Browse:Man You're Ruined (Volume 1, entries 878)
Man You're Ruined
Volume 1, entries 878. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → Consultation Technique. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 878
[As the preceding examples indicate, the first part of a hoodoo consul- tation concerns time: either You came to me just in time or You came too late - depending upon whether the doctor thought his cure would succeed or fail. We now come to the second part of the consultation, which is always something like: You're on your way to the graveyard!1 He lived over on the same farm that I was raised on - I left there when I was four years old - and he claimed that he was one of these high fellahs [usually high man = root doctor or cunjureman on the Eastern Shore]. So he got his name out here as being one of those high fellahs. So he fixed the path between his house and our path, our house rather, and fixed this path up like he wanted it. In fact, he got himself a spool and he made some holes in this spool just about the size of a needle point. He takes these needles and he puts 'em down in here. And he goes and gits himself some muratic [muriatic] acid [commercial name for hydrochloric acid]. He bores [small holes] in the bottom of this bottle and lets the points of these needles go through this spool just where they could touch this acid. Well, the needle would stick up just above de earth where these barefooted folks walked. ["The heads of the needles touched the acid and the points stuck up above the ground" - my note made at the time of my transcription, a few days after story collected.] And then, naturally, when a man come along and stepped on one of these spools with his bare foot, you know what took place, with that muratic acid through that needle in his flesh. ["The acid is supposed to go through the length of the solid needle" - my note at time of my transcription.] And in two or three days time this man would be all swelled up and dey didn't know what was the trouble. Now, they had to send for him. [No high man, even a stupid one, would have used such a crude trick as exposed needles in a path. This piece of gossip is merely one of many versions of the buried-needle theme - a pain or swelling in foot or leg comes from walking over a buried needle. However, a person does not step on an exposed needle point; contact between needle and flesh is magical. Originally the buried needle was a buried root (see No. 718, p.239). The author or editor of our story has heard of hypodermic needle but he does not know that it is hollow. How he thought acid could flow through a solid needle I am unable to say.] He'd come around and tell 'em, 'There's first, one thing buried here around this post." Said, "I don't wonder tha' chew being swelled up - no, I don't." He says, "Man, you got somepin awful around your house here. I kin move it. I know right where it is and I kin take it away from here. Well, naturally, you want that thing taken away. You all swelled up there and didn't know what de trouble was. He'd go to work and he'd come there, and he'd git a bottle of hair, needles and pins, first one thing and then another, and bring it in the house, open this bottle, and there you'd find all this stuff. He said, "Man, you're ruined, you ruined for life. You've got to be worked on and worked on quick." And he just gone there and took those few needles up in the earth there, see [those he was supposed to have buried], and he'd know just what to do, you know, to cut that acid from hurtin' yeh or burnin' yeh to death. And you'd pay him your money. And the first thing, you know, he'd go in the pound [cattle enclosure] and git a ole dumplin' of cow dung, you know, and fix it up. And go out and git hisself a few leaves of ole field mullein and elder roots, and boil all of that stuff up together. Then he'd put that on a fire and boil it up, and put some rock salt in there and a little table salt, fix it up, in a few minutes have your feet in there up to your knees. And you sit there now until he tell yeh to get up in a certain length of time.