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| Saw this in a LOUISIANA MAGAZINE...
There was a time when autumn breezes blowing mournfully through Cajun country bayous would carry with them the sound of tinkling bottles gleaming like rainbows from trees in the sunlight. T he cobalt of empty Milk of Magnesia bottles or the lime green of old 7UP bottles with squares of red were generally hung on trees near people's houses as protection.The roots of the "bottle trees" are deep in the soil of Congo culture. Legend holds that wandering spirits of ill intent can not resist the beauty of colored glass and that any evil spirits mesmerized enough to enter glass would be unable to escape and ultimately would be destroyed by morning sunlight.Slaves who were brought to the new world continued this tradition hanging blue bottles from huts and trees as talismans against evil.The tradition spread throughout the American South, in Europe, it took the form of single spheres known as "witch balls".If you want to revive this old folk ritual and make a bottle tree to ward off those color loving gremlins, one of the simplest and most beautiful ways is to take traditional cobalt-blue bottles(blue being the color of water, something spirits cannot cross), tie two by the neck at opposite ends of a shoe lace, and dangle them over tree branches. Repeat as many times as you desire....Mary |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by garden2garden z8FL (My Page) on Mon, Aug 30, 10 at 8:14
| Very cool, Mary. I'm going to try this as soon as I go outside today. Hard as it is to believe, I don't have 2 blue bottles, but I do have 2 pretty green 7up bottles. Wonder what the spirits think of green bottles, I'm blessed with them. TFS Donna Heck, my internet connection is so slow today, I went out and tried it while I was waiting for the preview page to load. I love this. So simple. Love the history, you can feel it as you are wrapping your bottles with the string. Dead calm here today, so I don't know how they will be in the wind but a larger branch seems to put them at about the right distance apart to clink a little.
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| My only problem with doing that is I don't have any low hanging tree limbs to hang anything on-sigh.... After hurricane Ivan, I had one of the tree cutters put a chain around a bottom limb (between 15-20 feet up) so I could hang a tire swing. I wrap the tire with a green plastic tablecloth, and lights, at Christmas to make a wreath.... |
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- Posted by concretenprimroses 4B NH (My Page) on Wed, Sep 1, 10 at 21:42
| I've been saving blue bottles for YEARS! I think I'll take your suggestion and hang some out in the plumtree. But I may use wire inside of garden hose scraps. But maybe I'll wait a few days. Theres a chance that Hurricane Earl will come up here. Kathy |
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