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            <title>Contributors</title>
            <author>Collective</author>
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               <persName>Eowyn Andres</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2024-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Haley Beardsley</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-2024)</resp>
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               <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp>
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               <persName>Mia DeRoco</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Margaret Hunter</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-2024)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Diane Jakacki</persName>
               <resp>Invesigator, encoder</resp>
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               <persName>Sophie McQuaide</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-2023)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Olivia Martin</persName>
               <resp>Editor, encoder (2021)</resp>
            </respStmt>
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               <persName>Zoha Nadeer</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2022-2023)</resp>
            </respStmt>
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               <persName>Bri Perea</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2022-2023)</resp>
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               <persName>Carrie Pirmann</persName>
               <resp>Editor, encoder (2023-Present)</resp>
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               <persName>Valeria Riley</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2024-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Ricky Rodriguez</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2022-2023)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Roger Rothman</persName>
               <resp>Investigator, editor</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Valeria Riley</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2024-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Kaitlyn Segreti</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Maggie Smith</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-2024)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Maya Wadhwa</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2021-2023)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Kelly Troop</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Lucy Wadswoth</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2022-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Anna Marie Wingard</persName>
               <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <persName>Olivia Wychock</persName>
               <resp>Graduate Editor (2024-Present)</resp>
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            <funder>Bucknell University Humanities Center</funder>
            <funder>Bucknell University Office of Undergraduate Research</funder>
            <funder>The Mellon Foundation</funder>
            <funder>National Endowment for the Humanities</funder>
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               <name>Bucknell University</name>
               <address>
                  <street>One Dent Drive</street>
                  <settlement>Lewisburg</settlement>
                  <region>Pennsylvania</region>
                  <postCode>17837</postCode>
               </address>
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            <availability>
               <licence>Bucknell Heresies Project: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
                  International (CC BY-NC 4.0)</licence>
               <licence>Heresies journal: © Heresies Collective</licence>
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               <analytic>
                  <title>Patterns of Communicating and Space Among Women</title>
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                     <publisher>HERESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics</publisher>
                     <pubPlace>
                        <address>
                           <name>Heresies</name>
                           <postBox>P.O. Boxx 766, Canal Street Station</postBox>
                           <settlement>New York</settlement>
                           <region>New York</region>
                           <postCode>10013</postCode>
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         <div type="essay">
            <pb n="42" facs="https://leaf.bucknell.edu/sites/default/files/2025-02/heresies02_042.jpg"/>
            <head>Magic Songs</head>
            <byline>Collected by Anne Twitty*</byline>
            <note>* From a collection begun while working with Julia Blackburn, who found two of the
               poems.</note>
            <p>Magic is a universal language, a technique for transformation. It works by binding or
               loosing, invoking, destroying, leading away. Wherever they were, the women who said
               or chanted these incantations had the same purposes—they wanted to stop the flow of
               blood or start the flow of milk, to ease childbirth, to send a fever back into the
               forest it came from. For them, the word was not the refuge of the helpless but a
               medicine or a thunderbolt, a sacramental tool. Their words were acts. </p>
            <lg>
               <l>The child's mother first wipes her sexual organ with the shirt and </l>
               <l>then the child's face, saying: </l>
               <l>Flee marvel from marvel. </l>
               <l>Here is a greater marvel. </l>
               <l>White partridges flew by and brought white milk. </l>
               <l>They pour it out of the stone, </l>
               <l>they pour it round out of the stone. </l>
               <l>One hand fastens the sleeve of the other. </l>
               <l>The axe by itself cuts the Evil Eyes. </l>
               <l>Let the Evil Eyes melt away </l>
               <l>like bees over the flowers, </l>
               <l>like lard on the coals, </l>
               <l>like foam on muddy water. </l>
               <l>We shall tread over the water, </l>
               <l>we shall make the Evil Eyes wither and dry up, </l>
               <l>that they appear no more</l>
            </lg>
            <note>A southern Slav charm collected by Phyllis Kemp, who practiced medicine there
               before World War II, and made an extensive study of folk medicine/magic.</note>
            <bibl>(From Phyllis Kemp, Healing Ritual, Faber and Faber, London, 1937, p. 141.)</bibl>
            <lg>
               <l>I dance a strong dance. </l>
               <l>The god comes on the rainbow </l>
               <l>to his shrine. </l>
               <l>He comes with the red rain </l>
               <l>and the blue. </l>
               <l>It is the sign of the god. </l>
               <l>He comes down here to earth. </l>
               <l>Dance, all ye children of his!</l>
            </lg>
            <note>From Ifaluk Atoll, an island south of the Marianas, where the women write all the
               poetry. This is an invitation to a god.</note>
            <bibl>(From Edwin Grant Burrows, Flower in My Ear: Arts and Ethos of Ifaluk Atoll,
               University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1963, p. 353.)</bibl>

