Powwows; or, The Long-Lost Friend

[moon_custafer]

Hey, The Long-Lost Friend, the classic book of Pennsylvania Dutch folk magic, is online as a text. It's even weirder than I thought it wood be.

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Much thanks!

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

"To Attach a Dog to a Person"! I love that this spell is A) apparently so necessary he puts it up the top of the list, near "Slander", and B) is almost exactly like your garden-variety love spell for attaching humans to other humans. It's for people who want their dogs to fall in love with them. (Really, making dogs fall in love with you doesn't seems so incredibly hard in RL, even without involving Pow-wow.)

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Similarly, there are multiple "prevent cattle from straying" spells. I can't haelp but notice there *aren't* any love spells, or even any "predict who you'll marry" spells; I'm guessing he considered those unlawful magic. As you said, though, the dog spell could be adapted pretty easily, and perhaps it was.

The anti-slander manoevre (hard to call it a spell when iirc it's wordless) really intrigued me.