Browse:SALT - PEPPER - DEVIL'S SNUFF (Volume 5, entries 9601)
SALT - PEPPER - DEVIL'S SNUFF
Volume 5, entries 9601. Source context: ADDITIONAL RITES AND BELIEFS → SALT AND ITS COMBINATIONS. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 9601
Salt, peppah, devil's snuff [all] in bag, carried in right-hand pocket to boss. Look 'im in eye when askin' fo' job. [Devil's snuff originally was the powder from puffballs - various fungi of the family Lycoperdaceae (class Basidiomycetes) - globular shaped, discharging ripe spores when pressed. As a boy I found their brown powder or smoke inter- esting, though warned that it was poisonous, and did not know puffballs were mushrooms. The plant must have been specially created for old-fashioned rootmen, but I suspect enterprising hoodoo drugstores in later years manufactured a devil's snuff of their own.