662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



house is struck by lightning, a mob of priests, Jcosio, and worship- 

 ers of Shango rush into it and plunder it, while pretending to 

 search for the sacred stone. When the house is stripped the 

 priests produce a stone implement, generally an axe, which they 

 pretend to have found, and which justifies their pillage. Blood, 

 mixed with rum, is commonly drunk by the votaries of Shango 

 on days of festival ; and this is the drink used in the secret cere- 

 monies of the cannibal "vaudoux" worshipers of Hayti. 



In the Century Magazine for April, 188G, Mr. George W. Cable 

 mentions some " voodoo " charms ; but these have no connection 

 at all with python-worship. They are superstitious practices, 

 such as are found everywhere ; survivals of the religions which 

 gave birth to them, and in which each had a definite meaning and 

 intention. Thus, on the Slave Coast, each god has his own dis- 

 tinguishing badge or amulet, made by his priests and sold to his 

 worshipers, who wear them so that the god may be reminded 

 that they are under his protection. From the priests of malevo- 

 lent gods people can also obtain charms to work evil; and these 

 are either harmless rubbish, such as parrots' feathers tied to- 

 gether, small bunches of human hair, etc., or powders which are 

 reputed to possess magic properties. To keep up the reputation 

 of the efficacy of such preparations, the priests occasionally se- 

 cretly supplement them with poison, which they contrive to have 

 placed in the food of the person against whom the spell was 

 directed ; and the purchaser, finding that his enemy has died, 

 attributes it to the action of what he obtained from the priest, 

 and consequently regards all such preparations with great dread. 

 The hollowed-out acorn, mentioned by Mr. Cable, seems a copy of 

 the cutch-nut charm of the Gold Coast, whose chief use there 

 however, is to restrain the slanderous tongue ; the dough or 

 waxen heart, stuck full of pins, is evidently an idea borrowed 

 from mediaeval witchcraft ; and the pouring of champagne on a 

 moonless night at the four corners of a square seems a corruption 

 of the form of invocation of Shugudu, a malignant god, who will 

 lend his aid to any one who on a dark night will pour a libation 

 of rum into a hole dug in the ground, or bury a fowl alive. 



The different words given by Mr. Cable, as used in connection 

 with vodu- worship, are difficult to identify ; they have, no doubt, 

 changed at least as much from the original as the Creole French 

 has from European French. As the word vodu and the snake- 

 worship are both peculiarly Ewe, one might expect to find words 

 belonging to that language predominating ; so, at a guess, one 

 might suppose the words tigui li, in the vodu song, given at the 

 foot of page 820, to be tigeicola, " a maker of charms/' or "medi- 

 cine-man"; and the concluding sentence, Do sedan go-do, to be 

 Do dsi danh godo, " O curved snake, may you be fat," i. e., " have 



