An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1980 meeting of the Organization of American Historians in San Francisco. I wish to thank Christopher Clark, Nora Faires, Christopher Johnson, Ewa Morawska, Stephan Thernstrom, Robert Zieger, and the editors of ILWCH for their helpful discussion, suggestions, and comments at various stages of its development. I would also like to thank Lisa Popham for typing the manuscript.

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2. After James Obelkevich, this article uses the term “popular religion” to mean “non-institutional religious beliefs and practices, including unorthodox conceptions of Christian doctrine and ritual….” See Obelkevich, James, Religion in Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825–1875 (Oxford, 1976), 261.Google Scholar Also see, for example, Thompson, E. P., “The Transforming Power of the Cross,” in his The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963), 350–400Google Scholar; Harrison, J. E C., The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780–1850 (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Berenson, Edward, Populist Religion and Left-Wing Politics in France, 1830–1852 (Princeton, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. On popular religion in immigrant America, see Vecoli, Rudolph, “Prelates and Peasants: Italian Immigrants and the Catholic Church,” Journal of Social History 2 (Spring 1969): 217–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Cult and Occult in Italian-American Culture: The Persistence of a Religious Heritage,” in Immigrants and Religion in Urban America, ed. Miller, Randall M. and Marzik, Thomas D. (Philadelphia, 1977), 25–47Google Scholar; Naff, Alixa, “Belief in the Evil Eye among the Christian Syrian-Lebanese in America,” Journal of American Folklore 78 (01–03 1965): 45–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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5. Polish sociologists observed an erosion of traditional religious practice in Poland, too, owing to industrialization, urbanization, and the rationalization of agriculture. See Piwowarski, Wl˜adysl˜aw, Religijność Wiejska w Warunkach Urbanizacji: Studium Socjologiczne (Warsaw, 1971), 31ff.Google Scholar; “La Pratique religieuse dans les villes polonaises au cours des vingt dernières années,” Social Compass: International Review of Socio-Religious Studies 15 (1968): 277–84Google Scholar; and “L'influence de l'industrialisation sur la religiosité populaire en Pologne,” Changement Sociale et Religion, Conference Internationale de Sociologie Religieuse, Actes de la 13e Conference Lloret de Mar, Espagne, 31 Aout-4 09 1975 (Lille, n.d.), 425–31.Google Scholar

6. Compare Linkh, Richard M., American Catholicism and European Immigrants (1900–1924) (Staten Island, 1975), 40.Google Scholar

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8. Dabrowska, , “History and Survey of the Polish Community in Brooklyn,” 125.Google Scholar According to Sula Benet, among “peasants who have risen in the social scale and acquired ‘genteel’ manners, and among cityfolk,” the dousing with water was replaced by the sprinkling with perfume or cologne. Polish immigrants also seem to have made this substitution. See Benet, , Song, Dance, and Customs, 48–49, 56–57.Google Scholar

9. This example comes from a childhood recollection of the author.

10. Dabrowska, , “History and Survey of the Polish Community in Brooklyn,” 120–21.Google Scholar

11. The author also heard these beliefs expressed as late as the 1960s.

12. Pyszkowski, Irene Stella, “The Polish Communities in Brooklyn: Their History and Development” (Ph.D. diss., Ottawa University, 1950), 176Google Scholar; “Religion and Churches,” Folder 26, Box 3584, WPA Federal Writers Project Historical Records Survey, Municipal Archives, New York City; Wood, , Hamtramck, 40–42Google Scholar; Dabrowska, , “History and Survey of the Polish Community in Brooklyn,” 120–21.Google Scholar

13. This song, of course, recalls the story of Tristan and Isolde. There is some debate whether many Polish folksongs originated among “the folk” or whether they had upper-class origins and were disseminated downward to the lower ranks of society. See Pawlowska, Harriet M., ed., Merrily We Sing: 105 Polish Folksongs (Detroit, 1961), 138–39, 229.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., 68–69, 90–91.

15. Ibid., 146–47, 232.

16. Thomas, and Znaniecki, , The Polish Peasant, 1:219.Google Scholar Zmiecznik could always be found, for example, in the bathroom medicine cabinet of the author's grandmother.

17. Mia¸so, Józef, The History of the Education of Polish Immigrants in the United States, trans. Kizyzanowski, Ludwik, vol. 6, Library of Polish Studies (New York, 1977), 86–87.Google Scholar

18. Godwin, Murray, “Motor City Witchcraft,” North American Review 233 (06 1932): 529–30.Google Scholar

19. Benet, , Song, Dance, and Customs, 41.Google Scholar Also see Perkowski, Jan, Vampires, Dwarves and Witches among the Ontario Kashubs, Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies Paper No. 1 (Ottawa, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The Kashubs are a Polonized ethnic minority resident in northern Poland. While it is hard to generalize immigrant Kashubian data from rural Canada to the factory districts of the industrial United States, the Perkowski study does nonetheless show that a wide range of popular beliefs survived immigration. If they were carried to and perpetuated in a rural setting, they probably also were carried to and–in some measure–perpetuated in urban settings. Several studies have suggested that urban and rural assimilation patterns were similar. See Sanders, Irwin T. and Morawska, Ewa T., Polish-American Community Life: A Survey of Research, Community Sociology Monograph Series, vol. 2 (New York, 1975), 210–11.Google Scholar I would like to thank Mark Stolarik for calling the Perkowski study to my attention.