<lg>
               <l>I cut all witchcraft from you. </l>
               <l>Hiao! </l>
               <l>I cut off the rainbow curses from you. </l>
               <l>Hiao! </l>
               <l>I cut all spirit-husband harm from you. </l>
               <l>Hiao! </l>
               <l>I cut from you the evil talk </l>
               <l>of the watering place. </l>
               <l>Hiao! </l>
               <l>I cut from you the harmful talk </l>
               <l>of the firewood-gatherers. </l>
               <l>Hiao!</l>
            </lg>
            <note>From Adayme, Africa. The pregnant woman is bound with magic strings. Then, as the
               charm is said, line by line, each string is cut. First around the head, then the
               neck, then the waist, the knees and the feet.</note>
            <bibl>(From Hugo Huber, "Adayme Purification and Pacification Rituals," The American
               Anthropologist, v. 29, 1927, p. 178; Twitty version.)</bibl>

<lg>
               <l>Whose womb do I have for my womb? </l>
               <l>The gull’s womb I have for my womb. </l>
               <l>Whose womb do I have for my womb? </l>
               <l>The sea-fowl’s womb I have for my womb.</l>
            </lg>
            <note>Eskimo. For a woman in childbirth</note>
            <bibl>(From William Thalbitzer, The Ammassalik Eskimo, AMS Press, New York, 1914; Twitty
               version.)</bibl>

<lg>
               <l>Earth-Woman, Earth-Woman, </l>
               <l>may you fall sick. </l>
               <l>Your milk turn to fire. </l>
               <l>May you burn in the earth! </l>
               <l>Flow, flow, my milk. </l>
               <l>Flow, flow, white milk. </l>
               <l>Flow, flow, as I will. </l>
               <l>My child is hungry.</l>
            </lg>
            <note>Gypsy. The Earth Woman is thought to suckle children so that they refuse their
               mother's milk. She has many sister spirits child-stealers and child-destroyers like
               the Hebrew Lilith and the Islamic Karina—who appear to be destroying shadows, the
               woman's double.</note>
            <bibl>(From H. von Wlislocki, "Zauber und Besprechungsformeln," Ethnologische
               Mitteilungen aus Hungarn, v. 1, no. 1-2, 1887; Twitty translation.)</bibl>

<lg>
               <l>May the lion take you <caesura/>coming out of the thicket. </l>
               <l>May he eat your flesh <caesura/>May your bones be lost. </l>
               <l>May Gaweg beat you <caesura/>when he is angry.</l>
               <l>May God protect me! <caesura/>How can weeping be stolen? </l>
            </lg>
            <note>Ethiopian. A woman’s angry song. Someone else has taken her mourning song and sung
               it. Ethiopian women traditionally invent and sing the dirges for the dead.</note>
            <bibl>(From Enno Littman, Publications of the Princeton Expedition to Abys sinia, E.J.
               Brill, Leyden, 1910-1915; Twitty version.)</bibl>
            <lg>
               <l>The woman who cannot nourish her child: </l>
               <l>Let her herself take a piece of her own child's grave, </l>
               <l>then wrap it up in black wool and sell it to traders. </l>
               <l>Let her then say: </l>
               <l>I sell it: buy ye it, </l>
               <l>this black wool, and seeds of this sorrow.</l>
            </lg>
            <note>Anglo-Saxon.</note>
            <bibl>(From J. H. G. Grattan and Charles Singer, Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine, Oxford
               University Press, New York, 1952, p. 191.)</bibl>
         </div>
      </body>

<back>
         <p>Anne Twitty is an American writer and translator who lives in London and in Deyâ,
            Mallorca. She is currently working on a book of collected origin myths and magic songs
         </p>
      </back>
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