Browse:Bad Mouth (Volume 1, entries 766–779)
Bad Mouth
Volume 1, entries 766–779. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → DOCTOR AND DOCTOR: TWO OPPOSING SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 766
I have known of people that have had the record of saying that they could put a bad mouth on you. They would say, "So-and-so will happen to you, ' and you will not go very far before something will happen to you. I am told that to a certain degree they have power for good or evil and when they use the evil it is very detrimental either to your health or to your business because they have learned that they have power and they use it for evil doings.
Entry 767
They claim that older people. put their mouth on you. They predict some- thing that is going to happen to you. They say to you, 'That's all right, seven years will never rot." That means you will have tough luck. While saying that they point the forefinger of their right hand at you. That is sure tough luck for you.
Entry 769
Old uncle Jim C. used to say, "If you say anything to me, boy, I'll spit in your path and turn you as green as a lizard." And anybody he didn't like, they would turn aside when they met old uncle Jim C. He's been dead quite awhile.
The account quotes a conditional threat to spit in someone's path; it does not report the threat being carried out.
Entry 770
They say, "I'm going to put a spider in your grub." I've heard them say that many a time. I'll tell you one thing. We used to run a oyster-house. A fellow setting in there by name of Charlie J, he found one of those small crabs in his oysters and he got up and wouldn't eat them. He said, "You missed me that time, I seen him first." He told we put a spider in his grub.
Entry 771
If a person is going to put a spider in your head, they say, "I'm gon'a put a spider in your dumplin'."
The short item names the head in a conditional spider-placement statement; no placement is reported as having happened.
Entry 774
"I'm going to chew a root for you." That means he's going to give it to you. He going to fix you. "I'll do that on a dark night - when the moon changes you'll be changed too, when I fix my root for you; it's just as well to make peace with your God."
Entry 775
This man, his name was James Brown. He lived 'tween Suffolk and Holland in Virginia. He was a farmer. He lived near his birthplace. It Was said of him that when he was a boy - he was a very mischief boy, he would run across a lady's flower garden and the lady didn't see any way to keep him off of her flowers. So she said to him, "Boy, if you cross my flower garden again, I'm going to have you barking like a dog." So he crossed her flower garden again. And that night he started a sound something like a cough, only more like the bark of a dog. That sound stayed with him until he died. He would make that sound almost every two minutes. Sometime he would use vulgarity with it. It didn't care where he went. He even made that sound in church. He raised a family of seven girls and four boys. He died when he was forty-eight and the peculiar thing was he drop where that flower garden was.
Entry 776
I heard my mother say one time she knowed a woman got hold a lock of hair and bored a hole in a tree and plugged it up. This man had spells and died, swell out of his head. They say he used to bark like a dog. [St. James, Negro community 5 miles from Pocomoke City, Md., (104), by hand; no electricity for my Telediphone.]
Entry 777
The Nassau people - we have quite a few of them heah from the colored race and they are very bad that way. When they are in love with yo' an' yo' quit them, they slip undah yo' bed an' light six candles - right in under yo', an' pretty soon yo' go away. They tell yo' quickly, "Ah burn candles fo' yo'. An' yo' don't know whut they mean and they don' tell you whut they mean, but someone else kin tell yo', if yo' ask them, say, "Look heah, Sech-a-one tole me they Was goin' burn candles fo' me." An' they say, "Well, yo' better look out." Well, they will light them candles under yo' bed while yo' sleep, an' dey burn dem six candles under dere and when dey go down, why yo' go down.
(What color are they - any particular color?)
Dey don't have to be no partic'lar color - any color, jest so they candles.
Entry 778
Aunt Dorothy Wallace, if you passed her an' made any remarks at her - she wus a quire [queer] lookin' woman, you know - if you passed her an' made a remark that anything, you know, wusn't right towards her, she would turn round an' look at you, she'd throw her hand out, she'd say, "You'll be a corpse befo' mornin'." An' you'd come nigh bein' there too.
Entry 779
"I'm goin' to throw for you." That means I'm goin' to cunjure you to kill you in some way.
The item explains the quoted threat as cunjuring with an intended killing aim; it reports no accomplished killing.