Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/274

236 where it had rubbed his neck at the edge of his hair. The fire was out then, and he had no light but a little grey streak of dawn coming through the chinks of the wall. He stole forth with the scrapings, put them into a gourd with red clover leaves, alum, snake root, and the leaves and stalks of a mayapple. Then he put the gourd into the river and said, "In Devil's name go, and may he whose life is in you follow you." The very next week the unfortunate "cunjered" conjurer was sold and sent down the river. "But no one could touch me," said the old man, "for I cunjured master and all of 'em."

The fourth class is composed of "commanded things", such as honey locust thorns, parts of "sticks", sand, mud from a crawfish hole, wax from a new beehive, things that are neither lucky nor unlucky in themselves, but may be made so. No charms are said over them: they are merely "commanded" to do a certain work. Take, for instance, the locust thorn, used innocently enough as a hairpin or dress-fastener, but which when "commanded" proves a terrible little engine of mischief A small rude representation of the human figure, made of mud from a crawfish-hole or wax from a beehive, when named by a conjurer and pierced by a thorn of his implanting, is supposed to make the man for whom it is named deaf, dumb, blind, crazy, lame, consumptive, etc., according to the place pierced. Worse still, the one killed or maimed will after death "walk" till judgment day. A prolific maker of uneasy ghosts is the "commanded thorn".

After each lesson, both pupil and teacher of witchery get drunk on whiskey or by swallowing tobacco-smoke. I feel it necessary, however, to state that I was an honourable exception to the rule, although I did find it necessary to set forth spirituous refreshment for my teachers. I must add to this, that maids and bachelors do not progress very far in the degrees of Voodooism.

After the preliminaries I have mentioned, the pupil begins to make some acquaintance with Grandfather Rattlesnake and the dance held in his honour. The origin of the dance was in this wise:

In the old times Grandfather Rattlesnake and his sister lived together; so say Mymee and a dozen other darkies of my acquaintance. The sister's disposition was as sweet as his was bitter. As he was very wise, many men and animals came to him