The same object, given to the same person, is a blessing or a curse depending on the colour of the pins.
What this is
Leland was an American folklorist living in Florence who published this in 1899, saying he had it from a Tuscan informant he calls Maddalena. Whether the material is as old or as coherent as he claimed has been argued about ever since, and the Archive takes no side in that: what is documented here is what the 1899 book prints.
It earns its place because of a structural detail found nowhere else in this collection. Every other working here is baneful by design. This one is a good-luck charm and a curse in the same object, and the only difference is the colour of the pins.
What the text was understood to do
To make evil befall a named person, by giving them a lemon stuck with black pins.
A note before the text. What follows is a historical document and a reading of it. It is recorded, not recommended.
The text, the reading of it, and where to find it.
The passage as Charles Godfrey Leland printed it in 1899, quoted in full and unaltered; the same passage in modern English; how the working was put together and what each part of it was for; the commentary; and the book, chapter and page it stands on.
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