Friday, June 15, 2018

Prayers to stop a dog from barking

You have some ability, I suppose, to make your own dogs behave, but for the neighbors' noisy dogs, you can try this. From Magic Songs of the West Finns, Vol. 2, by John Abercromby, [1898] (online version), here are a couple of prayers to silence a dog.

This one prays for a mushroom in one nostril and an apple in the other:

Field maiden, farmyard girl! O golden king of earth, here where they need thee, come from the field with thy family to close the mouth of a dog, to plug the nozzle of a whelp. Bind silk across its eyes, tie a bandage round its ears, a mushroom up one nostril thrust, an apple up the other one, lest it should scent the breath of man, perceive the smell of a full-grown man, lest it should hear a passer-by, lest it should see a wanderer.

If that doesn't work, you can pray for a good, old-fashioned muzzle:

O Hiisi [v. Juutas], shut the dog's mouth up, Lempo [v. Perkele], the jawbone of the dog, fetch, Hiisi, thy tall hat, Lempo, thy broad-brimmed cap with which to stop the puppy's nose, to bung its 'scenting-channel' up. Place a bar before its mouth, a gag between its teeth, between its tongue-strings lay a check, so that it cannot ope its jaws, nor separate its teeth. If that is not enough, take the backmost hedge-stake of the field, the lowest railing of the fence to stop the mouth of the hunting-dog, to press with it the puppy's head, so that it can no more give tongue at any man that passes by.

Good luck!

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