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A Co-op I was in last week had all its fall and Halloween decorations out. Inside the store they had three life-sized witch dummies made from old
depart-ment store mannequins all wrapped up in black landscape fabric, huddled around a Crystalyx tub that someone had thrown some sticks (firewood) under. At the sight of it, I feel sure Shakespeare would have been proud of his creepy bit of prose that inspired the display; words reminiscent of a time when people believed that earthly evil doers, like witches, were the cause of their woes…
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s
sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful
trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and
bubble.
What a
gruesome sounding pot of stew! In reality, what the Bard was, for the
most part, referring to were various herbs used in this soup by their
folk names. "Fillet of a fenny snake," for example, refers to
a fruit of a certain species of arum known as "Snakes meat."
"Eye of Newt" simply means any of the ‘eye’ flowers, such
as daisies, bachelors’ buttons and the like. "Toe of Frog"
is another name for the humble buttercup; "Wool of Bat" refers
to holly leaves, "Tongue of Dog" is Houndstongue (Cynoglossum
Officinale) and adder’s fork is a fern. Unfortunately it’s not a
totally vegan hell-broth; the blind worm is a small snake, that’s a
leg from something like a horned toad they’re talking about. And, yes,
there’s an owl somewhere who had to learn to out-run field mice.
Out in
the garden center of the Co-op was a pile of pumpkins, just waiting for
someone with a sharp knife to turn them into jack-o-lanterns. I’m sure
you could care less, but did you know that people in ancient England
carried jack-o-lanterns made from big turnips with faces carved in them
on the 31st of October to ward off evil spirits. I have no idea why the
bogymen were out only the 31st. Kind of like them being out here on the
15th of April, I guess.
Like the
beliefs of the turnip carving scaredy-cats of old, many of our Southern
superstitions, some that have been around since way before there was a
U. S. of A., are vanishing…rebuffed by literacy, homogenization,
urbanization, mobility, and the influence of the mass media.
But not
all are lost.
I know
full-grown people, with supposed good walking-around sense, who still
grab a button every time they see a hearse…and they won’t let go
until they see a dog! Now what the heck is that all about! Some won’t
walk under a ladder or step on sidewalk cracks; won’t borrow an opened
pocket knife and give it back to you closed; won’t hang a horseshoe
with the points down for fear of pouring their luck out onto the ground;
or won’t pass you a shaker of salt for fear of giving away their luck…they
place it next to your plate. Of course, anything that itches means
something; itchy ear, someone’s talking about you; itchy nose, you’ll
have company; itchy right palm, you’ll meet someone new; itchy left
palm, money’s coming, itchy feet, you’ll soon go on a trip. There’s
other parts of my body that itch. Do they all mean something?
These
same people think breaking a mirror is bad luck; a black cat crossing in
front of them is bad luck; or the number 13 is bad luck. Of course,
carrying a rabbit’s foot brings good luck (except for the rabbit) as
do keeping a penny in your shoe, seeing a shooting star or finding a
four-leafed clover.
Back
where I’m from, it’s a known fact that if a hog-nosed snake bites
you or if a bat flies into your hair, they won’t let go until it
thunders. People throw pea hulls in the road in front of their house or
whip their okra plants with a switch to make the plants keep bearing.
They also
use preventative measures to avoid bad luck. It’s not uncommon to see
broken mirrors on the porches of small country houses. Supposedly, the
haint in question will see its reflection and run off in fear before
coming in. At barber shops men will often ask for the hair that’s been
cut from their heads just in case someone who had something against them
got it and used some ‘hoodoo’ against them. You never, ever cut hair
(or your finger/toe nails) on Sunday for fear of being made a toy of the
devil for the whole next week.
Another
way to keep the will of others from harming you or your children would
be to wear a greegree. This is a strip of leather or string that might
have a small chicken bone tied to it but in most cases had a little bag
tied shut with something in it (I never asked what).
A lot of
women there don’t whistle because it will cause you to grow a beard.
Certain pregnant women go to the next county over to dig for a hand-full
or so of some pink clay that’s found there. They eat just so much of
it every day until their baby is born. All anybody could ever tell me
was that ‘it made for a healthy baby.’ Eating dirt made for a
healthy baby…go figure.
Those
same women took care never to insult anyone or speak low of anyone while
in a motherly way for fear that their child would be ‘marked.’ For
instance; if a person jibed someone else about an infirmity, malady,
shortcoming or something as simple as the color/texture of his or her
hair, the baby could be born with that same perceived flaw. If you dared
go so far as to say someone was ugly, you would most likely have an ugly
baby.
My momma apparently wasn’t
warned about ‘marking.’ I wonder if she was at the zoo.... |
