birth rituals – New World Witchery – The Search for American Traditional Witchcraft

Entry 238 – Pregnancy and Birth Lore

Cutting through birth pains with an ax!

Some time ago, I received some delightful news about a friend who will soon be a proud parent to a bouncing baby braucher (Pennsylvania German folk healer). As part of that news, my friend also requested any potential knowledge I might have about protection and safe delivery charms for the wee bairn and their birthparent. That project became a bit more extensive, and I realized it might be information that others are curious about, too, so with their permission I decided to turn it into our article this month!

A brief note and content warning: NONE of this is intended as medical advice. It should be understood as an examination of the folklore of pregnancy and birth, rather than anything to be attempted. Please listen to your medical professionals regarding accurate pregnancy and birth care! Additionally, some of these folkloric tidbits will get a tad unsavory. Animal deaths and bodily fluids are a key part of this lore, so please be aware of that before reading any further.

Rabbits paid a hefty price for human pregnancies in the mid-20th century
(image by Cory Thomas Hutcheson (c) 2023 – CC 2.0 Attribution license)

What to Expect when you’re Hex-specting – Pregnancy and In Utero Protection

The state of pregnancy is often treated in folklore with some degree of delicacy, both in terms of the physical aspects of carrying and birthing a child and in the very language we use to talk about it. Many folk sayings go to great lengths not to specifically say “pregnant” or even “with child,” but rather use euphemisms like “a bun in the oven” or “in the family way” to refer to someone while they are expecting. One of the more potent phrases, though, was to say “the rabbit died.” Why a rabbit? In the early-to-mid twentieth century, one of the more accurate pregnancy tests involved injecting urine into a rabbit’s kidneys. If the rabbit died, then it was confirmation that the person providing the urine sample was indeed pregnant. (Rabbits by and large get the short end of the stick in folkways–rabbit brains were used to help with teething babies and rabbits were often thought to be witches in disguise, not to mention the famous “lucky rabbit’s foot”). Another rabbit-based charm involves taking the rabbit’s foot and placing it under the expectant parent’s pillow while giving them a rather stinky asafetida bundle to wear around their neck, thus staving off any malevolent spirits during the birth process.

Much lore is devoted to concerns over “marked” babies, who will have birthmarks in the shape of something traumatic from their birth parent’s pregnancy. Usually this takes the form of a simple craving that goes unfulfilled, such as strawberries or apples, which then take the form of red marks on the new child. One account from Tennessee says that a woman who went to see a movie was frightened at one point, and her child came out with a “birth-scald” on its face. At other times, the marking can be more serious. Lore collected in the Ozark Mountains says that a pregnant person should avoid looking at corpses, lest they pass that condition on to their child. A similar bit of lore from the upland Southeastern mountains in North Carolina and Kentucky notes that seeing dead or skinned animals means that a pregnant person will be “confined” soon (on mandatory bed rest).

Many folk groups believed that a fright could mark a baby in the womb
(image by Cory Thomas Hutcheson (c) 2023 – CC 2.0 Attribution license)

One exception to the dead animals rule comes from a Central European Romany spell. In that case, a crawfish shell can be emptied out (the meat should be eaten by the one who is pregnant), then cleaned and dried. The shell can be kept in a little bundle on the person’s body or pinned to their clothing as a protective charm (Illes 838). Another amulet involves taking a sturdy cord and making knots in it to “hold” the baby in place and avoid any harm to it. Even wearing one’s hair in braids can be used to accomplish this.

A few other rules apply to the gestation period, too. One rule states that you shouldn’t make any kind of cap or headpiece for a baby before it is born, or it can cause the delivery to be incredibly difficult and painful. Expectant parents in the Ozarks will even take hats and caps given as gifts and burn them right away to avoid any unpleasant outcomes (Randolph 199). Another piece of lore from Kentucky (and one that I would say we have a different medical perspective on now) notes that Communion wine is thought to be vital to a pregnant person, and that they should be allowed to take it whether they are a member of the Church or not (Brown, NC Folklore v6, p.6).

Talking about a pregnancy is also taboo. In one bit of Italian lore mirrored among several cultures, the pregnancy should not be announced until at least the first trimester has completed, and even longer if possible. Hair is also guarded carefully in Italian folk belief–an expectant parent should only get their hair cut while pregnant on the first Friday in March.

Doing More than Boiling Water – Delivery Magic

Pregnancy is seen as a time of joy and vulnerability, and that comes to a head during the process of childbirth. Even in our modern age, there are still numerous risks to parent and child during birth, and mortality rates for births are still fairly high, ranging from around 20 deaths per 100,000 births on average to a high-end around 55 per 100,000 births among Hispanic parents in 2020.

