FETICH WORSHIP.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 147, 25 February 1876, Page 7

FETICH WORSHIP.

The waters of a spring, the fruit of a tree, even the milk of a cow may be " tricked" for one person alone, and while they bring death to him, all others may use them with impunity. The fetich buri. d beneath his doorstep may nail the destined victim to his chair with paralysis, while his wife and children pass in and out over it in perfect safety. These misguided people place no limits to its power, except, indeed, that of distance, it cannot follow its object ' to another State. In the days of slavery men and women wore known to beseech their owners, in mercy, to sell them away from home and kindred, as the only chance of escape from the doom which they were fully persuaded was before them. It is hard to tell what they will not believe of this terrible bugaboo. A colored woman, by no means lacking in natural intelligence, and even able to read a little, came to the writer one day during the past year, with a marvellous story of sickness and cure. A female friend who had suffered untold agonies from some mysterious disease, for which regular physicians could afford no relief, had at last applied to a "conjur" doctor. He had pronounced her "tricked," and had given her two remedies, to be employed conjointly — some- pills, to be taken internally, and an ointment to be rubbed on the pit of the stomach, the seat of the greatest pain. After making use of these for a few days the patient was seized with violent nausea, and vomited a quart of hairy worms," receiving immediate relief. '•Now/ added my informant, triumphantly, " how dem worrums git thar, cf somebody didn' put em thar ? " " M ," I said, mildly, "do you think that can be so ? " " Well, my missis," was the answer, " I can't J clar to it, 'cause I nuvver see it myse'f, but de ooman that tole me is a member ov de church, and I know she warnter gwine tell me no lie 'bout it. Fetich worship has disappeared before the light of Christianity, and is now unknown, except, perhaps, in the swamps of the Far South, whence malaria banishes the white man, and where the negro flourishes in a state of semi-barbarism. Voudou charms or fetiches (" conjur bags," as most of the negroes call them) are, however, in much demand as talismans against evil. It is considered as essential to their efficacy that their possession should be kept secret, the mystery constituting part of the virtue of the charm. A friend of the writer was one night on a railroad train, when the engineer, in rounding a sudden curve, saw the body of a man lying on the track directly in front of the engine. To whistle down brakes and reverse the engine was the work of a moment, but it was done too late to save the poor fellow's life. He was found to be a negro, and the empty whisky bottle by his side told the story. Hidden in the bosom of his shirt, and hung to his neck, by a dirty string, was one of these little Voudou charms which, despite the wearer's faith in it, had proved inadequate to save him from destruction. Those who pursue the practice of Voudou — not the doctors whose trade it is to counteract its influence, and v> ho must not be confounded with the witches themselves — are regarded as given over to the devil. When one of them dies his body and his grave are regarded with superstitious awe, and fearful tales are Wld of how the fiend has been seen by the terrified watchers to come in person to claim his prey at the death-bed, beside which none but church members with unusual claims for piety dare to keep vigil. Among the educated negroes this superstition is gradually dying out, yet its hold upon the race is deep and strong. Two hundred years ago witches were burned at Salem. Remembering this, one may not despair of the power of education and religion to cope with the negro giant Voudou. — • N. Y. Tribune.'