Browse:Buzzard Rock (Volume 1, entries 1155)
Buzzard Rock
Volume 1, entries 1155. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → FOLK MEDICINE → CURE AND PROTECTION. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 1155
A buzzard lays twelve eggs, you see, just like twelve and - and all of the eggs hatches. Now, it got a buzzard test - that's for a man to do anything, but you gotta make the buzzard get the test. Now, the buzzard, she sets on her eggs and after she sets on her eggs, she goes off to feed exactly thirty minutes. You gotta go to the nest and take one of them eggs out of the nest when she go off the nest feeding. You know she feeds thirty minutes, [therefore] you boil the egg about fifteen minutes and then you slip back there and put that egg in the nest. Now she going to hatch all them buzzards but that one egg, and she going to sit on that one egg nine days. After she see that egg don't hatch, she going off and get something and put on [test] the egg. Then she see that egg was not good. And then, when she see that egg was not good, she going to take all her young ones away from there and she going to leave that test there. What she left there - a little rock or something and you going to get that little rock. You take that little rock and do anything in the world with it, but you gotta make the buzzard get it though.
(You mean she goes away to feed herself for thirty minutes?)
Yeah, goes feeds herself and that's the time you get the egg out of that nest and you get that buzzard test. If you get that, why you kin go any place without being seen.
(I see. They can't see you.)
They can't see you.
(This egg that isn't any good - it turns to a rock?)
No, the egg don't turn to a rock. She goes off and gets something - we li'ble be walking over it but you don't know what it is. She goes gets it. You gotta make her go get it. And she put it on her egg to see was the egg good, and after she find out the egg was no good and it didn't hatch, then she going to leave there, but [before the test] she going to sit on the egg nine days. (After she finds out that egg is no good with that rock - she tests that egg with the rock?) Yeah, she tests that - we call it a buzzard test.
(A buzzard test. And she finds out that that egg is no good.)
No good.
(Then she just goes on away.)
She go on away.
(And she leaves both the egg and the rock in the nest?)
Leaves the egg and the rock and you goes there and gets that.
(You just take the rock - you don't get the egg?)
You don't get the egg, just get the rock. [There are similar stories of the raven.]