Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling / Illustrated by numerous incantations, specimens of medical magic, anecdotes and tales

by Charles Godfrey Leland

Fairies.

Where the scythe cuts and the sock rives,

No more fairies and bee-hives.

Laugh like a pixy (i.e., fairy).

Waters locked! waters locked! (A favourite cry of fairies.)

Borram! borram! borram! (The cry of the Irish fairies after mounting their steeds. Equivalent to the Scottish cry, “Horse! horse and hattock!”)

To live in the land of the Fair family. (A Welsh fairy saying.)

God grant that the fairies may put money in your shoes and keep your house clean. (One of the good wishes of the old time.)

Fairies comb goats’ beards every Friday.

He who finds a piece of money will always find another in the same place, so long as he keeps it a secret. (In reference to fairy gifts.)

It’s going on, like Stokepitch’s can.

A pixey or fairy saying, used in Devonshire. The family of Stokespitch or Sukespic resided near Topsham, and a barrel of ale in their cellars had for many years run freely without being exhausted. It was considered a valuable heirloom, and was esteemed accordingly, till an inquisitive maidservant took out the bung to ascertain the cause why it never run dry. On looking into the cask she found it full of cobwebs, but the fairies, it would seem, were offended, for on turning the cock, as usual, the ale had ceased to flow.

It was a common reply at Topsham to the inquiry how any affair wen on: “It’s going on like Stokepitch’s can,” or proceeding prosperously.

To laugh like Robin Goodfellow.

To laugh like old Bogie;

He caps Bogie.

(Amplified to “He caps Bogie, and Bogie capped old Nick.”)

To play the Puck. (An Irish saying, equivalent to the English one, “To play the deuce or devil.” Keightley’s “Fairy Mythology.”)

He has got into Lob’s pound or pond. (That is, into the fairies’ pinfold. Keightley’s “Fairy Mythology.”)

Pinch like a fairy. (“Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.” “Merry Wives of Windsor.”)

To be fairy-struck. (The paralysis is, or rather perhaps was, so called. Keightley’s “Fairy Mythology.”)

There has never been a merry world since the Phynoderee lost his ground. [A Manx fairy saying. See Train’s “Isle of Man,” ii. p. 148. “Popular Rhymes of the Isle of Man,” pp. 16, 17.]

To be pixey-led.

Led astray by fairies or goblins. “When a man has got a wee drap ower muckle whuskey, misses his way home, and gets miles out of his direct course, he tells a tale of excuse and whiles lays the blame on the innocent pixies” (see Keightley’s “Fairy Mythology”). Also recalling Feufollet, or the Will o’ the Wisp, and the traveller who

“thro’ bog and bush

Was lantern-led by Friar Rush.”

Gypsies have from their out of doors life much familiarity with these “spirits” whom they call mullo dūdia, or mūllo doods, i.e., dead or ghost lights. For an account of the adventure of a gypsy with them, see “The English Gypsies and their Language,” by C. G. Leland. London: Trübner & Co. “Pyxie-led is to be in a maze, to be bewildered as if led out of the way by hobgoblins or puck, or one of the fairies. The cure is to turn one of your garments the inside outward; some say that is for a woman to turn her cap inside outward, and for a man to do the same with some of his clothes” (MS. “Devon Glimpses”—Halliwell). “Thee pixie-led in Popish piety” (Clobery’s “Divine Glimpses,” 1659).

The fairies’ lanthorn.

That is the glow-worm. In America a popular story represents an Irishman as believing that a fire-fly was a mosquito “sakin’ his prey wid a lanthorn.”

God speed you, gentlemen!

“When an Irish peasant sees a cloud of dust sweeping along the road, he raises his hat and utters this blessing in behoof of y^e company of invisible fairies who, as he believes, caused it” (“Fairy Mythology”).

The Phooka have dirtied the blackberries.

Said when the fruit of the blackberry is spoiled through age or covered with dust at the end of the season. In the North of England we say “the devil has set his foot on the Bumble-Kites” (“Denham Tract”).

Fairy, fairy, bake me a bannock and roast me a collop,

And I’ll give ye a spintle off my god end.

“This is spoken three times by the Clydesdale peasant when ploughing, because he believes that on getting to the end of the fourth furrow those good things will be found spread out on the grass” (Chambers’ “Popular Rhymes, Scotland,” 3rd ed. p. 106).

Turn your clokes (i.e., coats),

For fairy folkes

Are in old oakes.

“I well remember that on more occasions than one, when a schoolboy, I have turned and worn my coat inside out in passing through a wood in order to avoid the ‘good people.’ On nutting days, those glorious red-letter festivals in the schoolboy’s calendar, the use pretty generally prevailed. The rhymes in the text are the English formula” (“Denham Tract”).

He’s got Pigwiggan.

“Vulgarly called Peggy Wiggan. A severe fall or somerset is so termed in the B’prick. The fairy Pigwiggan is celebrated by Drayton in his Nymphidia” (“Denham Tract”). To which may be added a few more from other sources.

Do what you may, say what you can,

No washing e’er whitens the black Zingan.

(“Firdusi.”)

For every gypsy that comes to toon,

A hen will be a-missing soon,

And for every gypsy woman old,

A maiden’s fortune will be told.

Gypsy hair and devil’s eyes,

Ever stealing, full of lies,

Yet always poor and never wise.

He who has never lived like a gypsy does not know how to enjoy life as a gentleman.

I never enjoyed the mere living as regards all that constitutes ordinary respectable life so keenly as I did after some weeks of great hunger, exposure, and misery, in an artillery company in 1863, at the time of the battle of Gettysburg.

Zigeuner Leben Greiner Leben. (Gipsy life a groaning life. Korte’s “Sprichwörter d. D.”)

Er taugt nicht zum Zigeuner. Spottisch vom Lügner gesagt weil er nicht wahr-sagt. (Korte, “Sprichwörter.”)

“He would not do for a gypsy.” Said of a liar because he cannot tell the truth. In German to predict or tell fortunes also means to speak truly, i.e., wahr = true, and sprechen = to speak.

Gypsy repentance for stolen hens is not worth much. (Old German Saying.)

The Romany chi

And the Romany chal

Love luripen

And lutchipen

And dukkeripen

And huknipen

And every pen

But latchipen

And tatchipen.

The gypsy woman

And gypsy man

Love stealing

And lewdness

And fortune telling

And lying

And every pen

But shame

And truth.

Pen is the termination of all verbal nouns.

(George Borrow, Quoted from memory.)

It’s a winter morning.

Meaning a bad day, or that matters look badly. In allusion to the Winters, a gypsy clan with a bad name.

As wild as a gypsy.

Puro romaneskoes. (In the old gypsy fashion.)

Sie hat ‘nen Kobold. (“She has a brownie, or house-fairy.”)

“Said of a girl who does everything deftly and readily. In some places the peasants believe that a fairy lives in the house, who does the work, brings water or wood, or curries the horses. Where such a fairy dwells, all succeeds if he or she is kindly treated” (Korte’s “German Proverbs”).

“Man siehet wohl wess Geisters Kind Sie (Er) ist.”

“One can well see what spirit was his sire.” In allusion to men of singular or eccentric habits, who are believed to have been begotten by the incubus, or goblins, or fairies. There are ceremonies by which spirits may be attracted to come to people in dreams.

“There was a young man who lived near Monte Lupo, and one day he found in a place among some old ruins a statue of a fate (fairy or goddess) all naked. He set it up in its shrine, and admiring it greatly embraced it with love (ut semen ejus profluit super statuam). And that night and ever after the fate came to him in his dreams and lay with him, and told him where to find treasures, so that he became a rich man. But he lived no more among men, nor did he after that ever enter a church. And I have heard that any one who will do as he did can draw the fate to come to him, for they are greatly desirous to be loved and worshipped by men as they were in the Roman times.”

The following are Hungarian or Transylvanian proverbs:—

False as a Tzigane, i.e., gypsy.

Dirty as a gypsy.

They live like gypsies (said of a quarrelsome couple).

He moans like a guilty Tzigane (said of a man given to useless lamenting).

He knows how to plow with the gypsies (said of a liar). Also: “He knows how to ride the gypsies’ horse.”

He knows the gypsy trade (i.e., he is a thief).

Tzigane weather (i.e., a showery day).

It is gypsy honey (i.e., adulterated).

A gypsy duck i.e., a poor sort of wild duck.

“The gypsy said his favourite bird would be the pig if it had only wings” (in allusion to the gypsy fondness for pork).

Mrs. Gerard gives a number of proverbs as current among Hungarian gypsies which appear to be borrowed by them from those of other races. Among them are:—

Who would steal potatoes must not forget the sack.

The best smith cannot make more than one ring at a time.

Nothing is so bad but it is good enough for somebody.

Bacon makes bold.

“He eats his faith as the gypsies ate their church.”

A Wallach proverb founded on another to the effect that the gypsy church was made of pork and the dogs ate it. I shall never forget how an old gypsy in Brighton laughed when I told her this, and how she repeated: “O Romani kangri sos kerdo bāllovas te i juckli hawde lis.”

“No entertainment without gypsies.”

In reference to gypsy musicians who are always on hand at every festivity.

The Hungarian wants only a glass of water and a gypsy fiddler to make him drunk.

In reference to the excitement which Hungarians experience in listening to gypsy music.

With a wet rag you can put to flight a whole village of gypsies (Hungarian).

