Free Book Friday - Folk-lore from Adams County Illinois by Harry Middleton Hyatt

Folk-lore from Adams County Illinois was the first book published by Harry Middleton Hyatt. It's written in roughly the same format as Hoodoo - Conjuration - Witchcraft - Rootwork, with informants identified only by numbers. FFACI's information is concise, and Hyatt does not converse with his informants. In some ways, I like this hands off approach better. Hyatt only occasionally makes notations, usually to point out that a certain statement is contrary to the general consensus, or that a certain belief is only held within a single ethnic group (you'll see what I mean).

By 1936, hoodoo had spread out of the south and curio catalogs, such as King Novelty Company (based in Chicago), were changing the nature of conjure. I think a lot of people look at the title, see that it's about "folk-lore" and folk-lore from a Midwestern state at that, and pass it by. FFACI is full of conjure, there's love and luck work, healing, hands/mojos, there's even entries on the infamous black cat bone. Give it a thorough read-though. There's also quite a bit similar to mountain folk lore/magic and powwow.

I've only been able to pick at Hyatt's HCWR series here and there, and the lucky bastard who owns the set no longer lives near me. Something that bothers me about Hyatt is that he puts conjure/hoodoo and witchcraft into the same category. They are opposed, it's witch-doctor vs witch.

Some informants don't come right out and say that they're talking about witches, not conjure workers, but they make it REALLY REALLY OBVIOUS that they mean OTHER PEOPLE. You know, THOSE OTHER PEOPLE, WINK. WINK. And Hyatt's all oblivious. And then other people do talk about witches, and they still get thrown together all the same. The people online who read Hyatt's work like it's some kind of conjure Bible see this and think it's ok to call jobs "spells" and to call conjure "witchcraft" just because of a modern redefinition of the word.

Anyway, just keep that in mind. Another thing I want to point out is that Hyatt makes note of three groups of people, "Irish", "German", and "Negro". All statements unattributed to one of these three groups are simply made by "white people". Basically, the Irish-Americans, German-Americans, and blacks he met had beliefs and practices unique enough that he felt their heritage should be made note of.

Corn dollies!

In my last post, I linked to New World Witchery. Not having read it in a few days, I clicked over to catch up, and to my delight the first post included a section on corn dollies!

The above picture is a corn husk doll I had made on the fly for a coworker a few years ago. She wasn't perfect, and she wasn't made with any magic intent; I had just twisted, tied, and pulled her together while chatting. I first learned to make them as a kid from people on my father's side of the family and friends. Indeed, these are not conjure, rather they are sometimes used in mountain and PA Dutch magic. Most all the time when you see them, they're nothing more than toys and folk art, but corn dollies are are a part of sympathetic magic called doll magic or poppet magic. They can also be used for protection.

Dolls, dollies, doll babies, voodoo dolls, poppets... every culture has a slightly different name for a figure that represents an actual person and is used to affect that person. Using a corn dollie as a poppet is pretty similar to the way you would construct a wax or cloth doll in conjure.You include personal concerns of the person (hair, nail trimmings, bodily fluids, scraps of worn clothing, etc) and maybe herbs appropriate to your goal (not everyone does). You might dress the doll with clothes, especially clothes *made from* the clothes of the person. The doll is baptized in the person's name and then worked on and spoken to as if it *is* that person.

I'm not sure how widespread their use in protection is, sometimes things that were once used for magic lose their meaning over several generations. I've known people, both in and outside of my family, to create corn dollie angels and pray over them for protection, hanging them on the front door or sitting them up on bookshelves. Sometimes you'll find corn dollies of angels or ladies in kitchens. I've seen corn husk angels being sold at farmers markets that I'm not sure were meant to be anything but decorations, but who knows?