214 Next to the Ground 



or a hollow log, and was pulled out or smoked 

 out. After a day or two, when paths in plenty 

 had been broken through the fields so Brer 

 Rabbit ran about freely, shooting began. The 

 moon changed just then, and every black 

 hunter cut ofF the left hind foot of the first 

 rabbit he shot after the moon ran dark. He 

 was careful to tell nobody, nor to let anybody 

 see him do it. But all understood that the 

 left hind feet were lucky charms good until 

 next new year. 



Belief in the rabbit foot's magic virtues is 

 an old English superstition, engrafted, no 

 doubt, by early immigrant owners upon the 

 slave mind. Pepys in his diary tells of own- 

 ing a rabbit's foot, and of his joy at finding 

 out that its lack of power arose from the fact 

 that it had but a single joint. One of his fine 

 gentleman acquaintances owned a foot with 

 two joints, and by the bare handling of it, Mr. 

 Pepys found his rheumatism very much bet- 

 tered. A little later, when he had duly sup- 

 plied himself with the two-jointed rabbit's 

 foot, he writes that he was never so well or 

 so prosperous in his life, " and do lay it all to 

 the workings of a proper foot." Books of 

 necromancy also give directions for cutting the 

 foot and curing it so as to enhance its magic 

 strength. A foot cut from a live rabbit, and 

 the rabbit allowed afterward to hop away, was 