An axe or knife under the bed was thought to ‘cut’ the pains of birth
(image by Cory Thomas Hutcheson (c) 2023 – CC 2.0 Attribution license)

With that risk in mind, the immediate before-during-after birth period is loaded with folk magical beliefs and practices. One of the most widely distributed is the use of sharp objects to “cut” birthing pains during the process (Brown, NC Folklore p.10-11). Mostly these involve bringing in an ax or knife and placing it beneath the bed of the one in labor. At least one bit of Southern folklore also indicates the use of a plowshare for the pain-cutting implement, too. Some additional charms, talismans, and rites to ease the pain of childbirth include:

All locks in the house should be opened, according to English folklore, in order to make the birth go smoothly (Opie & Tatem, p. 27)
Similarly, untying knots can be a way to make labor go smoothly as a sort of corollary to the knot-tying charms used during the months of pregnancy. A red string can be tied around a person’s waist to give them strength during the delivery, too (Botkin p. 627)
Keeping silver coins stolen from a church in the bed is done to stave off both venereal infections and childbirth pains (Randolph p.199-200)
It’s ideal to have a hornet’s nest kept somewhere in or near the house (it can still house hornets if it is outside, although a dried and empty one indoors can work well–as a bonus, if you hang an empty hornet’s nest it will usually discourage new hornets from building a nest near your home) (Randolph p. 200)
It’s bad luck to hear the call of the mourning dove while in labor, but you can speed and ease the delivery by wearing a shed snakeskin as a garter around the thigh (Brown, v6, p. 9)
A holey stone (hagstone) hung over the bed where the birth is taking place will make the delivery smoother and less painful (Brown, v6, p. 10)
The best time for birth is right before or right after the new moon, according to one bit of Southern lore (Botkin p. 627)

One charm worth noting is a specific himmelsbrief (“heaven letter”) used in Pennsylvania German folk magic to offer protection or blessings when carried or worn. I talk a good bit about these in my book, but the application of one of these written charms to childbirth is noted in the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina folklore, which indexes it to both the German American settlements and to Newfoundland. The specific letter in question is known as the Iconium letter, which purports to have been written by Jesus himself sixty-five years after the crucifixion. The letter has been copied, translated, and shared often, and you can even find a decent copy of it online (in English) through the Library Company of Philadelphia. The Brown Collection entry also mentions that those coming from an Islamic background might use Chapter 84 of the Quran, known as “The Rending Asunder” or similar names. A Jewish tradition of a letter regarding protection from Lilith is mentioned, too, although I found this variant in Joshua Trachtenberg’s Jewish Magic & Superstition:

“A circle was drawn around the lying-in bed, and a magical inscription (reading ‘Sanvi, Sansanvi, Semangelaf, Adam and Eve, barring Lilit’) was chalked upon the walls or door of the room” (p. 169).
Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic & Superstition

In Appalachian lore, a number of plants were used to help with the childbirth process to ease the pains:

Golden Ragwort (Senecio) can be made into a tea using leaves and roots, which was done by Indigenous peoples to help with childbirth complications. (Foxfire 11, pp. 131)
Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) – This evergreen fruiting plant was used by Tsiligi/Cherokee peoples, who made it into a tea to be taken in the weeks before a baby was due in order to make the birth go more smoothly (Foxfire 11, pp.138)
Red Trillium (Trillium erectum) – This low-growing tri-leaved plant with funky-smelling flowers blooms in the mountains from April until June, but the root was the valuable ingredient. It could be brewed into a tea that treated all sorts of reproductive issues including birth and labor, menstruation, and even menopause (Foxfire 11, pp. 142)
Spikenard and Sweet Flag (also known as Calamus root) – This marshy plant was used in the Ozarks as a treatment to ease childbirth (Randolph p. 199)

A final protection involves the burning of chicken feathers, then fumigating the room where the birth will take place, which is said to ease the process (found in both Randolph, p. 201; and Brown, v6, p.9).. Interestingly, there are also charms that involve symbolic images of chickens or other fowls as protective amulets for those giving birth (Trachtenberg p. 169).

Burning chicken feathers was thought to aid in delivery
(image by Cory Thomas Hutcheson (c) 2023 – CC 2.0 Attribution license)

After-Birth Blessing and Post-Partum Protections

The baby’s safe arrival and the parent’s stabilization was only the first part of the magical process, of course. After the birth, a number of folk practices and traditions focus on protecting the new family, establishing a connection between child and place, and other necessities of folk life.

Some folklore prognosticated on the child’s future. We’ve written especially about the presence of a caul or “veil” around a child’s head during birth–a thin amniotic membrane that was thought to presage a life of Second Sight or connection to the Otherworld. I also talk about the “calling circle” ritual done around a child’s first birthday to determine possible future careers in the New World Witchery book, too.