It would not be advisable to attempt this with any gypsies in Great Britain, where they are almost, without exception, only too ready to fight with anybody.

Every gypsy woman is a witch.

“Every woman is at heart a witch.”

In the “Materials for the Study of the Gypsies,” by M. I. Kounavine, which I have not yet seen, there are, according to A. B. Elysseeff (Gypsy-Lore Journal, July, 1890), three or four score of gypsy proverbial sayings and maxims. These refer to Slavonian or far Eastern Russian Romanis. I may here state in this connection that all who are interested in this subject, or aught relating to it, will find much to interest them in this journal of the Gypsy-Lore Society, printed by T. & A. Constable, Edinburgh. The price of subscription, including membership of the society, is £1 a year—Address: David Mac Ritchie, 4, Archibald Place, Edinburgh.

CHAPTER XIV.[1]

A GYPSY MAGIC SPELL.—HOKKANI BĀSO—LELLIN DUDIKABIN, OR THE GREAT SECRET—CHILDREN’S RHYMES AND INCANTATIONS—TEN LITTLE INDIAN BOYS AND TEN LITTLE ACORN GIRLS OF MARCELLUS BURDIGALENSIS.

There is a meaningless rhyme very common among children. It is repeated while “counting off”—or “out”—those who are taking part in a game, and allotting to each a place. There are many versions of it, but the following is exactly word for word what I learned when a boy in Philadelphia:—

Ekkeri (or ickery), akkery, u-kéry an,

Fillisi’, follasy, Nicholas John,

Queebee-quabee—Irishman (or, Irish Mary),

Stingle ‘em—stangle ‘em—buck!

With a very little alteration in sounds, and not more than children make of these verses in different places, this may be read as follows:—

Ek-keri (yekori) akairi, you kair an,

Fillissin, follasy, Nákelas jān

Kivi, kávi—Irishman,

Stini, stani—buck!

This is, of course, nonsense, but it is Romany or gypsy nonsense, and it may be thus translated very accurately:—

First—here—you begin!

Castle, gloves. You don’t play!

Go on!

Kivi—a kettle. How are you?

Stáni, buck.

The common version of the rhyme begins with—

“One—ery—two—ery, ickery an.”

But one-ery is an exact translation of ek-keri; ek, or yek, meaning one in gypsy. (Ek-orus, or yek-korus, means once). And it is remarkable that in—

“Hickory dickory dock,

The rat ran up the clock,

The clock struck one,

And down he run,

Hickory dickory dock.”

We have hickory, or ek-keri, again followed by a significant one. It may be observed that; while my first quotation abounds in what are unmistakably Romany words, I can find no trace of any in any other child-rhymes of the kind. I lay stress on this, for if I were a great Celtic scholar I should not have the least difficulty in proving that every word in every rhyme, down to “Tommy, make room for your uncle,” was all old Irish or Gaelic.

Word for word every person who understands Romany will admit the following:—

Ek, or yek, means one. Yekorus, ekorus, or yeckori, or ekkeri, once.

U-kair-an. You kair an, or begin. Kair is to make or do, ānkair to begin. “Do you begin?”

Fillissin is a castle, or gentleman’s country seat (H. Smith).

Follasi, or follasy, is a lady’s glove.

Nākelas. I learned this word from an old gypsy. It is used as equivalent to don’t, but also means ná (kélas), you don’t play. From kel-ava, I play.

Ján, Jā-an, Go on. From jāva, I go. Hindu, jána, and jáo.

Kivi, or keevy. No meaning.

Kavi, a kettle, from kekāvi, commonly given as kāvi. Greek, κεκκάβος. Hindu, kal, a box.

Stini. No meaning that I know.

Stáni. A buck.

Of the last line it may be remarked that if we take from ingle ’em (angle ’em), which is probably added for mere jingle, there remains stán, or stáni, “a buck,” followed by the very same word in English.

With the mournful examples of Mr. Bellenden Kerr’s efforts to show that all our old proverbs, saws, sayings, and tavern signs are Dutch, and Sir William Betham’s Etruscan-Irish, and the works of an army of “philologists,” who consider mere chance resemblance to be a proof of identical origin, I should be justly regarded as one of the seekers for mystery in moonshine if I declared that I positively believed this to be Romany. But it certainly contains words which, without any stretching or fitting, are simply gypsy, and I think it not improbable that it was some sham charm used by some Romany fortune-teller to bewilder Gorgios. Let the reader imagine the burnt-sienna, wild-cat-eyed old sorceress performing before a credulous farm-wife and her children, the great ceremony of hākkni pánki—which Mr. Borrow calls hokkani bāro, but for which there is a far deeper name—that of “the great secret”—which even my best Romany friends tried to conceal from me. This is to lel dūdikabin—to “take lightment.” In the oldest English canting, lightment occurs as an equivalent for theft—whether it came from Romany, or Romany from it, I cannot tell.

This feat—which is described by almost every writer on Gypsies—is performed by inducing some woman of largely magnified faith to believe that there is hidden in her house a magic treasure, which can only be made “to come to hand” by depositing in the cellar another treasure, to which it will come by natural affinity and attraction. “For gold, as you sees, draws gold, my deari, and so if you ties up all your money in a pocket-handkercher, an’ leaves it, you’ll find it doubled. An’ wasn’t there the Squire’s lady—you know Mrs. Trefarlo, of course—and didn’t she draw two hundred old gold guineas out of the ground where they’d laid in an old grave—and only one guinea she gave me for all my trouble; an’ I hope you’ll do better than that for the poor old gypsy, my deari——.”

The gold and the spoons are all tied up—for, as the enchantress sagely observes, “there may be silver to”—and she solemnly repeats over it magical rhymes, while the children, standing around in awe, listen to every word. It is a good subject for a picture. Sometimes the windows are closed, and candles lighted—to add to the effect. The bundle is left or buried in a certain place. The next day the gypsy comes and sees how the charm is working. Could any one look under her cloak, he might find another bundle precisely resembling the one containing the treasure. She looks at the precious deposit, repeats her rhyme again solemnly and departs, after carefully charging the house-wife that the bundle must not be touched, looked at, or spoken of for three weeks. “Every word you tell about it, my deari, will be a guinea gone away.” Sometimes she exacts an oath on the Bible, when she chivs o manzin apré lāatti—that nothing shall be said.

Back to the farmer’s house never again. After three weeks another Extraordinary Instance of Gross Credulity appears in the country paper, and is perhaps repeated in a colossal London daily, with a reference to the absence of the schoolmaster. There is wailing and shame in the house—perhaps great suffering—for it may be that the savings of years, and bequeathed tankards, and marriage rings, and inherited jewellery, and mother’s souvenirs have been swept away. The charm has worked.

“How can people be such fools!” Yea—how can they? How can fully ninety-nine out of one hundred, and I fear me nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand, be capable of what amounts to precisely the same thing—paying out their cash in the hopes that the Invisible Influences in the Inscrutable Cellar or Celestial Garret will pay it back to them, cent. per cent.? Oh, reader, if you be of middle age (for there are perhaps some young agnostics beginning to appear to whom the cap does not fit), and can swear on your hat that you never in your life have been taken in by a dūdikabin in any form—send me your name and I will award you for an epitaph that glorious one given in the Nugæ Venales:

“Hic jacet ille qui unus fuit inter mille!”

The charm has worked. But the little sharp-eared children remember it, and sing it over, and the more meaningless it sounds in their ears, the more mysterious does it become. And they never talk about the bundle—which when opened was found to contain only stones, sticks, and rags—without repeating it. So it goes from mouth to mouth, until, all mutilated, it passes current for even worse nonsense than it was at first. It may be observed, however—and the remark will be fully substantiated by any one who knows the gypsy language—that there is a Romany turn to even the roughest corners of these rhymes. Kivi, stingli, stangli, are all gypsyish. But, as I have already intimated, this does not appear in any other nonsense verses of the kind. There is nothing of it in—

“Intery, mintery, cutery corn,”

or in anything else in “Mother Goose.” It is alone in its sounds and sense—or nonsense. But there is not a wanderer on the roads in England who on hearing it would not exclaim, “There’s a great deal of Romanes in that ere!” And if any one doubts it let him try it on any gypsy who has an average knowledge of Romany.

I should say that the word Na-Kelas, which means literally “Do not play,” or, “You do not play,” was explained to me by a gypsy as signifying not speaking, or keeping quiet. Nicholas John has really no meaning, but “You don’t play—go on,” fits exactly into a counting-out game.

The mystery of mysteries in the Romany tongue—of which I have spoken—is this: The hokkani bāro, or huckeny boro, or great trick, consists of three parts. Firstly, the getting into a house or into the confidence of its owner, which is effected in England by offering small wares for sale, or by begging for food, but chiefly by fortune-telling, the latter being the usual pretence in America. If the gypsy woman be at all prepared, she will have learned enough to amaze “the lady of the house,” who is thereby made ready to believe anything. The second part of the trick is the conveying away the property, which is, as I have said, to lel dūdikabin, or “take lightning,” possibly connected with the old canting term for conveyance of bien lightment. There is evidently a confusion of words here. And third is to “chiv o manzin apré lāti” to put the oath upon her—the victim—by which she binds herself not to speak of the affair for some weeks. When the deceived are all under oath not to utter a word about the trick, the gypsy mother has a safe thing of it.

