XVII 



Maize Magic in American 

 Folklore 



MAG SIX is a granny-woman, little and wizened, deaf 

 as an adder, and with a snake's bright, unwinking 

 eyes. Mag knows things. These are not the sort of things that 

 city people think make a person smart. They are useful things, 

 like how to cure warts, and the right signs of the moon for 

 the planting of gourds and cucumbers and beans; the way to 

 give a child power to staunch blood, and more tricks that 

 will bring rain than just to hang a snake, belly up, over a 

 fence. 



To girls who show all the symptoms of being sixteen and 

 lovesick, Mag says: 'Take your bed-sheet and go lay it onto 

 the hills where you got your corn planted. You got to do it 

 on the last night of April, though, to make it work. Come 

 morning, that sheet'll be all over wrinkles. Them wrinkles 

 will spell your mister's name." 



Mag's mister has been dead for many years. She speaks of 

 him without regret, but also without resentment. "He had 

 a kind of mean streak to him." He suspected and not with- 

 out cause, if one can believe Mag's neighbors that her inter- 

 est in visiting her sister down the branch was that sister's 

 husband, and he quietly emptied some gunpowder into the 

 corn-cake batter she was preparing to fry. Mag told me 

 about it. 



"When I slapped them cakes onto the griddle they went 

 off like Judgment Day." She smiled, like a child remembering 

 a grand and glorious Fourth. "And I hain't heerd so much as 

 a cricket sence." 



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