Bosom Serpent Curses October 8, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
We have looked here before on several occasions at the bosom serpent, the notion that certain animals and particularly reptiles and amphibians could dwell in the stomach or elsewhere in the human body after entering through the nose, mouth or in some rarefied cases the vagina. Usually you get bosom-serpented because you have it coming (piss off God, don’t pay your taxes…) or because your are unlucky (fall asleep in a field). Anyone who knows the sublime rhythm of western history will not be surprised to learn that you are more likely to get punished in the Middle Ages, whereas unluckiness is the prerogative of antiquity and modernity, particularly if you are foolish enough to get drunk before you go to sleep; snakes love wine and will follow the smell down into the stomach. However, Beach today learns that there is a third motive for getting bosom-serpented, namely because you are cursed by an enemy. We are here, among Afro-Americans in Maryland in the nineteenth century. Watch out for the ground puppies!
The most effective charm, however, in the estimation of the colored people in the neighborhood of Chestertown, is that worked with ‘ground-puppies’ or ‘ground-dogs.’ These names are given to some common species of salamander… As many ‘ground-dogs’ as possible are to be put into a wide-mouthed bottle, and buried under the threshold of the person whom it is desired to conjure, at the same time making crosses with the four fingers on the earth above the buried bottle. After a time the ‘ground-puppies’ will burst the containing bottle, and then they will find their way into the stomach of the person against whom the spell is directed, and kill him [Journal American Folklore 11 (1890) ‘Concerning Negro Sorcery in the United States’, 286].
But if your enemy sends the ground puppies at you do not despair.
They can be driven out by taking internally a tincture made by soaking May-apple root, or snake-root, in whiskey. It is safest, however, to consult a ‘fortune-teller doctor,’ if one has reason to suspect the presence of ground-dogs in his stomach [Journal American Folklore 11 (1890) ‘Concerning Negro Sorcery in the United States’, 286].
In reading this Beach found himself wondering about the pleasure of stuffing salamanders into a bottle: probably more cathartic than sticking needles in a doll? And imagine the fear of finding a writhing mass in a broken container on your doorstep…
Other examples of BoS cursing: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