Many people are probably also familiar with the famous “Monday’s Child” rhyme which promises to tell the child’s future based on the day it was born:

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go.
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child must work for a living.
A child that’s horn on the Sabbath day
Is blithe and bonnie and rich and gay.

This is where the Addams Family chose their daughter’s name, as she seemed a child “full of woe.” There are variations on this, of course, as in this version recorded by Vance Randolph in an old manuscript owned by a woman in Notch, Missouri:

Sunday never to want,
Monday fair in face,
Tuesday full of grace,
Wednesday woeful and sad,
Thursday a long ways to go,
Friday loving and giving,
Saturday work hard for a living. (Randolph 206)

One tradition that made a comeback in the twentieth century (if indeed it ever went away) was the treatment of the placenta after the birth completed. Many people will retain the placenta and either eat it to ensure healthy nursing and a quick return to strength for the parent (it can be eaten raw or cooked, and many mammals do this), or bury it at the base of a new tree to grant the child long life (Randolph p. 202). Another bit of Southern lore says to save the water from a baby’s first bath and use it to water the “name tree” (usually also the tree where the placenta is buried) to link them and make them “blood kin,” so that both will thrive (Botkin, SF, p.627). On the other hand, some lore says that the parent should never be fully bathed/submerged nor their bed linens changed for at least nine days after the birth to protect them from infection and misfortune. That same line of lore says to avoid bathing a child completely until at least three days old, and to avoid washing the palms especially to make sure not to wash away any luck the child may have. Ozark lore indicates that the best water to wash a baby’s head is “stump water,” or the rain that collects in the hollow of a stump, so that the child will not suffer from premature baldness (Randolph p. 204-5).

Planting a placenta at the roots of a sapling brought health and protection to a baby
(image by Cory Thomas Hutcheson (c) 2023 – CC 2.0 Attribution license)

A few other charms and practices are worth mentioning, too. For example, in many places it’s customary for new parents to receive help from their family or community members in the form of food or services–laundry and cleaning especially. Washing and cleaning the house is usually done by older people, however, because any person who can give birth that helps clean the house of a newly-delivered parent will be the next to become pregnant (Opie & Tatum, p. 27). There’s also a taboo against calling a baby “angel,” for fear that it will think itself belonging to the heavenly host and not stay with its mortal family.

The clothes a newborn wears can also impact its future, according to some lore. In Ozark belief, wrapping the baby in a garment of the parent’s–such as a shirt or petticoat–as a swaddling cloth is thought to bring good luck. Clothes worn previously by another baby (who lived) are also good luck and ensure healthy growth, so long as they are never returned (Randolph 205-8).

A few place-specific beliefs also factor into the new life of a child. The parent of a newborn should avoid crossing running water for the first month to avoid bad luck. They should also avoid cutting their hair for at least nine days following the birth (Brown v.6 p.15). Honey and fish should be avoided (interesting, given their connection to Hekate as offerings). Walking the baby around the house/property so that it will “stay” (not die) and know its home all of its life, too.

A Note on the Evil Eye

It would be entirely remiss of me to do anything on pregnancy and childbirth lore and not mention the Evil Eye (or malocchio, mal ojo, or other similar names). This is probably the single most widespread and pervasive piece of folklore connected to children and pregnancy, and is found on most continents among many communities ranging from Turkish, Greek, and Syrian peoples to English, Spanish, Irish, Italian, and African American communities. It has a number of variations, and more than a number of remedies that can involve everything from the famous Hamsa hands and blue eye Nazar amulets to bowls of oil and water and looking at the end of one’s nose. To treat the topic of the Evil Eye is worthy of much more than a small mention in this article, however, and entire books have been written on the subject. I may one day come back around to covering this, but since it’s important, I thought I’d share tips from two recent publications dealing with the topic.

The first is an excerpt from Antonio Pagliarulo’s forthcoming book The Evil Eye: The History, Mystery, and Magic of the Quiet Curse (Weiser Books, 2023): “Take an example from my childhood. When I was a kid, a pregnancy was never announced outside of immediate family

members; it wasn’t even discussed until the expectant mother was clearly showing. I remember my own mother’s reaction whenever she received an invitation to a baby shower. She was confused. She didn’t understand why any woman would risk putting herself and her unborn child in the path of malocchio. To celebrate an event that hadn’t yet occurred—especially an event as delicate as childbirth—was like standing directly in front of the Eye while waving a sign that read: Look at me and how happy I am! If ever there was a way to court danger, it was having a baby shower.” (Pagliarulo pp.6-7)

Here we have echoes of lore we’ve already seen about not announcing a birth too early and avoiding inspiring jealousy, which is usually at the root of the Eye. Pagliarulo’s book contains a great deal more lore on the topic, so I’d recommend seeking it out for more depth.

