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Folk-Lore Scrap-Book. I43 FOLK-LORE SCRAP-BOOK. CONJURING AND CONJURE-DOCTORS IN THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES.- The "Southern Workman and Hampton School Record," Hampton, Va., for November and December, I895, contains an article on this subject by Miss Herron and Miss A. M. Bacon, the study being founded on composi- tions of students at the Hampton School. As this account gives extended and reliable information concerning Afro-American witchcraft, it is here reproduced in extenso. " It is difficult here to make any classification of the things used in con- juring which will have any value except as a mere arbitrary distinction for the sake of ease in enumerating and remembering in some intelligible order the great variety of media for the charms cited by the authors of the com- positions from which our data are drawn. We will, however, for the sake of convenience, classify into (I) Poisons. (2) Charms. "Of poisons derived from substances known or believed to be poisonous and administered in food or drink a number of cases are cited. A drink of whiskey is poisoned and offered to the victim; an apple is poisoned and given in church on Sunday. One instance is given of 'toad heads, scor- pion heads, hair, nine pins and needles baked in a cake and given to a child who became deathly sick.' By another of our writers it is said that 'some go in the woods and get lizards and little ground-dogs and snakes and dry them and then powder them all up together in liquor and give them to drink, or pick a chance and put in their food so they can eat it.' Another case is mentioned of a conjurer who caught a snake, cut his head off, hung him up by his tail and let the blood drop into a can. Then he went out and caught a lizard, killed him, took his blood and mixed it with the snake's blood. This mixture was done up in a bundle and sent to the victim. He drank it up, and in two minutes was lying on the floor speechless. In this case the victim was saved by an old doctor who was brought in and rubbed him about twelve hours. One woman swallowed a lizard in a cup of coffee and was poisoned thereby. In another case cabbage, presumably poisoned, was given to the victim with evil results. Again, horsehair is put into the food or a preparation of poisonous snakes and lizards is mixed with the whiskey. The theory in regard to the poisonous effects of hair is thus stated by a boy whose own hair had been baked in bread and given him to eat. The conjure-doctor told him that if he had eaten it the hair would cling round his heart strings and would have afflicted him so that he would not be able to work and after a while it would kill him. It required no belief in the supernatural whatever to make one afraid of persons whose business it is to devise poisons to place in the food of their victims, and, if the evidence of our collection of compositions is to be trusted, there was on the plantations in the old days a vast amount of just that sort of thing. That the poison did not always produce the desired effect was due rather