The hākkani boro, or great trick, or dūdikabin, was brought by the gypsies from the East. It has been practised by them all over the world, and is still played every day somewhere. And I have read in the Press of Philadelphia that a Mrs. Brown—whom I sadly and reluctantly believe is the wife of an acquaintance of mine who walks before the world in other names—was arrested for the same old game of fortune-telling, and persuading a simple dame that there was treasure in the house, and all the rest of the “grand deception.” And Mrs. Brown—“good old Mrs. Brown”—went to prison, where she doubtless lingered until a bribed alderman, or a purchased pardon, or some one of the numerous devices by which justice is easily evaded in Pennsylvania, delivered her.

Yet it is not a good country on the whole for hākkani boro, since the people, especially in the rural districts, have a rough and ready way of inflicting justice, which sadly interferes with the profits of aldermen and other politicians. Some years ago, in Tennessee, a gypsy woman robbed a farmer of all he was worth. Now it is no slander to say that the rural folk of Tennessee resemble Indians in several respects, and when I saw thousands of them during the Civil War, mustered out in Nashville, I often thought, as I studied these dark brown faces, high cheek-bones, and long, straight, wiry hair, that the American is indeed reverting to the aboriginal type. The Tennessee farmer and his friends reverted to it at any rate with a vengeance, for they turned out altogether, hunted the gypsies down, and having secured the sorceress, burned her alive at the stake. Which has been, as I believe, “an almighty warning” to the Romany in that sad section of the world. And thus in a single crime, and its consequence, we have curiously combined a world-old Oriental offence, an European Middle Age penalty for witchcraft, and the fierce torture of the Red Indian.

In the United States there is often to be found in a gypsy camp a negro or two who has with no great trouble adopted a life of perfect laziness. I infer that these men and brothers have not improved much in their morals, since a few years ago a coloured sorcerer appeared in Philadelphia, who, as I was assured, “persuaded half the niggers in Lombard Street to dig up their cellars to find treasure—and carried off all the treasures they had.” He had been, like Matthew Arnold’s scholar, among the tents of the Romany, and had learned their peculiar wisdom, and turned it to profit.

In Germany the Great Sorcery is practised with variations, and indeed in England or America or anywhere it is modified in many ways to suit the victims. The following methods are described by Dr. Richard Liebich, in “Die Zigeuner in ihrem Wesen und in ihrer Sprache” (Leipzig, 1863):—

“When a gypsy has found some old peasant who has the reputation of being rich or very well-to-do he sets himself to work with utmost care to learn the disposition of the man with every possible detail as to his house and habits.” (It is easy and congenial work to people who pass their lives in learning all they can of other folks’ affairs to aid in fortune-telling, to find out the soft spots, as Sam Slick calls the peculiarities by which a man may be influenced.) “And so some day, when all the rest of the family are in the fields, the gypsy—man or woman—comes, and entering into a conversation, leads it to the subject of the house, remarking that it is a belief among his people that in it a treasure lies buried. He offers, if he may have permission to take it away, to give one-fourth, a third, or a half its value. This all seems fair enough, but the peasant is greedy and wants more. The gypsy, on his side, also assumes suspicion and distrust. He proves that he is a conjuror by performing some strange tricks—thus he takes an egg from under a hen, breaks it, and apparently brings out a small human skull or some strange object, and finally persuades the peasant to collect all his coin and other valuables in notes, gold, or silver, into a bundle, cautioning him to hold them fast. He must go to bed and put the packet under his pillow, while he, the conjuror, finds the treasure. This done—probably in a darkened room—he takes a bundle of similar appearance which he has quickly prepared, and under pretence of facilitating the operation and putting the man into a proper position, takes the original package and substitutes another. Then the victim is cautioned that it is of the utmost importance for him to lie perfectly still;”

“Nor move his hand nor blink his ’ee

If ever he hoped the goud to see;

For aye aboot on ilka limb,

The fairies had their ’een on him.”

The gypsy is over the hills and far far away ere the shades of evening fall, and the family returning from their fields find the father in bed refusing to speak a word; for he has been urgently impressed with the assertion that the longer he holds his tongue and keeps the affair a secret the more money he will make. And the extreme superstition of the German peasant is such that when obliged to tell the truth he often believes that all his loss is due to a premature forced revelation of what he has done—for the gypsy in many cases has the cheek to caution the victim that if he speaks too soon the contents of the package will be turned to sand or rags—accordingly as he has prepared it.

Another and more impudent manner of playing this pretended sorcery, is to persuade the peasant that he must have a thick cloth tied around his head, and if any one addresses him to reply only by what in German is called brummen—uttering a kind of growl. This he does, when the entire party proceed to carry off everything portable—

“Chairs and tables knives and forks,

Tankards and bottles and cups and corks,

Beds and dishes and boots and kegs,

Bacon and puddings and milk and eggs,

The carpet lying on the floor,

And the hams hung up for the winter store,

Every pillow and sheet and bed,

The dough in the trough and the baken bread,

Every bit of provant or pelf;

All that they left was the house itself.”

One may imagine what the scene is like when the rest return and find the house plundered, the paterfamilias sitting in the ruins with his head tied up, answering all frantic queries with brum—brum—brum! It may recall the well-known poem—I think it is by Peter Pindar Wolcott—of the man who was persuaded by a bet to make the motion of a pendulum, saying, “Here she goes—there she goes!” while the instigator “cleared out the house and then cleared out himself.” I have little doubt that this poem was drawn from a Romany original.

Or yet, again, the gypsy having obtained the plunder and substituted the dummy packet, persuades the true believer to bury it in the barn, garden, field, or a forest, performs magic ceremonies and repeats incantations over it, and cautions him to dig it up again, perhaps six months later on a certain day, it may be his saint’s or birth day, and to keep silence till then. The gypsy makes it an absolute condition—nay, he insists very earnestly on it—that the treasure shall not be dug up unless he himself is on the spot to share the spoil. But as he may possibly be prevented from coming, he tells the peasant how to proceed: he leaves with him several pieces of paper inscribed with cabalistic characters which are to be burnt when the money is removed, and teaches him what he is to repeat while doing it. With sequence as before.

It might be urged by the gypsy that the taking a man’s money from him under the conditions that he shall get it all back with immense interest six months after, does not differ materially from persuading him to give his property to Brahmins, or even priests, with the understanding that he is to be amply rewarded for it in a future state. In both cases the temptation to take the money down is indeed great—as befel a certain very excellently honest but extremely cautious Scotch clergyman, to whom there once came a very wicked and wealthy old reprobate who asked him, “If I gie a thousand puns till the kirk d’ye think it wad save my soul?” “I’m na preparit to preceesely answer that question,” said the shrewd dominie, “but I would vara urgently advise ye to try it.”

Oh thou who persuadest man that for money down great good shall result to him from any kind of spiritual incantation—twist and turn it as ye will—mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur:

“With but a single change of name,

The story fits thee quite the same.”

And few and far between are the Romanys—or even the Romans—who would not “vara earnestly advise ye to try it.”

Since I wrote that last line I have met, in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, with a very interesting article on the Counting-out Rhymes of Children, in which the writer, H. Carrington Bolton, avows his belief that these doggerel verses or rhymes are the survivals of sortileges or divination by lot, and that it was practised among the ancient heathen nations as well as the Israelites:—

“The use of the lot at first received divine sanction, as in the story of Achan related by Joshua, but after this was withheld the practice fell into the hands of sorcerers—which very name signifies lot-taker. The doggerels themselves I regard as a survival of the spoken charms used by sorcerers in ancient times in conjunction with their mystic incantations. There are numerous examples of these charms, such as—

“ ‘Huat Hanat Huat ista pista sista domiabo damnaustra.’

(Cato, 235 B.C.)

“And—

“ ‘Irriori, ririori essere rhuder fere.’

“And—

“ ‘Meu, treu, mor, phor

Teux, za, zor

Phe, lou, chri,

Ge, ze, on.’

(Alexander of Tralles.)

“Tylor in his ‘Primitive Culture’ holds that things which occupy an important place in the life-history of grown men in a savage state become the playthings of children in a period of civilization; thus the sling and the bow and arrow, which formed the weapons of mankind in an early stage of its existence, and are still the reliance of savage tribes, have become toys in the hands of all civilized children at the present day. Many games current in Europe and America are known to be sportive imitations of customs which formerly had a significant and serious aspect.

“Adopting this theory, I hold that counting-out is a survival of the practice of the sorcerer, using this word in its restricted and etymological meaning, and that the spoken and written charms originally used to enforce priestly power have become adjuncts to these puerile games, and the basis of the counting-out doggrels under consideration.

“The idea that European and American children engaged in ‘counting-out’ for games, are repeating in innocent ignorance the practices and language of a sorcerer of a dark age, is perhaps startling, but can be shown to have a high degree of probability. The leader in ‘counting out’ performs an incantation, but the children grouped round him are free from that awe and superstitious reverence which characterized the procedure in its earlier state. Many circumstances make this view plausible, and clothe the doggrels with a new and fascinating interest.”

Mr. Bolton remarks, however, that “in only one instance have I been able to directly connect a child’s counting-out rhyme with a magic spell. According to Leland the rhyme beginning with

‘One-ery, two-ery, ickery, Ann,’

is a gypsy magic spell in the Romany language.”