I also want to mention Laura Davila’s anti-Evil Eye charm for both babies and parents: a mixture of rosemary, basil and oregano steeped in a strong alcohol. This would then be used to mark a cross on the person’s forehead while praying that they be healed from or protected from the Eye, and asking that any such connections to harmful witchcraft be severed. This working, called an ensalmo in the brujeria de rancho tradition, specifically draws upon existing Christian prayer forms, as do many other Evil Eye countermagics (Davila p.125-26). This is one of many simple remedies one can use to protect from the Eye, and it echoes a lot of lore found in other places, too.

There is truly so much lore about pregnancy and childbirth that covering it in this short(ish) entry is a Sisyphian task. I hope, though, that what you’ve read here will offer you some insights and guidance in researching the topic further for yourself. As always, I recommend turning to folk practitioners for their original insights on the subject. Ask those who have helped with births about things they do to ensure a safe delivery and to protect parent and child following the pregnancy and birth, and you’ll probably open up a whole treasure chest of folk knowledge.

As a very final note, I can’t let this article end without mentioning one of my favorite books, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, based on her Diary, 1785-1812. It’s a magnificently annotated and transcribed account of a late eighteenth/early nineteenth-century midwife’s work, and how integrated she was in so many aspects of her community. Bits of folk knowledge come through, as well as a much deeper understanding of the contexts connected to birth and daily life. Do yourself a favor and find a copy if you can.

For now, though, I think I’ve labored long enough on this one, and I’ll place it safely swaddled in your arms to take with you.

Thanks for reading!

-Cory

REFERENCES

Botkin, B. A. A Treasury of Southern Folklore. Crown Publishers, 1953.
Collins, Kaye Carver, Lacy Hunter, and the Foxfire Students. Foxfire 11: The Old Home Place, Wild Plant Uses, Preserving and Cooking Food, Hunting Stories, Fishing, More Affairs of Plain Living. The Foxfire Group/Anchor Books, 1999.
Davila, Laura. Mexican Sorcery: A Practical Guide to Brujeria de Rancho. Weiser Books, 2023.
Fahrun, Mary-Grace. Italian Folk Magic: Rue’s Kitchen Witchery. Weiser Books, 2018.
Federal Writers’ Project. “Chapter 14 – Folklore: The Living Past,” in Tennessee: A Guide to the State. WPA/Hastings House: New York, 1949.
Hand, Wayland, ed. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, Vol. VI. Duke Univ. Press, 1961.
Hoyert, Donna L. “Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2020.” NCHS Health E-Stats. 2022. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc:113967.
Hutcheson, Cory Thomas. New World Witchery: A Trove of North American Folk Magic. Llewellyn Pub., 2021.
Illes, Judika. The Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells. HarperOne, 2009.
Opie, Iona, and Moira Tatem. A Dictionary of Superstitions. Oxford Univ. Press, 1989.
Pagliarulo, Antonio. The Evil Eye: The History, Mystery, and Magic of the Quiet Curse. Weiser Books, 2023.
Randolph, Vance. Ozark Magic & Folklore . Dover Pub., 1964.
Trachtenberg, Joshua. Jewish Magic & Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion. Behrman’s Jewish Books, 1939.

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, based on her Diary, 1785-1812. Vintage Books, 1991.

Blog Post 190 – Magical Gift Giving

“Die Neujahrsbretzel für den Herrn Pfarrer”, 1884 (via Wikimedia Commons)

I’ve had several people recommend a book to me called The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman. It’s a book that looks at the various ways in which people give and receive love. It gets into a lot of psychology and interpersonal communication theories, but in a nutshell it assumes that people tend to give or receive affection via physical touch, loving words, acts of kindness or service, quality time, or gifts. I am definitely a gift-giver when it comes to expressing my feelings—I will work for weeks to handcraft something for someone I care about. When my lovely wife and I were courting, I put hundreds of sticky notes all over her apartment with love messages so that she would constantly find them for months and months afterwords. Even when we ship products out of our Etsy shop, I tend to add layers of Spanish moss to the packing material, as well as little lagniappe touches to the shipment to make it feel magical for the person who opens the box. None of this is to brag, but simply to frame the point that giving gifts is a major part of my connection to others.

Giving gifts has been an important aspect of human relationships for a very lnog time. The Ancient Roman patronage system essentially operated on a large-scale gifting economy. In North America, giving gifts with a magical bent appears time and again. A number of superstitions and rituals surround the acts of gifting and receiving gifts. Possibly one of the gifts most beset by magical rules is the knife:

One must not give a friend a knife or other sharp instrument, as it “cuts love.” (Price 34).
“Giving a knife as a gift is bad luck as it cuts the friendship” (Hines 12).
A present of knives will break the friendship between you (the giver) and the recipient of the gift. (Hines 13)
No hillman would think of giving a steel blade to a friend such a gift is sure to sever their friendship (Randolph 58).

