Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/272

 234 To all this "Charles Leland" replied by causing the ball to dance and spin in the most delirious manner, and by a murmur sounding now far now near, something like the coo of the wood-dove, but it was oo-oo, oo-oo, not foo-ool, foo-ool, as the dove calls to those who penetrate miasmatic woods. Then there was another shower-bath of whiskey, after which the ball was wrapped, first in tinfoil then in a silk rag. I was warned at the time to tie no knots in the wrappings: such knots would tie the spirit up helpless. This thing is to be worn under the right arm.

As an illustration of the power of the sorcerer's spirit, Mymee and Alexander tell a story of Chuffy the rabbit. He had three arrows, one of which he spat on before he shot at the sun. It fell into the water. The second he breathed on: the wind carried it away. The third he wetted with a tear, and nothing could impede its flight. It made a hole in the sun, and from that fell fiery blood that almost burned up the world. Indeed, nothing was left but some trees on a sandy island in the midst of a great river. The trees and river would soon have shared the general destruction had not Chuffy shed another tear into the waters, and thus kept them from drying up.

This same Chuffy had the most potent luck-ball that ever was made; it looked like silver, and was brought into existence by the devil's wife. The story of it is too long for insertion here.

It may not be out of place to mention that the left hind-foot or right fore-foot of one of Chuffy's descendants, especially if it be a graveyard rabbit killed "in the dark of the moon", may be used instead of a luck-ball.

Better still is the "swimming bone" of a toad. The "swimming bone", as Arthur McManus explained to me, is "the one bone of the hop-toad's body that will not sink when dropped in water".

A mole's right fore-foot is also a good-luck piece. These things are not prepared; they are powerful, because parts of sorcerers.

To the second class belong the bad tricks, charms and fetiches made in the name of the devil: those queer little linen, woollen, or fur bags, or tiny bottles filled with broken glass, bits of flannel, hair, ashes, alum, grave-dust, jay or whippoorwill feathers, bits of bone, parts of snakes, toads, newts, squirrels, fingers of strangled