It occurred to me long, long ago, or before ever the name “Folk-lore” existed, that children’s rhymes were a survival of incantations, and that those which are the same backward and forward were specially adapted to produce marvellous effects in lots. But there was one form of counting-out which was common as it was terrible. This was used when after a victory it was usual to put every tenth captive to death—whence the greatly abused word to “decimate”—or any other number selected. When there was a firm belief in the virtues of numbers as set forth by Pythagoras, and Plato in the Timæus, and of cabalistic names inspired by the “Intelligences,” it is not remarkable that the diviners or priests or sorcerers or distributors of sortes and sortileges should endeavour to prove that life and death lay bound up in mystic syllables. That there were curious and occult arithmetical means of counting-out and saving elected persons is shown in certain mystic problems still existent in Boys Own Books, and other handbooks of juvenile sports. It was the one on whom the fatal word of life or death fell who was saved or condemned, so that it was no wonder that the word was believed to be a subtle, mysterious existence: an essence or principle, yea, a spirit or all in one—diversi aspetti in un, confuse e misti. He who knew the name of Names which, as the Chaldæan oracles of old declared, “rushes into the infinite worlds,” knew all things and had all power; even in lesser words there lingered the fragrance of God and some re-echo of the Bath Kol—the Daughter of the Voice who was herself the last echo of the divine utterance. So it went down through the ages—coming, like Cæsar’s clay, to base uses—till we now find the sacred divination by words a child’s play: only that and nothing more.

Truly Mr. Bolton spoke well when he said that such reflection clothes these doggerels with a new and fascinating interest. Now and then some little thing awakens us to the days of old, the rosy, early morning of mankind, when the stars of magic were still twinkling in the sky, and the dreamer, hardly awake, still thought himself communing with God. So I was struck the other day when a gypsy, a deep and firm believer in the power of the amulet, and who had long sought, yet never found, his ideal, was deeply moved when I showed him the shell on which Nav, or the Name, was mystically inscribed by Nature. Through the occult and broken traditions of his tribe there had come to him also, perhaps from Indian or Chaldæan sources, some knowledge of the ancient faith in its power.

I think that I can add to the instance of a child’s counting-out game based on a magic spell, yet another. Everybody knows the song of John Brown who had

“Ten little, nine little, eight little, seven little, Six little Indian boys;

Five little, four little, three little, two little, One little Indian boy,[2]

And of the fate which overtook them all, one by one, inevitable as the decrees of Nemesis. This song is in action a game. I have heard it in Romany from a gypsy, and have received from a gypsy scholar another version of it, though I am sure that both were versions from the English. But in Romany, as in all languages, there have existed what may be called additional and subtractive magic songs, based on some primæval Pythagorean principle of the virtues of numbers, and, as regards form, quite like that of the ten little Indians. In the charms of Marcellus Burdigalensis (third century), it appears as a cure for pains or disorders in the jaws (remedium valde certum et utile faucium doloribus), in the Song of the Seven Acorn Sisters, which the Latin-Gaul doctor describes as carmen mirum, in which opinion the lover of Folk-lore will heartily concur.

“Carmen mirum ad Glandulas.

“Glandulas mane carminabis, si dies minuetur, si nox ad vesperam, et digito medicinali ac pollice continens eas dices:—

“Novem glandulæ sorores,

Octo glandulæ sorores,

Septem glandulæ sorores,

Sex glandulæ sorores,

Quinque glandulæ sorores,

Quatuor glandulæ sorores,

Tres glandulæ sorores,

Duæ glandulæ sorores,

Una glandula soror!

Novem fiunt glandulæ,

Octo fiunt glandulæ,

Septem fiunt glandulæ,

Sex fiunt glandulæ,

Quinque fiunt glandulæ,

Quattuor fiunt glandulæ,

Tres fiunt glandulæ,

Duæ fiunt glandulæ,

Una fit glandula,

Nulla fit glandula!”

(I.e., “Nine little acorn sisters (or girls), Eight little acorn sisters,” &c.)

This is simply the same count, forwards and backwards.

It rises before us as we read—a chorus of rosy little Auluses and Marcellas, Clodias, and Manliuses, screaming in chorus:—

“Ten little, nine little, eight little, seven little, Six little acorn girls!”

Until it was reduced to una glandula et nulla fit—“then there was none.” They too had heard their elders repeat it as a charm against the jaw-ache—and can any man in his senses doubt that they applied it in turn to the divine witchcraft of fun and the sublime sorcery of sport, which are just as magical and wonderful in their way as anything in all theurgia or occultism, especially when the latter is used only to excite marvels and the amazement which is only a synonym for amusement. But it is not credible that such a palpable “leaving out” song as that of the Ten Little Acorn Girls should not having been utilized by such intelligent children as grew up into being the conquerors of the world—“knowing Latin at that.”

There is yet another old Roman “wonderful song to the Acorns,” apparently for the same disorder, given by the same author.

“Albula glandula,

Nec doleas nec noceas.

Nec paniculas facias,

Sed liquescas tanquam salis (mica) in aqua!

“Hoc ter novies dicens spues ad terram et glandulas ipsas pollice et digito medicinali perduces, dum carmen dices, sedante solis ortum et post occasum facies id, prout dies aut nox minuetur.”

There appears in these formulas to be either a confusion or affinity as regards glandulas, the tonsils, and the same word signifying small acorns. As is very often the case, the similarity of name caused an opinion that there must be sympathetic curative qualities. Perhaps acorns were also used in this ceremony. In a comment on this Grimm remarks: “Die Glandula wird angeredet, die Glandulæ gelten fur Schwestern, wie wenn das alt hoch-deutsch druos glandula (Graff 5, 263) personification ankündigte? Alt Nordisch ist drôs, femina.”

There is another child’s rhyme which is self-evidently drawn from an exorcism, that is to say an incantation. All my readers know the nursery song:—

“Snail, snail, come out of your hole,

Or else I’ll beat you as black as a coal!

Snail, snail, put out your head,

Or else I’ll beat you till you are dead!”

It is very remarkable that in Folk-lore the mole and the snail are identified, and, as De Gubernatis states, both are the same with the grey mouse, or, as he might more accurately have declared with the mouse in general. A critic objects to this simply because it occurs in the work of De Gubernatis, among his “fanciful theories,” but it need not follow that every citation or opinion in his book is false. Friedrich, who certainly is not a fanciful theorist, asserted nearly thirty years ago that the mouse, owing to its living underground and in dark places as well as to its gnawing and destroying everything, is a chthonisches Thier, one of the animals of darkness and evil. Also “the mole, because it is of subterranean life, has received a chthonic, demoniac, misanthropic reputation.” In support of these statements he cites a great array of authorities. The connection between the mole and mouse is evident enough, that between both and the snail is also clear: firstly, from the fact that “the snail of popular superstition is demoniacal,” or evil; and secondly, from the rhyme which I now quote, which is applied to both moles and snails. According to Du Cange it was usual in the Middle Ages for children to go about carrying poles, on the ends of which was straw, which they lighted, and going round the gardens and under the trees shouted:—

“Taupes et mulots,

Sortez de vos clos,

Sinon je vous brulerai la barbe et les os!”

But in Germany there are two and in Italy five versions of the same song addressed to snails. It is evidently a Roman Catholic formula, based on some early heathen incantation. Thus in Tuscany they sing:—

“Chiocciola marinella

Tira fuori le tue cornelle,

E se tu non le tirerai

Calcie pugni tu buscherai.”

Both the snail and mole and mouse were, as I have said, chthonic, that is diabolical or of darkness. The horns of the former were supposed to connect it with the devil. “In Tuscany it is believed that in the month of April the snail makes love with serpents.”

There is another nursery counting-out rhyme whose antiquity and connection with sorcery is very evident. It is as follows:—

“One, two, three, four, five,

I caught a hare all alive.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

I let her go again.”

The following from the medical spells and charms of Marcellus Burdigalensis manifestly explains it:—

“Lepori vivo talum abstrahes, pilósque ejus de subventre tolles atque ipsum vivum dimittes. De illis pilis, vel lana filum validum facies et ex eo talum leporis conligabis corpusque laborantis præcinges; miro remedio subvenies. Efficacius tamen erit remedium, ita ut incredibile sit, si casu os ipsum, id est talum leporis in stercore lupi inveneris, quod ita custodire debes, ne aut terram tangat aut a muliere contingatur, sed nec filum illud de lana leporis debet mulier ulla contigere. Hoc autem remedium cum uni profuerit ad alias translatum cum volueris, et quotiens volueris proderit. Filum quoque, quod ex lana vel pilis, quos de ventre leporis tuleris, solus purus et nitidus facies, quod si ita ventri laborantis subligaveris plurimum proderit, ut sublata lana leporem vivum dimmittas, et dicas ei dum dimittis eum:

“ ‘Fuge, fuge, lepuscule, et tecum aufer coli dolorem!’ ”

That is to say, you must “first catch your hare,” then pluck from it the fur needed ad dolorem coli, then “let it go again,” bidding it carry the disorder with it. In which the hare appears as a scape-goat. It may be observed that all this ceremony of catching the hare, letting it go and bidding it run and carry away the disorder, is still in familiar use in Tuscany.