The ‘hillman’described in the last point would have been obliged to pay for a knife if he received it as a gift, in order to abate any potential tragedies:

Whenever a knife changes hands, it must be paid for, even if the sum is merely nominal. I have seen a salesman, a graduate of the University of Missouri, present his son with a valuable hunting knife but he never let it out of his hand till the boy had given him a penny (Randolph 58).

This is a sentiment I’ve seen echoed through other traditions as well, including some Wiccan circles and their beliefs about gifting athames. I have also seen contrary points, insisting that Wiccan ritual blades must never be purchased, but only gifted.

Knives, however, are only scratching the surface of the myriad taboos, beliefs, and customs surrounding giving and receiving. In the following paragraphs, I hope to lay out some of these traditions (though certainly not all of them… The concept of Christmas and birthday gifts is well outside the scope of a single survey article, for example, and the topic is much larger than a 2,000 word synopsis could handle). What I hope that you will see is the sheer humanity of this process. People seem to develop an entire language around gifting (see the Victorians and their flowers, for example), and understanding that language, especially within a magical context, expands the conversation on American folk magic immensely.

Since we’ve started in the domestic realm with knives, let’s continue in that vein. In the Ozarks, even very small gifts can have great significance:

A button received as a gift is always lucky, no matter what the color. Years ago, many an Ozark girl collectedbuttons from her friends and strung them together into a sort of necklace called a charm string. A charm string not only brought good fortune to the owner but also served as a sort of memory book for women who could not read one button recalled a beloved aunt, another a friend’s wedding, still another a dance or a quilting party or an apple-peelin’ or some other pleasant occasion. (Randolph 61)

These little tokens often represent a greater whole. In the example Randolph cites the ‘memory book’ aspect of the charm pushes it out of the realm of luck and into a broader realm of personal narrative. It tells the story of where the girl has been. The luck may then be a cumulative blessing from all those around her, an assembly of good wishes designed to attract further goodness into her life. Similarly, some fairly small gifts can act as predictors or insurance of future blessings, as in these two examples from Louisiana:

A midwife should plant a flower for a baby at its birth.
It is good luck for visitors to place a silver coin in a baby’s hand (Roberts 150).

Here we see blessings which ensure growth and health (the flower) and insurance against poverty (the coin) passed onto a baby, with the hopes that the child will grow and prosper in the future.

Of course, there are just as many taboos on gifting as there are joyous customs. As we saw with knives, some of those can be firmly established and nigh universal at times. Let’s look at another domestic commonplace with strong taboos:

Never borrow salt or you will have bad luck (Hines 12).
Never return salt that has been borrowed (Roberts 178)

Why salt? In my family, we frequently gave salt as a component of a new house blessing for people we knew, which as I understood it derived from Polish traditions (after investigating this a bit, I’m reasonably sure this was adopted from a similar Jewish custom picked up by my family in the area on the border between Lithuania and Poland). We give a jar of salt with some bread and a penny in it, ‘So that the family may never be hungry (bread), never be poor (penny), and their lives may never lack flavor (salt).” The salt, then, can be seen as the experience and cumulative personality of the family, its seasoning or flavor which makes it distinct. Borrowing someone else’s flavor would, in essence, give them power over you, especially when the salt is returned carrying traces of your own eau de familie. It could also be that by taking one family’s wisdom and experience, then returning it, you set off a disruptive cycle whereby your two families will be struggling to rebalance power for a long time, which definitely sounds like bad luck. A similar Louisiana superstition says ‘Don’t give spades, etc., to your neighbors; you will have a fuss if you do (Roberts 174). In that case, the tool is symbolic of a person’s work and labor, and to lend it out cheaply doesn’t bode well for anyone (and makes me think of Homer Simpson borrowing essentially every tool in Ned Flanders’ garage…a very bad neighbor).

The issue of when a gift is given can also impact its significance and magical qualities. While I will avoid holidays and the like here, there are plenty of other occasions when gift-giving is an expectation, such as at baby showers:

At a baby shower, the giver of the seventh gift to be unwrapped will be the next to have a baby (Hines 14).

