Shut Your Mouth: Beef Tongue Work

“dey meddles wit chure business an’ jes’ go about an’ bring news, an’ say evah thing.” That was how one Algiers worker put the problem. The answer, across dozens of Hyatt’s informants, was a beef tongue.

Tongue work is the hoodoo of silence. A tongue bought from the market or the slaughterhouse stood in for the tongue of an enemy, a gossip, a witness or a judge. Whatever was done to the meat was done to the mouth it named.

What it is

The core of the rite hardly changed from house to house. A fresh beef tongue was split or bored at the thick end, and the names of the people to be silenced were written out, usually nine times, and pushed inside.

The tongue was then sewn shut and stuck through with metal. Nine new needles, nine new pins and often nine new tacks or tenpenny nails were driven in, sometimes crossed over each other.

After that, the tongue was put somewhere that would hold it fast:

• Frozen in a tub or a hole packed with ice, often fifty pounds of it, so the named tongues froze too.
• Smoked, hung up the chimney or flue over a fire, sometimes for nine days.
• Buried, towards the sunrise, or upside down so that it would rot.
• Carried in the pocket into the courtroom itself.

What Hyatt’s informants said

Most of the beef tongue material Hyatt gathered came from New Orleans and Algiers, and most of it was aimed at the courthouse. Witnesses, the district attorney, the judge and even the jurymen were named and put in the meat.

One New Orleans informant promised that the witnesses would sit in the box “All dem tongue-tied, dey can’t say nuthin” and the defendant would walk free (Hyatt 8982 · New Orleans, La. · informant 859).

The judge could be worked the same way, his name put on the tongue and burned or smoked in the old chimney on the day of trial. As another put it, “An’ burn that on the judge. That changes his mind.” (Hyatt 8957 · New Orleans, La. · informant 824).

The anger behind the work mattered. One worker said the tongue was sewn with No. 8 thread, black for Black witnesses and black and white mixed for white ones, and that the worker cursed the witness with every stitch and every needle (Hyatt 8976 · New Orleans, La. · informant 820).

The variations

• Names written backwards, surname first, nine times, sometimes in indelible pencil (Hyatt 8973 · Algiers, La. · informant 1577; Hyatt 8975 · Algiers, La. · informant 1597a).
• Jurymen’s names scratched with a needle straight onto a tongue frozen hard, then buried a foot down (Hyatt 8968 · New Orleans, La. · informant 1560).
• The tongue kicked about the floor before it went up the chimney (Hyatt 8956 · New Orleans, La. · informant 838).
• An alligator tongue in place of beef. One worker, taught by Doctor Henry Laemson, rated it higher: “It do the same part as the beef tongue and from what it was taught to me from Doctor Henry Laemson, it’s better.” (Hyatt 8963 · New Orleans, La. · informant 879).

What it was used for

Silence in court was the main job, but not the only one. The Algiers informant who buried the tongue to the sunrise did it simply to stop people talking about their business (Hyatt 8973 · Algiers, La. · informant 1577).

At its darkest the tongue became a death rite. Another Algiers worker pinned the name to a tongue with nine needles and buried it upside down under a tree, so the person named would rot as the meat rotted (Hyatt 8669 · Algiers, La. · informant 1593).

In their own words

“If mah boy wuz in jail, ah would take a beef tongue an’ ah would smoke it”

(Hyatt 8959 · New Orleans, La. · informant 1558)

“you kicks it around the floor and you takes it and you put it up in the chimney”

(Hyatt 8956 · New Orleans, La. · informant 838)

“when dat tongue rot, dey rot.”

(Hyatt 8669 · Algiers, La. · informant 1593)

How it’s worked today

Beef tongue work is still done in the South, and the shape of it has barely moved since Hyatt’s day. Practitioners split the tongue, load it with names on paper, pin and sew it shut, and freeze it, most often for court cases and to stop gossip at work or in the family.

Where a whole tongue is not practical, workers fall back on lighter versions of the same idea: names frozen in a jar of water, or written and sealed inside a dressed candle or under a pile of red pepper. Many pair it with a Shut Your Mouth or Stop Gossip oil, a later commercial name for the same intention.

Learn the work

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Source: Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork, 5 vols., 1970-1978. Numbers refer to Hyatt’s own item numbers; the town and informant number follow. Written by Hoodoo Witch in our own words, with short quotations from Hyatt’s informants for reference.