Browse:Lightwood and Lighter Pine (Volume 1, entries 1702)
Lightwood and Lighter Pine
Volume 1, entries 1702. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → FOLK MEDICINE → Wood. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 1702
[Lightwood in Southern United States means pine, often the Georgia or long-leaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill). Lighters are small pieces of pitch-filled pine used in starting a fire; these coming from a lighter pine or lightwood tree. Iighters appear somewhat frequently in other rites but rarely in cures and protection.] Take some lighters. You get them from offen the north side of a pine, you know, the lighter pine, lightwood, and make splinters of it. [Except in this rite, lighters come from any side or part of the pine.] Chew make nine and dig a hole. You.get these sticks, now, offen this pine and you get it offen the north side and you take and make nine splinters of it. You make 'em so many inches long, just as long as you wish. Make notches in them just as many as you wish to make, you see. Most in general you just make nine. And you dig a hole such a depth, I think round about twelve inches or eighteen in the ground. Then you cross them and make your wish.
(How do vou mean cross them?)
You put 'em across like that in the ground.
(Like a rail fence?)
Yeh, like a rail fence - only they're sticking in the ground though. You stick 'em down and cross 'em like that. That's to purwent anyone from inter- fering with you around this home.