In this example, the gift-giver receives the magical benefit of a prediction. I suppose that if you are not in the market to start a family, this superstition could seem more like a taboo than a blessing. Another key occasion for giving gifts is after a new family moves into a new home. I mentioned my family’s custom for making a house-blessing from my Polish roots, but it turns out that the general concept of the house-warming may come from the other side of my family tree in the British Isles. The hint of magic behind this tradition comes from the original house-warming present, which actually served to warm a new home:

“As poet John Greenleaf Whittier noted…’The Irish who settled here about the year 1720, they brought indeed with them, among other strange matters, potatoes and fairies.’…The Scots [who were also early settlers in America, particularly in the Mid-Atlantic region and parts of Appalachia]…believed in ‘brownies,’ a more subdued version of the leprechaun. Brownies lived in the kitchen fireplace, and the belief was that the owners of the house had a responsibility to always keep these fairy-creatures warm by keeping a constant fire in the hearth. The Yankees noted that Scots-Americans, when moving from one house to another, would always remove burning embers from the old house to the new, to provide a warm home for the brownies that would move in right along with the family. This was how the tradition of ‘house-warmings’ started” (Cahill 32).

I tend to think this is a bit of fancy on Cahill’s part, and that the giving of gifts to new homeowners is something much older and less literal than a brownie’s ‘house-warming,’ but I would be completely unsurprised to find that the actual practice of moving hearth coals to entice fairy-beings to move houses exists in the Old World or the New.

Marriage also features a number of gift-giving customs, some with superstitious components. For example, in Kansas groups of Russian-German emigrants pin money to the bridal skirt as a way of blessing the bride and groom with prosperity. Additionally, a fun game is made of the best man’s gift, and the “custom of some young buck’s stealing the shoe of the bride. The best man had to redeem the shoe with cash, which went into the household fund” (Tallman 227-8). The best man might contribute some or all of the money, with the remainder raised by good-natured begging of the wedding guests.

A number of tales from Appalachia and New England, including stories from Hubert Davis’ The Silver Bullet and other collections of supernatural American folklore, indicate that magical gifts have particular rules when it comes to witches. For example, a witch might offer a very low price for some livestock or sundries she fancies from a local homestead. If she is refused the gift—which is all such a lowballed agreement could be seen as—she curses whatever it is she wanted, rendering it useless to the family that has it. Often she will curse a cow so it won’t produce milk, or she might even curse an entire herd of pigs or sheep rather than just the one she wanted. On the flip-side, a witch should never be given a present of anything from the household, or she could use it to harm those who dwell within. One story features a housewife who loans the local witch-woman a cup of sugar in a neighborly—if cautious—manner, only to find her butter won’t come when she churns it afterwords. She summons a local witch-doctor who takes a piece of hot silver and drops it in the churn, then spills cream on the fire and whips a pan of the scalded dairy until they hear shrieks from the direction of the witch-woman’s home. She, of course, suffers great pains and bears the marks of a whipping and burning the next day, and everyone knows just what’s what. Oh, and the butter is fine after that, too, of course.

Not all witches or magical practitioners are conniving and dangerous when it comes time to share the wealth, though. For example, many witch-doctors and conjurers in the Southern Mountains will not take direct payment for their work, but only offers of gifts made in-kind, such as foodstuffs, clothing, or other necessities. Vance Randloph noted that one witch woman in the Ozarks did not ask a fee for her work, but would accept such donations: “This woman makes no charge for her services, but if somebody offers her a present, such as a new dress or a side of bacon, she seldom refuses the gift” (Randolph 126).

Lest you think all these magical gifting traditions are limited to the realm of humanity, here’s a bit of lore from John George Hohman’s Long Lost Friend to show otherwise:

A GOOD METHOD OF DESTROYING RATS AND MICE.

Every time you bring grain into your barn, you must, in putting down the three first sheaves, repeat the following words: “Rats and mice, these three sheaves I give to you, in order that you may not destroy any of my wheat.” The name of the kind of grain must also be mentioned. (Hohman 70).

Here we see the old idea of “one for the rabbit, one for the crow, one to rot, and one to sow” extended from nursery rhyme to magical practice. Giving the animals a bit of the household bounty seems to be a way to stave off any thievery on their part, at least in this example.

Finally, I can’t help but offer up a humorous story from Maryland which shows animals getting in on the gift-giving action:

It seems that Mrs. Morison’s uncle and her father went fishing one time and as always they carried their [moonshine] jug along. They came to this water moccasin who was just about ready to swallow a frog. So Mrs. Morison’s father took a forked stick and clamped it down over the snake’s head and took it [the frog] away ‘cause they wanted to use it for bait.

Well, that snake looked so darn downhearted that they gave him a drink of moonshine, and off he went. So they went on with their fishing and about an hour later one of them felt a tug on his leg. He looked down and there was that snake back with another frog. All I can say is, that must have been awful good moonshine” (Carey 31).

I’m not sure if the ‘magic’ in that tale is so much in the moonshine or the moccasin, but I couldn’t resist sharing it with you.

I’m sure there are many other magical giving traditions I’m missing here, so if you have any you want to share, please do!

