2j6 Singing Valleys 



iron kettle when she takes it down for a hog-killing. Mag is 

 always in demand at local butcherings. She is known to be the 

 best casings-maker in the valley. 



Everybody knows that a five-pointed star will keep off any 

 hex. There are people who laugh at this and call it a super- 

 stition. But not infrequently their barns have stars painted 

 on the gable ends; and whenever the barns are repainted the 

 stars are put on again Even when the job is being done by a 

 son home from the state college. When Mag whitewashed her 

 corncrib last year she brushed a crooked hexenfuss on the 

 door. 



"Might's well be keerful," she explained. 



A lifetime of poverty has made Mag "keerful" of everything 

 that can be eaten. Her "keerfulness" of corn, however, springs 

 from a different source than the thrift which inspires her to 

 find a use for every scrap of pig which falls from the butcher's 

 knife. Corn is food in a larger sense than just something for 

 tomorrow's dinner. Her feeling for it is similar to that which 

 makes the Sicilian peasant woman, if she drops a piece of 

 bread, snatch it up and kiss it penitently. 



The Mexican woman has this reverence for the maize. If 

 any of it is spilt, she gathers up every grain, lest her careless- 

 ness invite want. Before she grinds the corn, she blows on it 

 "to make it live." Nothing to her mind is a truer portent of 

 bad luck than for her to break the merate-stone. Greedy chil- 

 dren who beg to lick the metate for the sake of the sweet 

 yellow grains that cling to its surface are warned that to do 

 so will cause their teeth to fall out. The same women foretell 

 their luck at the market by dropping a dozen kernels of maize 

 into a jar of water. If all the grains sink to the bottom as 

 sound corn will do then the day will be lucky. But if more 

 than three or four float on the surface of the water, then it is 

 best to stay at home and avoid the threatened disaster. 



There are few Mexican village homes in which there is a 

 new-born baby where anyone would put a corncob in the fire 



