She said, 'I will never forget this; I will be
revenged.' He went far up the St. John River with his traps; he set
them in the stream for beaver. All that he caught that winter was
sticks, and sometimes an eel. Then at the end of the day he would say
to his man, 'It is of no use.' And then they could hear the witch
laughing behind the bushes, and tittering when he came home. So it went
on long. Then he was sorry, and said, 'I wish I had paid that woman
what I owed her.' And at once they heard a voice from the bushes, or
rocks, say, 'Louis, that will do. It is enough.' And the next day they
caught two beaver, and every day two, and so on, till the season was
over.
"This happened in 1872, in Miramichi Waters."
There does not appear to be any single approved method of acquiring
_m'teoulin_. Some, as I have said, are born to it, but they appear
to be wizards or witches. Others are formally trained from boyhood by
the experienced magicians. Others acquire certain gifts by certain
ceremonies or penances. Of this kind was the power obtained in the
manner narrated in the following story, which I heard from an old
Passamaquoddy:--
"There was once a young man who wished to become a very wise and brave
warrior, like his father. And his father said to him, 'I get all my
luck of every kind from my dreams. You can have such dreams; any man
can, if he will do a certain thing; but that thing is not easy for a
young man like you.
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