Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/284

246 I have interviewed a score or more of conjurers, some in the circle and some out, and have heard from them many queer stories, charms, and superstitions, but where they varied from what I have related they were modified or borrowed entire from their white or red acquaintances. I did not know this until I began to read folk-lore magazines, and had accumulated a great many facts that did not belong properly to Voodoo practices at all.

Before closing I must tell one little experience I had at Plattsburg, a small town about forty miles from where I live. I went there to see two famous Voodoos, but could get very little. All I could learn from the man—and I learned that because he wanted to make a sale—was that rattlesnakes' rattles worn in the hat would cure headache and prevent sunstroke. The skin worn around the waist would cure rheumatism, the heart swallowed whole would cure consumption—"because grandfather willed it so."

My other call was on Aunt Ellen Merida, an enormously fat yellow woman, with a cracked soprano voice and a husky laugh. She greeted me effusively, and in the presence of the neighbours, who dropped in by twos and threes to see what I wanted, lectured me severely on desiring to have dealings with the Old Master, or Devil. She and her daughters then sang a hymn beginning—

After that she told me of trances she had had. At such times she had been caught up to the highest Heaven, and once she had seen a man's life judge him. He was laid on a white pavement before the great white throne, and his heart's blood ran out in two streams and formed writing; and one writing told of his good deeds, and the other of his bad.

"That's very fine," I said, "but you will get no money from me unless you tell what I want to know."

I rose to leave, and she took me to an inner room to give me "God's blessing"; and what do you think she said? "Come back at full moon, honey, or a little later, that's the time for cunjerin', it's too early in the month now."

Of other interviews with Alexander, of strange tales of the