It has been observed to me that “any nursery rhyme may be used as a charm.” To this we may reply that any conceivable human utterance may be taken for the same purpose, but this is an unfair special pleading not connected with the main issue. Mr. Carrington Bolton admits that he has only found one instance of coincidence between nursery rhymes and spells, and I have compared hundreds of both with not much more result than what I have here given. But those who are practically familiar with such formulas recognize this affinity. On asking the Florentine fortune-teller if she knew any children’s counting-out rhymes which deemed to her to be the same with incantations, she at once replied:—

“In witchcraft you sometimes call on people one by one by name to bewitch them. And the little girls have a song which seems to be like it.” Then she sang to a very pretty tune:—

“Ecco l’imbasciatore,

Col tra le vi la lera,

Ecco l’imbasciatrice,

Col tra la li ra la!

Cosa volete col tua la li la,

Col tra le li va la,

Voglio Giuseppina,

Col tra le li va le va.

Voglio la Cesarina,

Col tra le li ra le ra.

Voglio la Armida, &c.

Voglio la Gesualda,

Voglio la Barbera,

Voglio la Bianca,

Voglio la Fortunata,

Voglio la Uliva,

Voglio la Filomena,

Voglio la Maddalena,

Voglio la Pia,

Voglio la Gemma,

Voglio la Ida,

Voglio la Lorenzina,

Voglio la Carolina,

Voglio la Annunciatina,

Voglio la Margo,” &c.

There is one thing of which those who deny the identity of any counting-out rhymes with spells are not aware. These incantations are very much in vogue with the Italian peasantry, as with the gypsies. They are repeated on all occasions for every disorder, for every trifle lost, for every want. Every child has heard them, and their jingle and even their obscurity make them attractive. They are just what children would be likely to remember and to sing over, and the applying them to games and to “counting-out” would follow as a matter of course. In a country where every peasant, servant-girl and child knows at least a few spells, the wonder would be if some of these were not thus popularized or perverted. It is one thing to sit in one’s library and demonstrate that this or that ought not to be, because it is founded on a “theory” or “idea,” and quite another to live among people where these ideas are in active operation. Washington Irving has recorded that one of the Dutch governors of New York achieved a vast reputation for wisdom by shrugging his shoulders at everything and saying, “I have my doubts as to that.” And truly the race of Wouter van Twiller is not extinct as yet by any means among modern critics.

It is worth noting in this connection that in Mrs. Valentine’s Nursery Rhymes (Camden edition) there are fifteen charms given which are all of a magical nature.

Since the foregoing chapter was written I have obtained in Florence several additional instances of children’s rhymes which were spells. Nearly allied to this subject of sorcery in the nursery is The Game of the Child-stealing Witch, which, as W. Wells Newell has shown in a very interesting and valuable contribution to the American Folk-Lore Journal, vol. iii., April, 1890, is found in many languages and lands.

In connection with divination, deceit, and robbery, it may be observed that gypsies in Eastern Europe, as in India, often tell fortunes or answer questions by taking a goblet or glass, tapping it, and pretending to hear a voice in the ring which speaks to them. This method of divination is one of the few which may have occurred sporadically, or independently in different places, as there is so much in a ringing, vibrating sound which resembles a voice. The custom is very ancient and almost universal; so Joseph (Genesis xliv. 5) says (“Vulgate”), “Scyphus quam furati estis, ipse est, in quo bibit Dominus meus, et in quo augurari solet.” “The goblet which ye have stolen, is it not this wherein my lord drinketh and in which he is wont to divine?” Joseph says again (ver. 15), “Know ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine.” A great number of very orthodox scholars have endeavoured to show that “divine” here means merely “to conjecture wisely,” or “to see into,” in order to clear Joseph from the accusation of fortune-telling: but the cup and his interpretation of dreams tell another story. In those days in the East, as now, clever men made their way very often by fortune-telling and theurgia in different forms in great families, just as ladies and gentlemen are “invited out” in London and Paris to please the company with palmistry.

This divining by goblets is still common in the East. In Norden’s “Reise nach Egypten,” &c., we are told that a native said to the travellers that he had interrogated his coffee-cup, and it had replied that the travellers were those of whom the Prophet had predicted they would come as spies and lead the way for a great immigration of Franks. In an Arabic commentary of the twelfth century the replies which the goblet gave to Joseph when it tapped on it are given in full. As coffee-drinking is very ancient it is probable that divination by means of the grounds grew out of foretelling with the cup.

Horst (“Dæmonomagie,” vol. ii.) remarks that “prediction by means of drinking or coffee-cups,” &c., is called in magic, Scyphomancy, and that the reader may judge how common it was in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century by consulting the famous humorous poem of the “Renomist,” Song iii. ver. 47. Certain goblets of thin glass will give out quite a loud ring if only blown upon, and by blowing or breathing in a peculiar way the sound may be greatly increased or modified, so as to sound like the human voice. This was shown me by an old custode in the museum at the Hague. It is a curious trick worth trying—especially by those who would pass for magicians!

There is yet another kind of magic cup known only by tradition, the secret of which, I believe, I was the first to re-discover. It is said that the Chinese knew of old how to make bottles, &c., which appeared to be perfectly plain, but on which, when filled with wine, inscriptions or figures appeared, and which were used in divination as to answer questions. In the winter of 1886–87, Sir Henry Austin Layard went with me through his glass factory at Venice.[3] As we were standing by the furnace watching the workmen it flashed upon me quite in a second how the mysterious old goblets of the Chinese could be made. This would be by blowing a bottle, &c., of thin white glass and putting on the interior in all parts except the pattern, a coating of glass half an inch in thickness. The outside should then be lightly ground, to conceal the heavy portion. If red wine or any dark fluid should then be poured into the bottle the pattern would appear of the same colour. Sir Austin Layard at once sent for his very intelligent foreman, Signor Castellani, who said that he had indeed read of such goblets, but that he regarded it as a fable. But when I explained to him what had occurred to me, he said that it was perfectly possible, but that the great expense of making such objects would probably make the manufacture practically impossible. Apropos of which I may mention that those who would investigate the curiosities of glass, especially the art of making it malleable, may find a great deal in A. Nevi, “De Arte Vitraria” (Amsterdam), and its German translation of 1678 (which contains a chapter, “Wie die Malleabilität dem Glase beygebracht werden könne”).

It is probable that the celebrated cup of Djemschid, in Persian story, which showed on its surface all that passed in the world, owed its origin to these Chinese bottles.

---

[1] This chapter is reproduced, but with much addition, from one in my work entitled “The Gypsies,” published in Boston, 1881, by Houghton and Mifflin. London: Trübner & Co. The addition will be the most interesting portion to the folk-lorist. [↑]

[2] This song which, with its air, is very old in the United States, has been vulgarized by being turned into a ballad of ten little nigger boys. It is given in Mrs. Valentine’s Nursery Rhymes as “Indian boys.” [↑]

[3] It is not generally known that Sir H. A. Layard and Sir William Drake were the true revivers of the glass manufacture of Venice. [↑]

CHAPTER XV.

GYPSY AMULETS.

“Knew many an amulet and charm

Which would do neither good nor harm,

In Rosicrucian lore as learned

As he that veré adeptus earned.”—Hudibras.

With pleasant plausibility Heine has traced the origin of one kind of fairy-lore to the associations and feelings which we form for familiar objects. A coin, a penknife, a pebble, which has long been carried in the pocket or worn by any one, seems to become imbued with his or her personality. If it could speak, we should expect to hear from it an echo of the familiar voice of the wearer; as happened, indeed, in Thuringia in the year 1562, when a fair maid, Adelhait von Helbach, was carried into captivity by certain ill-mannered persons. “Now her friends, pursuing, knew not whither to go, when they heard her voice, albeit very small and feeble, calling to them; and, seeking, they found in the bush by the road a silver image of the Virgin, which she had worn: and this image told them which road to take. Following the direction, they recovered her; the Raubritter who bore her away being broken on the wheel, and the image hung up for the glory of the Virgin, who had spoken by it, in the Church of our Lady of Kalbrunn.” Again, these objects have such strange ways of remaining with one that we end by suspecting that they have a will of their own. With certain persons these small familiar friends become at last fetishes, which bring luck, giving to those who firmly believe in them great comfort and endurance in adversity.

Who has not been amazed at the persistency with which some button or pebble picked up, or placed perchance in the pocket, remains in all the migrations of keys and pencils and coins, faithful to the charge? How some card or counter will lurk in our pocket-book (misnamed “purse”) or porte-monnaie, until it becomes clear as daylight that it has a reasonable intelligence, and stays with us because it wants to. As soon as this is recognized—especially by some person who is accustomed to feel mystery in everything, and who doubts nothing—the object becomes something which knows, possibly, a great deal which we do not. Therefore it is to be treated with care and respect, and in due time it becomes a kind of god, or at least the shrine of a small respectable genius, or fairy. I have heard of a gentleman in the Western United States who had a cane in which, as he seriously believed, a spirit had taken up its abode, and he reverenced it accordingly. The very ancient and widely-spread belief in the efficiency of magic wands probably came from an early faith in such implements as had been warranted to have magic virtues as weapons, or to aid a pedestrian in walking. Hence it happened that swords which had been enchanted, or which had taken lives, were supposed to have some indwelling intelligence. Hence also the names given to swords, and indeed to all weapons, by the Norsemen. It was believed that the sword of an executioner, after it had beheaded a certain number of men, pined for more victims, and manifested its desire by unearthly rattling or ringing. Apropos of which I have in my possession such a gruesome implement, which if experience in death could give it life, or make it ring in the silent watches of the night, would be a ghastly, noisy guest indeed. I once told the story in “The Gypsies” (Boston, 1881)—now I have something to add to it. I had met in London with an Indian gypsy named Nano, who informed me that in India he had belonged to a wandering tribe or race who called themselves Rom, or Romani, who spoke Romani jib, and who were the Gypsies of the Gypsies. I have in my possession a strange Hindu knife with an enormously broad blade, six inches across towards the end, with a long handle richly mounted in bronze with a little silver. I never could ascertain till I knew Nano what it had been used for. Even the old king of Oude, when he examined it, went wrong and was uncertain. Not so the gypsy. When he was in my library, and his keen black eyes rested on it, he studied it for a moment, and then said: “I know well enough that knife. I have seen it before; it is very old, and it was long in use—it was the knife used by the public executioner in Bhotan. It is Bhotanī.”

