"Now," said the sorcerer, "we will experiment with this on the witch
who wishes to destroy you." So as it was night they went to the
village. A dance was being held, and the beautiful tall witch having
paused to rest, the two men approached her. The young man placed his
hand on her head; he held in it a scraping of the horn of the
_weewillmekq'_. As he did so she grew older in an instant,--she
became very old; a pale color rippled all over her; she fell, looking a
hundred years, dead on the floor, shriveled, dried, and dropped to
powder.
"She will not trouble you any more," said the sorcerer. "Her dance is
over."
This is the same story as the preceding; but I give it to show now
differently a tale may be told by neighbors. In one it is the _spretae
injuria formae_, the wrath of rejected love, which inspires the witch
to revenge; in the other it is jealousy. In one she inflicts madness; in
the other she turns him into a cannibal demon, as Loki, when only half
bad, was made utterly so by getting the "thought-stone" or heart of a
witch. This legend was sent to me by Louis Mitchell. It is written not
by him, but by some other Passamaquoddy, in Indian-English.
TALES OF MAGIC.
_M'teoulin, or Indian Magic_.
The study of magic as it is believed in or understood by the Indians of
America is extremely interesting, for it involves that of all
supernaturalism or of all religion whatever.
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