Thanks for reading,

-Cory

Sources

Cahill, Robert Ellis. Olde New England’s Strange Superstitions (1990).
Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore (Tidewater Pub.: 1989).
Davis, Hubert J. The Silver Bullet, & Other American Witch Stories (Jonathan David Pub.: 1975).
Hines, Donald M. “Superstitions from Oregon,” Western Folklore, Jan. 1965.
Hohman, John George. The Long-Lost Friend (Llewellyn, 2012).
Price, Sadie. “Kentucky Folklore,” Journal of American Folklore, Jan-Mar 1901.
Randolph, Vance. Ozark Magic & Folklore (Dover: 1964).
Roberts, Hilda. “Louisiana Superstitions,” Journal of American Folklore, Apr-Jun 1927.
Tallman, Marjorie. Dictionary of American Folklore (Philosophical Library, NYC: 1959).

Podcast 62 – Pregnancy and Birth Lore

Shownotes for Podcast 62 – Pregnancy and Birth Lore

Summary:
In this episode we’re trying out the wedding ring test, asking about spicy foods, and trying not to scare any birthmarks onto Laine’s baby as we talk about the lore and folk customs surrounding pregnancy and childbirth.

Play:

Download: New World Witchery – Episode 62

-Sources-

We mostly mention various lore we remember without citing sources, but I do mention a few books:

The Ways of My Grandmothers, by Beverly Hungry Wolf
Our old standby, Ozark Magic and Folklore, by Vance Randolph makes an appearance
You can read about the weird Drano test mentioned by Laine here

Pagan Podkin Super Moot 5 is going to be in Chicago! Watch Fire Lyte’s page for more detail to come.

Cory is going to be moving to Pennsylvania in the Fall, which may impact the show and blog a bit (but probably for the better in the long run)

If you have feedback you’d like to share, email us or leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you!

Don’t forget to follow us at Twitter! And check out our Facebook page!

Promos & Music

Title music: “Homebound,” by Jag, from Cypress Grove Blues. From Magnatune.

Promos:

Blog Post 187 – Magical Hats

Cowboy hats for sale in Austin, TX (photo by Nika Vee, via Wikimedia Commons)

There’s a line from the classic (well, sort of) movie Smokey & the Bandit in which Burt Reynolds’s character explains to his lady of the film that he only takes his hat off for one thing, to which his female companion (Sally Field), of course, replies: ‘Take off your hat.’

Costume is frequently a reflection of ceremonial, ritual, or even magical operation, an outer manifestation of inner desire or power. A nun’s habit or a burqa can both represent a commitment to religious life, and inspire reactions from those around them. The ceremonial robes of a Thelemic magician frequently conform to specific standards to enhance invocations and rituals. The Encyclopedia of American Folklore notes:

Folklorists who discuss adornment have concentrated on costume’s socializing force and its relationship to the maintenance of individual and group identities. According to Don Yoder (1972), folk costume expresses identity in a symbolic way; functioning as an outward “badge” of community identity and expressing an individual’s manifold relationships to and within that community (Brunvand 341).

One of the items frequently associated with magicians is the magic hat—whether it’s the shiny tophat of a stage magician concealing a rabbit in its depths or the pointy, star-spangled adornment of a fantasy wizard. In American lore the hat has a special place as a magical item, frequently providing either symbolic guidance, otherworldly taboo, or a method of deployment in spell-casting.

When people think of American hats, possibly the most iconic is the cowboy’s ten-gallon hat (which, of course, does not hold ten gallons, but the galon hatband worn by Southwestern vaqueros). I remember teaching overseas and asking about impressions of America, and the most common response was that we tend to wear cowboy hats and smile a lot.

The cowboy hat—as well as a number of other elements of ‘rugged’ American folk costume—was borrowed from other cultures:

Many specifically American types of costume emerged from the interaction of diverse costume traditions in dialogue with indigenous materials and environments. Recognizable forms in Western regional costume, for example, are creolized forms resulting from the interaction of different traditions of dress. The costume of mountain men who charted new Western territory—fringed buckskin coats, breeches and shirts, fur “coonskin” hats, and thick, colorful blanket jackets—was an adaptation of Native American costume forms suitable for native environments and constructed with indigenous materials. The occupational costume of the American cowboy was also the result of the interaction of various cultural forms in dialogue with the demands of occupation and environment. Many of the recognizable elements of the classic American cowboy costume, such as spurs, hat, boots, and chaps, were the result of cultural exchanges between working Anglo and Mexican cowboys, known as vaqueros. Vaqueros were known by their wide-brimmed hats, short jackets, colorful neckerchiefs, red sashes, elaborate spurs, and protective leather leggings (Brunvand 343)

Given the emblematic nature of the Stetson and its kin and the frequently superstitious nature of life in the Old West, it is hardly surprising that lore has arisen surrounding this headgear. Probably the most common belief surrounding the cowboy hat has to do with what to do when you’re not wearing it. There seems to be an absolute taboo on placing a hat on the bed, which appears in everything from Southwestern rodeo lore to Oregon folk belief.