Nano had volunteered the explanation, and whatever his moral character might be, he was not given to romantic invention. Time passed, I went to America, stayed there four years, and returned. In 1888 I became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Art, and was on the Central Committee. One day we had a meeting at the house of a distinguished architect. When it was over, my host showed me his many treasures of art, or archæology. While examining these, my attention was attracted by an Indian knife. It was precisely like mine, but smaller. I asked what it was, and learned that it had long been used in some place in the East for the express purpose of sacrificing young girls. And in all respects it was what we might call the feminine counterpart of my knife. And if I ever had any lingering doubt as to the accuracy of Nano’s account, it disappeared when I saw the one whose history was perfectly authentic. A few years ago in Heidelburg there were sold at auction a great number of executioners’ swords, some of which had been used for centuries. A gentleman who had a special fondness for this kind of bric-à-brac, had for many years collected them.

It may be here observed that the knife forms a special feature in all witch-lore, and occurs frequently among the Hungarian and Italian gypsy charms, or spells. It is sometimes stuck into a table, while a spell is muttered, protesting that it is not the wood which one wishes to hurt, but the heart of an enemy. Here the knife is supposed in reality to have an indwelling spirit which will pass to the heart or health of the one hated. In Tam O’Shanter there is a knife on the witches’ table, and in Transylvania, as in Tuscany, a new knife, not an old one, is used in divers ceremonies. Sometimes an old and curious knife becomes an amulet and is supposed to bring luck, although the current belief is that any pointed gift causes a quarrel.

But to return to the fetish or pocket-deity which is worn in so many forms, be they written scrolls, crosses, medals or relics—c’est tout un. Continental gypsies are notable believers in amulets. Being in a camp of very wild Cigany in Hungary a few years ago, I asked them what they wore for bakt, or luck; whereupon they all produced small seashells, which I was assured were potent against ordinary misfortunes. But for a babe which was really ill they had provided an “appreciable” dose in the form of three Maria Theresa silver dollars, which were hung round its neck, but hidden under its clothes. And I may here remark that all through many lands, even into the heart of Africa, this particular dollar is held in high esteem for magical purposes. From one to another the notion has been transferred, and travellers and traders are often puzzled to know why the savages will have no coin save this. From Russia to the Cape it is the same story, and one to be specially studied by those ethnologists who do not believe in transmission, and hold that myths and legends are of local growth and accounted for by similar local conditions.

The gypsies were very desirous to know what my charm was. Fortunately I had in my pocket a very fine fossil shark’s tooth which I had purchased in Whitby, and this was greatly admired by the learned of the tribe. Mindful of good example, I obtained for myself specimens of the mystic shells, foreseeing that they would answer as passes and signs among the fraternity in Germany and elsewhere. Which, indeed, came to pass a few days ago in the town of Homburg, when looking from my window in the Schwedenpfad I saw two very honest-looking gypsies go by. Walking forth, I joined them, and led them into a garden, where over beer and cigars we discussed “the affairs of Egypt.” These Romanys were from the Tyrol, and had the frank bold manner of the mountain-men blended with the natural politeness of the better class of gypsy. I had taken with me in my pocket, foreseeing its use, a small bag or purse, containing an assortment of objects such as would have puzzled anybody except a Red Indian, a negro, or any believer in medaolin or Voodoo, or my new acquaintance; and after a conversation on dúrkepen (in Anglo-gypsy, dukkerin) or fortune-telling, I asked the men what they wore. They wished to see my amulets first. So I produced the shells; which were at once recognized and greatly admired, especially one, which is something of a curiosity, since in its natural markings is the word NAV very plainly inscribed: Nav, in gypsy, meaning “the name.” The elder gypsy said he had no charm; he had long been seeking a good one, but had not as yet met with the correct article. And then he begged me—gracious powers, how he did beg!—to bestow on him one of my shells. I resolved to do so—but at another time.

The younger gypsy, who was a pasche-paskero, a musician, and had with him a rare old violin in a wonderfully carved wooden case at least two centuries old, was “all right” on the fetish question. He had his shell, sewn up in a black leather bag, which he wore by a cord round his neck. Then I exhibited my small museum. Every object in it was carefully and seriously examined. My shark’s tooth was declared to be a very good fetish, a black pebble almost equal to the shell, and an American Indian arrow-head of quartz passed muster as of possible though somewhat doubtful virtue. But an English sixpence with a hole in it was rejected as a very petty and contemptible object. I offered it in vain as a present to my friends: they would not accept it. Neither did they want money: my dross might perish with me. It was the shell—the precious beautiful little shell on which the Romany in search of a fetish had set his heart; the shell which would bring him luck, and cause him to be envied, and ensure him admiration in the tents of the wanderers from Paris to Constantinople. He admitted that it was the very shell of shells—a baro seréskeri sharkūni, or famous sea-snail. I believe the gypsies would have given me their fine old Stainer violin and the carved case for it. Failing to get the shell, he implored me to give him the black pebble. I resolved to give him both in free gift the next time we met, or as a parting souvenir. Alas for the Romany chal!—we never met again. The police allow no gypsies in Homburg, and so they had to move on. I sought them that night and I sought them next day; but they were over the hills and far away. But I have no doubt that the fame of the shell on which Nature has written the Name—the very logos of magic itself—spread ere the summer was past even to the Carpathians. Something tells me that it is not played out yet, and that I shall hear anon something regarding it.

The cult of the shell is widely spread. One day in a public-house, in the West End of London, I, while taking my glass of bitter, entered into conversation with a rather tall, decently-attired brunette Alsatian girl, who spoke French and German, and who knew a few words of Romany, which she said she had picked up by accident—at least she professed not to be gypsy, and to know no more. Being minded to test the truth of this, I casually exhibited one of my shells and said it was a Hungarian gypsy amulet for la bonne fortune. She began to beg earnestly for it, without getting it. On several occasions at long intervals, when I met her in the street, she again implored me for the treasure, saying that she believed “if she had it, her luck would turn to good.” And, being convinced of her gypsyism, I said, “It will do you no good unless you have faith.” To which she replied, in a tone which indicated truth itself: “But I have faith—absolute, entire faith in it.” Which seeing, and finding that she was a true convert to the power of the holy shell, I gave it to her with my blessing, knowing that it would be a joy and comfort to her in all the trials of life.

This reminds me that I have seen, and indeed possess, a pearl-shell bearing the image of Saint Francis of Assisi, such as is sold by thousands at his shrine, and which are supposed to possess certain miraculous innate or intrinsic virtues. Thus, if worn by children, they are a cure for croup. “Ah—but that is a very different thing, you know.”

An idol is an object, generally an image, worshipped for its own sake—being supposed to not only represent a god, but to have some immanent sanctity. The Catholic priest, and for that matter all Brahmins or bonzes, assure us that their sacred images are “only symbols, not regarded as really dwelling-places of divinity.” They are not, so to speak, magnified amulets. Yet how is it that, if this be true, so many images and pictures are regarded and represented by priests as being able of themselves by the touch to cure tooth-ache, and all other ills which flesh and bones are heirs to. Why is one image especially good for tooth-ache, while another of the same person cures cramp? Why, if they are all only “symbols,” is one more healing or holy than another? How can our Lady of Embrun be of greater aid than our Lady of Paris? The instant we ascribe to an image or a shell real power to act, we make of it an inspired being in itself, and all the sophistry in the world as to its being a means of faith, or a symbol, or causing a higher power to act on the suppliant, is rubbish. The devotee believes tout bonnement that the image works the cure, and if he did not, any other image of the Virgin or Saint would answer the same purpose. This chaff has been thrashed out a thousand times—or many tens of thousand times in vain,—as vain so far as effects go as is the remarkably plain First Commandment. And it will last, while one fetish endures, that the hierophant will call it a mere “symbol,” and the ignorant worshipper, absolutely unable to comprehend him, will worship the symbol as the thing itself—as he is really expected to do.

According to J. B. Friedrich, “Symbolik der Natur,” the sea-shell, on account of its being a product of the sea, or of the all-generating moisture; and much more probably from its shape, is an emblem of woman herself. Therefore as “Venus, Love’s goddess, was born of the sea,” shells are dedicated to her. (“Museo Bourbonico,” vol. vi. p. 10. Kugler, “Handbuch Geschichte der Malerei,” Berlin, 1837, vol. iv. p. 311. Also translated by Sir H. Austin Layard). Being one of the great emblems of productive Nature, or of life and light, and opposed to barrenness, absence of pleasure, darkness, or negation, it was of course a charm against witchcraft or evil. That the gypsies have retained it as a powerful agent for “luck,” is extremely interesting, showing to what a degree they are still influenced by the early symbolism which effectively formed not one but many mythologies. Among the Hungarian gypsies the virtue or magical power of a shell is in proportion to the degree of resemblance above mentioned, which it possesses, as Wlislocki expressly declares.

