New Orleans Superstitions by Lafcadio Hearn.pdf

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NEW ORLEANS
SUPERSTITIONS
by Lafcadio Hearn
from An American miscellany, vol. II, (1924)
originally published in Harper's weekly, 1886-dec-25
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NEW ORLEANS
SUPERSTITIONS
by Lafcadio Hearn
from An American miscellany, vol. II, (1924)
originally published in Harper's weekly, 1886-dec-25
I
The question "What is Voudooism?" could scarcely be answered to-day by
any resident of New Orleans unfamiliar with the life of the African west
coast, or the superstitions of Hayti, either through study or personal
observation. The old generation of planters in whose day Voudooism had a
recognized existence--so dangerous as a motive power for black insurrection
that severe measures were adopted against it--has passed away; and the only
person I ever met who had, as a child in his colored nurse's care, the rare
experience of witnessing a Voudoo ceremonial, died some three years ago, at
the advanced age of seventy-six. As a religion--an imported faith--Voudooism
in Louisiana is really dead; the rites of its serpent worship are forgotten; the
meaning of its strange and frenzied chants, whereof some fragments linger as
refrains in negro song, is not now known even to those who remember the
words; and the story of its former existence is only revealed to the folklorists
by the multitudinous débris of African superstition which it has left behind it.
These only I propose to consider now; for what is to-day called Voudooism in
New Orleans means, not an African cultus, but a curious class of negro
practices, some possibly derived from it, and others which bear resemblance
to the magic of the Middle Ages. What could be more mediæval, for instance,
than molding a waxen heart, and sticking pins in it, or melting it slowly
before a fire, while charms are being repeated with the hope that as the waxen
heart melts or breaks, the life of some enemy will depart? What, again, could
remind us more of thirteenth-century superstition than the burning of a certain
number of tapers to compel some absent person's return, with the idea that
before the last taper is consumed a mysterious mesmerism will force the
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wanderer to cross rivers and mountains if necessary on his or her way back?
The fear of what are styled "Voudoo charms" is much more widely spread in
Louisiana than any one who had conversed only with educated residents
might suppose; and the most familiar superstition of this class is the belief in
what I might call pillow magic, which is the supposed art of causing wasting
sicknesses or even death by putting certain objects into the pillow of the bed
in which the hated person sleeps. Feather pillows are supposed to be
particularly well adapted to this kind of witchcraft. It is believed that by secret
spells a "Voudoo" can cause some monstrous kind of bird or nondescript
animal to shape itself into being out of the pillow feathers--like the tupilek of
the Esquimau iliseenek (witchcraft.) It grows very slowly, and by night only;
but when completely formed, the person who has been using the pillow dies.
Another practice of pillow witchcraft consists in tearing a living bird asunder-
-usually a cock--and putting portions of the wings into the pillow. A third
form of the black-art is confined to putting certain charms or fetiches--
consisting of bones, hair, feathers, rags, strings, or some fantastic combination
of these and other trifling objects--into any sort of a pillow used by the party
whom it is desired to injure. The pure Africanism of this practice needs no
comment. Any exact idea concerning the use of each particular kind of charm
I have not been able to discover; and I doubt whether those who practise such
fetichism know the original African beliefs connected with it. Some say that
putting grains of corn into a child's pillow "prevents it from growing any
more"; others declare that a bit of cloth in a grown person's pillow will cause
wasting sickness; but different parties questioned by me gave each a different
signification to the use of similar charms. Putting an open pair of scissors
under the pillow before going to bed is supposed to insure a pleasant sleep in
spite of fetiches; but the surest way to provide against being "hoodooed," as
American residents call it, is to open one's pillow from time to time. If any
charms are found, they must be first sprinkled with salt, then burned. A
Spanish resident told me that her eldest daughter had been unable to sleep for
weeks, owing to a fetich that had been put into her pillow by a spiteful
colored domestic. After the object had been duly exorcised and burned, all the
young lady's restlessness departed. A friend of mine living in one of the
country parishes once found a tow string in his pillow, into the fibers of which
a great number of feather stems had either been introduced or had introduced
themselves. He wished to retain it as a curiosity, but no sooner did he exhibit
it to some acquaintance than it was denounced as a Voudoo "trick," and my
friend was actually compelled to burn it in the presence of witnesses.
Everybody knows or ought to know that feathers in pillows have a natural
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