In both the American South and West, a particular custom of hat-burning following the birth of the first baby (or sometimes only the firstborn son) of a miner prevails. From Vance Randolph’s Ozark Magic & Folklore comes the following account:

In some clans, when a baby boy is born, a sister of the babe’s father comes to the house, looks at the child, and then burns the first hat she finds. No matter whose it is, nor how valuable, she just picks up a hat and throws it into the fireplace. Many people laugh at this and pretend to take it lightly, but it is never omitted in certain families. I know of one case where there was some doubt about the child’s paternity, and the husband’s family were by no means friendly to the young mother, but despite all this one of the sisters came and burned the hat; she did it silently and grudgingly and most ungraciously, but she did it. This practice is never discussed with outsiders, but it is sufficiently known that a series of funny stories has grownup about hats being burned by mistake, strangers’ hats missing, doctors leaving their hats at home, and so on (Randolph 205)

This practice was also found in California by folklorist Wayland Hand, where “[o]n occasion of a miner’s first trip to the mine after the arrival of the firstborn, his comrades simply seize his hat and burn it despite any resistance or protests offered” (Hand 52). This act functions both as an initiatory rite and as a method of preventing bad luck for the child. Hand also notes that the baby was usually made to touch the hat if possible prior to its cremation. A soldier’s hat could also be worn by a woman in labor to give her strength during the birth, furthering the link between children and hats.

A number of traditions from African American folklore have been attached to hats. In most cases, headgear serves as a method for the transference of contagious magic, sometimes almost in a medical sense: “if one borrows a hat from a diseased person, and the wearer sweats round the forehead where the hat rests, he will take the disease” (Steiner 267). Harry Hyatt recorded a string of beliefs among African Americans surrounding hat lore:

9750. If a girl puts a man’s hat on her head, she desires him to kiss her; if a man puts his hat on a girl’s head, he desires to kiss her.
9751. A girl should never put a man’s hat on her head; it will cause quarrels with him.
9752. The girl who tries on a man’s hat will not get him for a husband.
9753. If a woman throws her hat and gloves on a man’s bed, she wants to sleep with him; if a man throws his hat on a woman’s bed, he wants to sleep with her.
9754. A girl can strengthen a sweetheart’s love by laying his hat on her bed when he comes to see her.
9755. The significance of a beau refusing to hand his hat to his girl when he calls on her is love growing cold. 9756. A girl stepping on a man’s hat will soon marry the owner.
9757. “The girls did this when I was young: in the spring stamp with your thumb in the palm of your hand the first twenty-seven straw hats you see and you will meet your beau.”
9758. If a girl takes the bow out of the hat of each man liked, she will marry the owner of the seventh hat.
9759. Let a girl take as many bows as possible from the hats of men liked and wear them on her garter; the bow staying on longest will reveal who among these men loves her best (Hyatt 231)

Clearly some of these are contradictory, as in the piece about one gender wearing the other’s hat breeding either contempt or desire. There does seem to be a very strong connection between hats and sexuality, however, perhaps because the hat sits so close to the brain and retains the warmth of the head, it may be seen to cause ‘feverish’ behavior, such as love, lust, or even fighting. The divinatory rites surrounding hats are also interesting, although I suspect these performances have less to do with any direct effect upon the mind and more to do with other counting rituals related to love forecasting. Several tricks in the practice of old-style hoodoo involve acquiring the band from a man’s chapeau and using it to deploy any number of tricks, mostly designed to influence him in love (or occasionally business).

A bit of lore from the Southern mountains tells about how a person can reverse bad luck caused by unfortunate omens (in particular a fearsome rabbit crossing one’s path): [If a] Rabbit runs cross yur path, turn yur hat ‘roun’. (Wear your hat with the back part in front.)” (Duncan 236). This is not much different from the idea of turning around if a black cat crosses one’s path or even turning a key or coin over in one’s pocket after seeing an unlucky sign. In an era when hats are frequently worn backward (if worn at all), this sort of act is probably much less out of place today than it would have been half a century or so ago.

Hats, then, can be deeply magical objects to those that wear them. It’s hardly surprising that Lyle Lovett sings of his size-7 Stetson, “Well if it’s her you want, I don’t care about that/ You can have my girl, but don’t touch my hat.”

So what about you? Do you have any hat-related lore? What kinds of hats hold particular magic for you? The pointy costume ‘witch’ hat? A trucker’s cap owned by a favorite grandfather? I’d love to hear what makes your hat special and whether you ever ascribe anything magical to it.

Thanks for reading!

-Cory