Welcome to the latest edition of Easy Does It, a column dedicated to simple, semi-automatic magic. In this instalment, I’m sharing a card trick that apparently uses Appalachian mountain magic—with a little help from the Jack o’ Diamonds—to find a card a spectator has mentally selected.
As this is an even-numbered edition, this trick tutorial is available to all Ruseletter subscribers (this is my “freeven” model of publication).
Quick Reference 📋
Effect Type: Spelling/Location Effect
Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ (Easy)
Duration: 3-5 minutes
Setup Time: Minimal
Reset Time: Instant
Props: A standard deck of playing cards
Key Moves & Principles: Automatic Placement, Double Turnover, Breather Crimp, Marked Key Card
Here’s what happens:
A card is selected “by association” using a traditional British nursery rhyme:
“One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a wedding,
Four for a birth,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told,
Eight for love,
Nine for health,
And ten for Old Splitfoot, the Devil himself.”
It’s then lost deep in the deck while your back is turned, ensuring there’s no way you could estimate its location.
Borrowing the techniques of an Appalachian water witch, you divide the deck into two piles. You hover your hand over the cards, demonstrating how they used to dowse for hidden objects, and confidently set aside the pile that lacks the proper feeling.
To cause the selection to rise to the top of the pile, you recite a historical mountain charm:
“Part the dirt and turn the stone,
Make the hidden secret known.
Draw it upward from the earth,
Bring the buried truth to birth.”
The top card is turned over, but it isn’t the spectator’s selection. Explaining that the first charm wasn’t strong enough, you note that old Appalachian “granny witches” would sometimes use a folk song to summon a little help. You deal the wrong card onto the table and ask the spectator to knock on it three times. To complete the charm, you recite an old mountain poem:
“Jack o’ Diamonds, Jack o’ Diamonds, I know you of old,
You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold.”
When the card is turned face up, it has transformed into the Jack of Diamonds. Your spectator will reluctantly tell you that this is still not her chosen card. You smile and explain that this was expected—you summoned the Jack of Diamonds because he has an unnatural talent for finding hidden things. To force the scoundrel to find her card, you use a very different kind of magic spell. You deal one card from the deck for each letter in his name (“J-A-C-K-O-D-I-A-M-O-N-D-S”). The final card—the one that lands on the “S”—is turned over to reveal the chosen card.
Magpie Magic 🐦⬛
I developed this trick while experimenting with Marlo’s Automatic Placement. I wanted to find a way to better justify the slightly odd and indirect selection process. Here’s how the card is usually chosen: a small number of cards are cut from the deck, secretly counted and hidden. The participant is shown ten or fifteen cards and asked to remember the card that falls on her secret number. The hidden cards are then returned to the deck. Through this process, the thought-of card will always end up at a known position from the top of the deck (usually the number of cards shown plus one).
The solution I finally settled on was to use a traditional British nursery rhyme, “One for Sorrow”, to justify the count. (More information on the history of the rhyme can be found on Wikipedia.) However, there was a problem. Because the poem usually ends at the number seven, I had to modify the rhyming scheme to include the numbers eight, nine and ten (taking my cue from the Victorian versions that ran to ten and, as mine does, ended with a line about the Devil). Here’s the final version:
“One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a wedding,
Four for a birth,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told,
Eight for love,
Nine for health,
And ten for Old Splitfoot, the Devil himself.”
This worked well with the routine because, at this stage, I’d already attached the Appalachian folk-magic theme to it, and a superstitious rhyme about birds felt at home alongside it. I did have to change the bird from a magpie to a crow, as magpies are not native to the mountainous regions of the eastern United States.
One of the accidental benefits of using the rhyme to justify the count is that it lets you frame the whole thing as a fortune-telling ritual. A spectator is asked to pick a number from one to ten at random, and each number corresponds to an omen in the poem. Although I haven’t tried this aspect of the trick yet, I’m convinced it will create some memorable moments with an audience.
My inspiration for using the rhyme this way was a song called “Magpie”, featured in the third series of Detectorists, performed by the English folk group The Unthanks—both the TV series and folk group get my highest recommendation. The song uses the more modern version of the rhyme (“One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy…”). However, I decided to use the older wording because it was a better fit for the trick’s American folklore theme. For the same reason, I included “Old Splitfoot” in the final line, as it is an old American folk name for the Devil; it also echoes the legend of “Mr. Splitfoot”, the Fox sisters, and the birth of nineteenth-century American Spiritualism.
The song—originally titled “The Magpie”—was written and first recorded in 1979 by Davey Dodds, the English prog-folk singer, who sadly died this past February after a long illness. In 2019, he joined The Unthanks on stage at the Cornwall Folk Festival to sing it with them—the song’s writer and the voices that carried it to millions of TV viewers, together for a few magical minutes. You can watch him perform “The Magpie” on his YouTube channel.
It would also be remiss of me not to mention the American rock band Counting Crows, whose name derives from the same British nursery rhyme. The poem also appears in the lyrics of their 1993 song “A Murder of One”, which offers another cool musical connection to “Gambler’s Lament”.
Rye Whiskey I Cry! 🥃
If that wasn’t enough, the presentation also features lyrics from another traditional song, “Jack o’ Diamonds” or “Rye Whiskey”, which remains popular among fiddle and banjo players in the coves, hollows and valleys of Appalachia.
Final Thoughts 🤔
Finally, for those familiar with the Automatic Placement, I’ve found a way to avoid your volunteer having to hide a packet of cards, which can be a little awkward if they don’t have an empty pocket or are wearing a dress. This makes the trick much more practical for casual performance. The full write-up is available on my blog.
While you learn and practise “Gambler’s Lament”, I suggest you listen to the songs included above to help you get into the spirit of the routine.
Yours Magically,
Marty
P.S. This is the first in a series of card tricks I’ll be publishing based on the Automatic Placement principle. The next trick, titled “I Alone Know”, will draw inspiration from the chilling true-crime mystery of the Axeman of New Orleans. 🪓