20. See Perkowski, , Vampires, 54.Google Scholar

21. Pawlowska, , Merrily We Sing, 45.Google Scholar

22. Recollection of the author.

23. See Benet, , Song, Dance, and Customs, 40–41.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., 228–30. Also see Thomas, and Znaniecki, , The Polish Peasant.Google Scholar

25. Compare Haremski, Roman L., The Unattached, Aged Immigrant: A Descriptive Analysis of the Problems Experienced in Old Age by Three Groups of Poles Living Apart from Their Families in Baltimore (Washington, D.C., 1940).Google Scholar

26. On the former, see Benet, , Song, Dance, and Customs, 178Google Scholar; on the latter, compare Boyer, Paul and Nissenbaum, Stephen, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, Mass., 1974).Google Scholar

27. Perkowski, , Vampires, 30–31, 49.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., 49.

29. Ibid., 43–45. The withering could be attributable to a grass fungus. I would like to thank Phil Schmidt for calling this regional botanical malady to my attention.

30. According to one Ontario Kashub interviewed in the late 1960s: “There was a lot ofthat at Wilno in the graves. They opened the graves. They cut the heads off. When those who were born vampires are not seen to, then they have to dig up the graves. First he [the vampire] carries off his relatives and then those as far as the bell rings. It happened at Wilno [Ontario]. They have dug up many, but it was not told, never revealed. They had to dig it [the vampire's body] up and cut off the head while he sat in the coffin.” Postmortem decapitation with a spade was only the last resort for “seeing to” vampires. Among other practices, Kashubs in Europe placed a rosary or crucifix in the coffin of the suspected vampire, but this cultural practice was modified in rural Ontario. There Kashubs employed crosses constructed of poplar. See Perkowski, , Vampires, 2, 27–29.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., 21–22, quoting Lorentz, Friedrich, The Cassubian Civilization (London, 1935), 132–34.Google Scholar Interestingly, atheists and socialists fell into this last category.

32. For the child born with the “little cap,” Kashubs believed that the antidote to the vampire's fate was to remove the placenta, dry it, grind it to dust when the child was seven years old, and administer it in the child's drink. Burning it was an alternative. See Perkowski, , Vampires, 21–22, 26.Google Scholar In other cultures, the “little cap” appears to have signified positive talents and gifts. Compare Rölvaag, Ole, Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later, trans. Solum, Nora O. and Rölvaag, O. E. (New York, 1929).Google Scholar Among Eastern Europeans, it is interesting how much it resembled the yarmulke and may shed some light on cultural attitudes toward Jews.

33. Among Ontario Kashubs, dwarves were believed to substitute their own malformed children for healthy infants. See Perkowski, , Vampires, 46.Google Scholar

34. Bukowczyk, John J., And My Children Did Not Know Me: A History of the Polish-Americans (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), 24.Google Scholar

35. Pawlowska, , Merrily We Sing, 44–45.Google Scholar Desecration of Christian sacred objects was a time-honored technique of witches in Polish lore. See Thomas, and Znaniecki, , The Polish Peasant, 1:267–68.Google Scholar

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37. Mia¸so, , The History of the Education of Polish Immigrants, 86–87.Google Scholar

38. Benet, , Song, Dance, and Customs, 40–41.Google Scholar One medicine woman who administered to Ontario Kashubs insisted that if her client did not follow her instructions and pay her, her client would die. See Perkowski, , Vampires, 37.Google Scholar

39. Pawlowska, , Merrily We Sing, 20–21, 150–51.Google Scholar

40. Czas (Brooklyn), 3 03 1906, 2 01 1914.Google Scholar

41. Godwin, , “Motor City Witchcraft,” 530.Google Scholar

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43. Though the following story from the study of Ontario Kashubs does not specifically identify the protagonist as a midwife, we can well imagine the kind of activities described in it taking place during a childbirth. The Ontario informant reported

[A] vampire … was born to some people. The child was fine, baptized. Everything was good and he died. I was there. It was forty years ago [1920s]. And my neighbor was there. They said that I was to sew a garment for the child and I took it and was sewing the garment, but I said to Mrs. Martin Etmanski, “Come here. The child is alive. The child is coming to life, but the mother is dying.” And then Mrs. Etmanski said, “Yes, but I will put it straight.” She took a needle. From the ring finger, but I can't say whether it was two drops or three, she drew blood. The blood was alive and she administered it. When she gave it from the girl to the mother, the mother got better and began to sit up. The child grew cold and they buried it….

This vignette also reveals the delicate ambiguity of episodes of alleged witchcraft or whose life immigrants considered more important. Under other circumstances, Mrs. Etmanski or the informant might have been accused of hexing the birth. See Perkowski, , Vampires, 25.Google Scholar

44. In some cases, of course, magic has been politicized. See Platt, Tristan, “Notes on the Devil's Cult among South Andean Miners,” and Terence Ranger, “Religion in the Zimbabwe Guerilla War,” in Disciplines of Faith: Studies in Religion, Politics and Patriarchy, ed. Obelkevich, Jim, Roper, Lyndal, and Samuel, Raphael (London, 1987), 245–58 and 259–79, respectively.Google Scholar

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