This association of shells, with the mysterious and magical, is to be found among gypsies in the East, as is shown by the following: from my work entitled “The Gypsies.” It describes something which I saw many times in Cairo:—

“Beyond the door which, when opened, gave this sight, was a dark, ancient archway, twenty yards long, which opened on the glaring, dusty street, where camels with their drivers, and screaming saïs or carriage-runners and donkey-boys and crying venders kept up the wonted Oriental din. But in the archway, in its duskiest corner, there sat in silence and immovable, a living picture—a dark, handsome woman, of thirty years, who was unveiled. She had before her on the gateway floor, a square of cloth and a few shells. Sometimes an Egyptian of the lower class stopped, and there would be a grave consultation. She was a fortune-teller, and from the positions which the shells assumed when thrown she predicted what would come to pass. And then there would be a solemn conference and a thoughtful stroking of the beard, if the applicant was a man, and then the usual payment to the oracle, and a departure. And it was all world-old primæval Egyptian, as it was Chaldæan, for the woman was a Rhagarin, or gypsy, and as she sat so sat the diviners of ancient days by the wayside, casting shells for auspices, even as arrows were cast of old, to be cursed by Israel.

“It is not remarkable that among the myriad manteias of olden days there should have been one by shells. The sound of the sea when heard in a nautilus or conch is marvellously “like that of ocean surges murmuring far.”

“Shake me and it awakens—then apply

Its polished lips to your attentive ear,

And it remembers its august abodes

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.”

All of this is very strange to children and not less so to all unsophisticated folk, and I can remember how in boyhood I was told and listened with perfect faith to the distant roaring, and marvelled at the mystery of the ocean song being thus for ever kept alive inland. The next step to this is to hear in the sea-murmuring something like voices, and this is as curious as it is true—that if the mind be earnestly given to it, and the process be continued for a long time during several days, many persons, and probably all in time, will come to distinguish or hear human utterances and eventually words. There is no special faith required here; the mind even of the most sceptical or unimaginative will often turn back on itself, and by dint of mere perseverance produce such effects. An old pitcher or jug of a peculiar shape is also declared to be admirably adapted for this purpose, and I have one of Elizabeth’s time which was trawled up from the sea near Lowestoft which would fulfil every requisition.

In 1886 I was by moonlight in a camp of gypsies in the old Roman amphitheatre near Budapest. It was a very picturesque sight, what with the blazing fire, the strangely-dressed men, the wild shrieking, singing, and dancing women. And when, as I have before mentioned, they showed me the shells which they carried for amulets, they exhibited one much larger of conch-like form, the tip of which had been removed and to which there was attached a flexible tube. This was used in a very remarkable trick. The shell, or one like it, is put into the hands of the person consulting the oracle, who is directed to listen to the voice of the Nivashi, or spirit of the air. Then he is blindfolded, the tube applied, and through it the gypsy speaks in a trained soft voice. Thus, in conchomanteia, the oracles still live and devotees still hear the fairies talk.

Now, be it observed that hearing is the most deceptive of the senses—as the reader may have seen exemplified by a lecturer, when the audience were persuaded that he was fiddling on one cane with another, or blowing a flute tune on one, when the music was made by a confederate behind a screen. I myself, a few days since, when in the Köppern Thal, verily believed I heard the murmur and music of children’s voices—when lo! it proved to be the babbling brook. Some years ago—I forget where it happened in England, but I guarantee the truth of what I tell—it was found that the children in a certain village were in the habit of going to an ancient tomb in which there was a round hole, putting their ears to it, and, as they said, of listening to what the dead people were saying. It is facile enough to understand that among them there would be some whose unconscious creative faculty would lead them to literally hearing words or songs. There is another ancient and beautiful mystical association with shells. The conch when pierced formed a trumpet, whose notes seemed to be allied to the murmuring of the wind and waves heard in the shell when applied to the ear. The sea-god Triton blew upon a shell—“meaning thereby the roaring of the waves.” “And in analogous wise a shell is represented on the Tower of the Winds in Athens, to represent Boreas, the north-east wind, and the roaring of the storm” (Millin, “Gallerie Mythologique”). The resemblance of wind to the human voice has probably occurred to every human being, and has furnished similes for every poet. That these voices should be those of spirits is a natural following. So the last Hebrew oracle, the Bath Kol, or Daughter of the Voice, survives in shells and lives in gypsy-lore. And so we find in rags and patches on the garments of Egyptian fellahin the edges of Pharaoh’s garment, which in olden time it was an honour for kings to kiss.

Deception of this kind by means of voices, apparently supernatural, is of great antiquity. The high priest Savan the Asmunian, of Egypt, is said to have used acoustic tubes for this purpose, and it is very evident that the long corridors or passages in the stone temples must have suggested it as well as whispering galleries. The Hebrew Cabalists are believed to have made one form of the mysterious Teraphim by taking the head of a child and so preparing it by magic ceremonies that when interrogated it would reply. These ceremonies consisted in fact of skilfully adjusting a phonetic tube to the head. It is very probable that the widely-spread report of this oracle gave rise to the belief that the Jews slaughtered and sacrificed children. “Eliphaz Levi,” or the Abbé Constant, a writer of no weight whatever as an authority, but not devoid of erudition, and with occasional shrewd insights, gives it as his belief that the terrible murders of hundreds of children by Gilles de Retz—the absurdly so-called original of Blue-beard—were suggested by a recipe for sanguinary sorcery, drawn from some Hebrew Cabalistical book. Nicephorus (Lib. 7 c. 33) and Cedrenus, as cited by Grosius in his “Magica” (1597), tell us that when Constantine was ill a number of children were collected to be slain that the emperor might bathe in their blood (in quo si se Imperator ablueret, certo recuperaret), and that because he was moved by the tears of their mothers to spare their lives, was restored to health by the saints. It seems to have escaped the attention of writers that at the very time during the Middle Ages when the Jews were being most bitterly persecuted for offering children at the Passover, it was really a common thing among Christians to sacrifice children, maids, or grown-up people, by burying them alive under the foundations of castles, &c., to insure their stability—a ghastly sacrifice, which in after-times took the form of walling-up a cock and finally an egg. But from an impartial and common-sense standpoint, there could be no difference between the sacrifice of a child by a Cabalist and the torturing and burning witches and heretics by ecclesiastics, unless, indeed, that the latter was the wickeder of the two, since the babes were simply promptly killed, while the Inquisitors put their victims to death with every refinement of mental and physical torture. Both Cabalist and priest were simply engaged in different forms of one and the same fetish-work which had been handed down from the days of witchcraft. Nor did Calvin, when he burnt Servetus, differ in anything from a Voodoo sacrificing “a goat without horns.”

Punishing a heretic to please or placate the Deity differs in nothing from killing any victim to get luck. Other sentiments may be mingled with this “conjuring,” but the true foundation of black witchcraft (and all witchcraft is black which calls for blood, suffering, starvation, and the sacrifice of natural instincts), is the mortar of the fear of punishment, and the stones of the hope of reward, the bulk of the latter being immeasurably greater than that of the former, which is a mere Bindemittel, or means of connection.

It is remarkable that nowhere, not even in England, do the gypsies regard the witch as utterly horrible, diabolical, and damnable. She is with them simply a woman who has gained supernatural power, which she uses for good or misuses for evil according to her disposition. The witch of the Church—Catholic or Protestant—when closely examined is a very childish conception. She sets forth personal annoyance without any regard whatever as to whether it is really good in disguise or a natural result of our own follies. Thus witches caused thunder-storms, which, because they were terrifying and more or less destructive, were seriously treated by the Church as unmitigated evils, therefore as phenomena directly due to the devil and his servants. Theology the omniscient did not know that storms cleared the air. Witches were responsible for all pestilences, and very often for all disorders of any kind—as it was very convenient for the ignorant leech to attribute to sorcery or moral delinquency or to God, a disease which he could not cure. For “Theology, the science of sciences,” had not as yet ascertained that plagues and black deaths, and most of the ills of man are the results of neglect of cleanliness, temperance, and other sanitary laws. It is only a few years since a very eminent clergyman and president of a college in America attributed to “Divine dispensation” the deaths of a number of students, which were directly due to palpable neglect of proper sanitary arrangements by the reverend gentleman himself, and his colleagues. But, admitting the “divine dispensation,” according to the mediæval theory, the president, as the agent, must have been a “wizard”—or conjuror—a delusion which the most superficial examination of his works would at once dissipate. But to return—there can be no denial whatever that according to what is admitted to be absolutely true to-day by everybody, be he orthodox or liberal, witches, had they existed, must have been agents of God, busied in preventing plagues instead of causing them—by raising storms which cleared the air. Even the Algonkin Indians knew more than the Church in this respect, for they have a strange old legend to the effect that when the god of Storms, Wuch-ow-sen, the giant eagle, was hindered by a magician from his accustomed work, the sea and air grew stagnant, and people died.[1] The witch was simply another form of the Hebrew Azrael, God’s Angel of Death.

