Frogs and Toads

“Jes’ tell ‘im dey name an’ he’ll go dere.” That was how a Waycross informant said a toadfrog could be sent to someone’s house. Name the person, and the frog went.

Frogs and toads crowd the pages of Hyatt. They were sent as messengers, nailed down as proxies, parched into powders, left for ants to strip, and read like a thermometer for poison. Hyatt’s informants rarely separated the two animals; the word they used most was simply “toadfrog”.

What it is

The toadfrog lives between water and earth, wakes from the mud in spring and fills the night with its hollering. In conjure it stands for things that crawl, swell and hide inside, and for a body that can be made to dry up or fill up at a distance.

Every part was used: the live animal, the blood, the skin, the heart, the bones, and the dried body ground to dust. Informants also spoke of toadfrog bread, the woodland mushroom whose dust was blown into a hat to run a person blind (Hyatt 1907 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1365).

What Hyatt’s informants said

The Waycross informant told of a frog that came to her mother’s house and sat in the fireplace every morning. Her mother caught it and hung it in the chimney. A neighbour woman then came and stood at that fireplace every morning for as long as the frog hung there, because whoever sends the frog dries up as it dries (Hyatt 252 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1134).

In Brunswick the toadfrog became a stand-in for a victim. A photo went on a new piece of lumber under the doorstep, a hair from the victim’s head went into the frog’s mouth, and one peg was driven through the heart of the frog and the heart of the picture together. “When dat toadfrog die, yo’ll die” (Hyatt 8148 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1225).

The frog was also a test. A Fayetteville informant described tying a live frog over a pain: “if he dies, yore poisoned” (Hyatt 573 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1418).

The variations

• The fishhook bone. A toadfrog fastened down alive under a board until ants picked it to a skeleton. Among the bones were one shaped like a fish scale and one like a fishhook, and the hook bone was caught in the clothes of the one desired (Hyatt 3098 · Norfolk, Va. · informant 467).
• Frogs put in you. Frog blood dropped in whiskey, coffee or sweet milk, or frog skin parched to powder and served in drink, to make live frogs grow inside a person (Hyatt 6547 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1424; Hyatt 6563 · New Orleans, La. · informant 802).
• Swelling with the tide. A rock toady killed, dried, ground and put in food, so the victim swells as the tide comes in (Hyatt 963 · Savannah, Ga. · informant 543).
• Crippling powder. A frog parched to powder with toenail parings and buried in a red flannel bag, to lame a person in the feet (Hyatt 6449 · Vicksburg, Miss. · informant 536).
• Numbers luck. The numbers you want written in indelible pencil on a live toadfrog’s belly (Hyatt 575 · Jacksonville, Fla. · informant 549).

Cures and counter-work

The same animal drew out what it could put in. A Charleston informant said a snakebite could be treated by splitting a live frog or a black hen and laying it on the wound to pull the poison (Hyatt 1164 · Charleston, S. Car. · informant 504). Hyatt noted that the blood was the working element in these split-animal rites.

In Jacksonville a frog killed on the thirteenth of the month, dried in the sun and laid on any poisoned part was called a sure cure (Hyatt 947 · Jacksonville, Fla. · informant 588).

The hung frog of Waycross was itself counter-work: catch what was sent, hang it, and the sender is drawn back to your door until the frog comes down.

In their own words

“just hook it into somebody’s clothes and don’t you pull it out”

(Hyatt 3098 · Norfolk, Va. · informant 467)

“every time de tide come up, you will swell”

(Hyatt 963 · Savannah, Ga. · informant 543)

“You can hear them hollering the same as in the spring.”

(Hyatt 6545 · Fredericksburg, Va. · informant 80)

How it’s worked today

The toad remains a figure of baneful work in conjure. Dried toads and toad bones are still sought by rootworkers, and the frog-in-the-body remains one of the best-known signs of being fixed.

The fishhook bone carries on as a love-drawing curio, and dried frogs and toads still appear in jinxing and crossing work. Toad-shaped charms and images are often used where the animal itself is not.

Many workers still read a toad that keeps coming to the house as a sign that something has been sent, and deal with it in the old way.

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.