Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
He did it, and those bottles and feathers are some of the charms. We pay for having them renewed every year. It costs a tidy bit, but less than the watchmen and police did." "And have the thefts stopped?" "Absolutely. There hasn't been a shilling's worth of stuff touched since the obeah-man was here." "But obeah wouldn't have any effect on East Indian coolies," objected Stuart.
Now the Coolie well understood what doing the business thoroughly for an Obeah-man involved; namely, the putting Brinvilliers or other bush-poison into his food; or at least administering to him sundry dozes of ground glass, in hopes of producing that 'dysentery of the country' which proceeds in the West Indies, I am sorry to say, now and then, from other causes than that of climate.
Arriving home one night, he said, with two friends, he heard hideous screams from the house of a Portuguese Negro, a known Obeah-man. Fearing that murder was being done, they burst open his door, and found that he had tied up his wife hand and foot, and was flogging her horribly. They cut the poor creature down, and placed her in safety.
"It's all right to call it coincidence, but down in these islands that kind of coincidence happens a bit too often. For me, I'll throw a shilling to an Obeah-man any time I see one, and I won't play any tricks with charms if I know enough about them to keep away." The buggy jogged along at a smart pace until the shore was reached, and then set down the beach over the hard wet sand.
He picked them up, laughing, and threw them away, to the horror of his servant. But the Obeah-man was not so easily beaten. In a few days the servant came in again with a wise visage. 'You no drink a milk to-day, massa. 'Why not? 'Oh, perhaps something bad in it. You give it a cat. 'But I don't want to poison the cat! 'Oh, dere a strange cat in a stable; me give it her.
Not two generations ago there might be found, up and down the islands, respectable white men and women who had the same half- belief in the powers of an Obeah-man as our own ancestors, especially in the Highlands and in Devonshire, had in those of witches: while as to poisoning, it was, in some islands, a matter on which the less said the safer.
David, who, by the overwhelming influence he had acquired over the minds of his deluded victims, and the more potent means he had at command to accomplish his ends, had done great injury among the slaves on the property before it was discovered. One of the witnesses, a negro belonging to the same estate, was asked "Do you know the prisoner to be an obeah-man?" "Ees, massa, shadow-catcher, true."
It was said again, that if asked by an Obeah-man to swear to his good character, they could not well refuse, under penalty of finding some fine morning a white cock's head sign of all supernatural plagues in their garden path, the beak pointing to their door; or an Obeah bottle under their doorstep; and either Brinvilliers in their pottage, or such an expectation of it, and of plague and ruin to them and all their worldly belongings, in their foolish souls, as would be likely enough to kill them, in a few months, of simple mortal fear.
The site of the new church, an address from the inhabitants to the Governor, inspection of roads, examination of disputed claims, squatter questions, enclosure questions, and so forth, would occupy some hours in hard work. But the piece de resistance of the day was to be the examination and probable committal of the Obeah-man of those parts.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking