies, in the significance of dreams and in the names of the various materials of the charms into which the "power" of the sorcerer is most easily attracted, is but preparatory. "Any fool," said Alexander, "can know the way to mix sulphur, salt, alum, may apple, clover, feathers, needles, blood, or rags the color of blood—four things together—and he may say the great number, four times four times four, over them with strong words, but he can't throw his own spirit made up strong from Old Grandfather into them."

On another occasion, he told me that some tolerably successful conjurers had their power from others and not from within, but they were very "low down." He illustrated his meaning by a tale of a young woman whom he had known in Arkansas. She had a great wolfskin-bag full of rabbits'-feet, luckstones, snakes' fangs, jaws of lizards and squirrels, toads' bones, frogs' ashes, black hens' feathers and bones, black lambswool saturated with the sweat from the back of an angry toad, bats' hearts, doves' hearts, mole-skins, wax and clay images, candy made of brown sugar mixed with putrid liver, mud from the edge of a swamp, obeah poison and a half-dozen each of the little bags, bottles, and balls known as "tricks." From this collection, which must have resembled a famous one kept by Old Rabbit inside three wooden boxes, she gained some strength, and, having a good deal of natural cunning, she made up some "tricks" of alum, snakeweed, river sand, and hair, and sold them at a profit which should have gone to the pockets of the true professionals. She was a Voodoo believer though not a priestess, so instead of "plum ruinatin," her without warning, Alexander remonstrated. She replied with "some sass," but afterwards invited him to her cabin. He went, willed her to sleep, made her tell in her sleep where the bag was hidden, took it out and burned it. Prom that moment she was helpless, and he was so indignant at the remembrance of her former insolence that he refused to make a real witcher-woman of her.

If he had granted her petition how would he have proceeded?