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Generally speaking, pins, needles, and nails are protective elements in folk magic. They are one of the elements included in many British witch bottles, which function by drawing in malevolent magic and trap it. One source describes a witch doctor who recommended that a man “take a Bottle, and put his Wives Urine into it, together with Pins and Needles and Nails, and Cork them up,” first to be set on the fire to explode and then later buried in the yard to heal his wife from an illness (Saducismus triumphatus). In Appalachia, Scots-Irish settlers held onto these traditions and passed them down. Here, pins, needles, and nails can be used for protection, healing, divination, love magic, and cursing.

 It wouldn't be Yule without the all-night dance, now, would it?

Breakin' Old Yule Up

Hoo-ray Jake and hoo-ray John,

breakin' old Yule up all night long.

Way back yonder a long time ago,

the old folks danced the do-si-do.

Hey little children, off to bed:

you'll wake up with ginger bread.

Way down yonder along the creek,

I saw Berhta washin' her feet.

Berhta come, Berhta gone:

breakin' old Yule up right along.

Roll up the rug and dance all night,

stay with me till mornin' light.

Pitch a nickle, pitch a dime,

breakin' old Yule up one more time.

So, you want to be a witch, do you?

Well, here's what you do.

Friday night, go up to the old Indian graveyard up top the ridge.

Take off every stitch of clothing and dance, dance for the Devil.

Then get dressed and go back home.

The next Friday, do the same, and the one after that. Nine weeks running, you do this.

Old Granny Nicburne kept the Devil upstairs in an old black kettle.

Look on in, and you'd swear you were looking down an old, dry well.

And there at the bottom, looking back up, two eyes like a couple of fires.

They say one night a fellow broke into Granny's place, whilst she was up to the mountain at one of her jamborees.

Puzzled the sheriff no end.

Broke in, didn't steal nothing; just plain vanished into thin air.

Footprints in the dust led on up the stairs, and into an empty room, with nothing inside it but a deer skull in an old kettle.

Full set of prints going up those stairs.