Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/253

plan is to put breadcrumbs under the bullet when loading. The effect of putting in breadcrumbs over the ball is that the missile enters the body of the animal shot at for certain. A gun shoots straight if washed with the blood of a carrion-eating bird, or if rubbed with the fat of a corpse; it kills dead if the inside of the barrel is smeared with snake-fat or mercurial ointment. A gun will kill if at the time of purchase it is rubbed thrice against the left leg, or if put into an ant-heap for the night, or if the muzzle is heated in a fire and then plunged into water. If it won't kill, the hunter must take off his coat, suspend it to a branch beside the gun, take three knives, and then slash at his coat in a towering passion. If a gun is washed inside and outside with water and the blood of the grossbeak, it not only kills well but remains unaffected by hostile spells. A gun is often spoilt for shooting by an enemy without his ever having seen it. For if the enemy, on hearing the hunter's shot, turns on his right heel with the words, "A snake into the gun, a lizard for a plug!" the latter might shoot for ever so long without hitting till he had cleaned his gun. The same result would ensue were the enemy, on hearing the report of the gun, to fling himself upon the ground on his belly. The shooting powers of a gun are destroyed by putting down the barrel the fat of a spawning fish, or by mixing sugar with the powder, or by wiping it with the dirty frock of an old harlot. These powers, however, can be renewed by leaving the gun all night in the sheep-pen, or by digging a hole through an ant-heap and then passing through it thrice, gun in hand. If a gun has been so ruined by the evil eye that it won't kill, won't even go off, a snake should be induced to crawl down the barrel and act as a wad to the charge. The gun is then fired into the air. The worst of this treatment is that it usually bursts the gun. The hunter's chances of sport are injured if he mentions animals by their real names, and the animals themselves seem sometimes to take it amiss. Hence the lynx is termed euphuistically "the forest cat", lest it should