Which may all lead to the question: If a belief in witches as utterly evil servants of the devil could be held as an immutable dogma of the Church and a matter of eternal truth for eternal belief—to prove which there is no end of ingenious argument and an appalling array of ecclesiastical authority cited in the black-letter “Liber de Sortilegiis” of Paulus Grillandus, now lying before me (Lyons, 1547), as well as in the works of Sprenger, Bodinus, Delrio, and the Witch-bull of Pope Innocent—and if this belief be now exploded even among the priests, what proof have we that any of the dogmas which went with it are absolutely and for ever true? This is the question of dogmatik, versus development or evolution, and witchcraft is its greatest solvent. For when people believe, or make believe, in a thing so very much as to torture like devils and put to death hundreds of thousands of fellow-beings, mostly helpless and poor old women, not to mention many children, it becomes a matter of very serious import to all humanity to determine once for all whether the system or code according to which this was done was absolutely right for ever, or not. For if it was true, these executions and the old theory of witchcraft were all quite right, as the Roman Church still declares, since the Pope has sanctioned of late years several very entertaining works in which modern spiritualists, banjo-twangers, table-turners, &c., are declared to be really wizards, who perform their stupendous and appalling miracles directly by the aid of devils. And, by the way, somebody might make an interesting work not only on the works in the Index Librum Prohibitorum, which it entails seventy-six distinct kinds of damnation to read, but also on those which the Pope sanctions—I believe, blesses. Among the later of the latter is one which pretends to prove that Jews do really still continue to sacrifice Christian children at the Passover feast—and, for aught I know, to eat them, fried in oil, or “buttered with goose-grease”—apropos of which, I marvel that the Hebrews, instead of tamely denying it, do not boldly retort on the Christians the charge of torturing their own women and children to death as witches, which was a thousand times wickeder than simply bleeding them with a penknife, as young Hugh of Lincoln was said to have been disposed of by the Jew’s daughter.

But people all say now—that was the age, and the Church was still under the influence of barbarism, and so on. Exactly; but that admission plainly knocks down and utterly destroys the whole platform of dogmatism and the immutable and eternal truth of any dogma whatever, for it admits evolution—and to seize on its temporary fleeting forms and proclaim that they are immutable, is to mistake the temporal for the eternal, the infinitesimal fraction for the whole. This is not worshipping God, the illimitable, unknown tremendous Source of Life, but His minor temporary forms, “essences,” or “angels,” as the Cabalists termed the successive off-castings of His manifestations.

In Being’s flood, in action’s storm

I work and weave—above, beneath,

Work and weave in endless motion

Birth and death, an infinite ocean

A seizing and giving

The fire of the living.

’Tis thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply

And weave for God the garment thou seest Him by.

Now there are infinite numbers of these garments, but none of them are God, though the Church declared that what they had of them were truly Divine. So Oriental princes sent their old clothes to distant provinces to be worshipped, as Gessler sent his hat: it is an old, old story, and one which will be long repeated in many lands.

I have, not far back, mentioned a work on witchcraft by Paulus Grillandus. Its full title is “Tractatus de Hereticis et sortilegiis, omnifariam Coitio eorumque penis. Item de Questionibus et Tortura ac de Relaxatione Carceratorum”—that is, in brief, a work on Heretics, Witches breakers of the Seventh Commandment of all kinds, Examination by Torture, and Imprisonment. It was a leading vade mecum, or standard guide, in its time for lawyers and the clergy, especially the latter, and reads as if it had come from the library of hell, and been written by a devil, though composed, according to the preface, to promote the dignity and glory of the Christian Church. I can well believe that a sensitive humane person could be really maddened by a perusal and full comprehension of all the diabolical horrors which this book reveals, and the glimpses which it gives of what must have been endured literally by millions of heretics and “witches,” and all men or women merely accused by anybody of any kind of “immorality,” especially of “heresy.” I say suspected or accused—for either was sufficient to subject a victim to horrible agonies until he or she confessed. What is most revolting is the calm, icy-cold-blooded manner in which the most awful, infernal cruelties are carefully discussed—as, for instance, if one has already had any limbs amputated for punishment whether further tortures may then be inflicted? It is absolutely a relief to find that among the six kinds of persons legally exempted from the rack, &c.—there are only six and these do not include invalids—are pregnant women. But such touches of common humanity are rare indeed in it. I do not exaggerate in the least when I say that the whole spirit of this work—which faithfully reflects the whole spirit of the “justice” of the Middle Ages—inclines in a ferocious, wolfish manner to extend and multiply punishment of the most horrible kinds to every small offence against the Church—to manufacture and increase crime as if it were capital for business, and enlarge the sphere of torture so as to create power and awe.

Nous avons changé tout cela, say the descendants of those fiends in human form. But if it was wrong then why did you do it if you were infallible inspired judges? And if you now believe that to be atrocious which was once holy, and a vast portion of your whole system, how can you say that the Church does not follow the laws of evolution and progress—and if so, where will it stop? It is a curious reflection that if the Pope and Cardinals of 1890 had lived four hundred years ago they would (with the exception, perhaps, of the Spaniards) have all been burned alive for heresy. Which is literally true.

Within a minute’s walk from where I sit, and indeed visible from my window in this town of Homburg vor der Höhe, are two round towers of other days—grim and picturesque relics of the early Middle Ages. One is called the Hexenthurm or Witches’ Tower. In it gypsies, witches, and heretics were confined—it was the hotel specially reserved for them when they visited Homburg, and in its cells which are of the smallest between walls of the thickest, I or you, reader, might be confined to-day, but for one Martin Luther and certain laws of evolution or progress of which Paulus Grillandus did not dream.

As I was sketching the tower, an old woman told me that there were many strange tales about it. That I can well believe but I dare say they are all summed up in the following ballad from the German of Heine:—

“The Witch.”

“Folks said when my granny Eliza bewitched,

She must die for her horrid transgression;

Much ink from his pen the old magistrate pitched,

But he could not extort a confession.

And when in the kettle my granny was thrown

She yelled ‘Death’ and ‘Murder!’ while dying;

And when the black smoke all around us was blown,

As a raven she rose and went flying.

Little black grandmother, feathered so well,

Oh, come to the tower where I’m sitting:

Bring cakes and bring cheese to me here in the cell,

Through the iron-barred window flitting.

Little black grandmother, feathered and wise,

Just give my aunt a warning,

Lest she should come flying and pick out my eyes

When I merrily swing in the morning.”

Horst in his “Dæmonomagie,” a History of the Belief in Magic, Demoniac marvels, Witchcraft, &c., gives the picture of a Witch-tower, at Lindheim in the Wetterau, with all its terrible history, extracted from the town archives. It is a horrible history of torturing and burning at the stake of innumerable women of all ages, the predominant feature being that any accusation by anybody whatever, or any rumour set afloat in any way, amply sufficed to bring an enemy to death, or to rob a person who had money. Hysterical women and perverse or eccentric children frequently originated these accusations merely to bring themselves into notice.

There was till within a few years a Witches’ Tower in Heidelberg. It was a very picturesque structure in an out-of-the-way part of the town, in nobody’s way, and was therefore of course pulled down by the good Philistine citizens, who have the same mania in Heidelberg as “their ignorant-like” in London, Philadelphia, or any other town, for removing all relics of the olden time.

In connection with sorcery and gypsies, it is worth observing that in 1834 the latter, in Swabia, or South Germany, frequently went about among the country-people, with puppet-shows, very much of the Punch kind, and that they had a rude drama of Faust, the great wizard, which had nothing to do with that of Goethe. It was derived from the early sources, and had been little by little gypsified into a melodrama peculiar to the performers. August Zoller, in his “Bilder aus Schwaben” (Stuttgard, 1834), gives the following description of it. The book has a place in all Faust libraries, and has been kept alive by this single passage:—

“There is a blast of a trumpet, and the voice of a man proclaims behind the scenes that the play is to begin. The curtain is drawn, and Faust leaning against the background—which represents a city—soliloquizes:

“ ‘I am the cleverest doctor in the world, but all my cleverness does not help me to make the beautiful princess love me. I will call up Satan from the under-world to aid me in my plans to win her. Devil—I call thee!’

“Meanwhile Faust’s servant—the funny man—has entered and amused the public with comical gestures. The appearance of the devil is announced by a firework (Sprühteufel) fizzing and cracking. He descends from the air, there being no arrangements for his coming up. The servant bursts into a peal of laughter, and the devil asks:

“ ‘Faust thou hast called me; now, what is thy wish?’

“ ‘I love the lovely princess—canst thou make her love me?’

“ ‘Nothing is easier. Cut thy finger and sign to me thy life; then all my devilish art will be at thy service till thou hast committed four murders.’

“Faust and the devil fly forth, the servant making sarcastic remarks as to the folly of his master, and the curtain falls.

“In the second act the fair princess enters—she is three times as large as Faust, but bewails his absence in a plaintive voice and departs. Faust enters and calls for a Furio who shall carry him to Mantua. Enter three Furios (witches) who boast their power. ‘I can carry you as swiftly as a moor-cock flies,’ says one. This is not swift enough for Faust. ‘I fly as fast as bullet from a gun,’ says the second. The master answers:

“ ‘A right good pace, but not enough for Faust.’ To the third: ‘How fast art thou?’

“ ‘As quick as Thought.’

“ ‘That will suffice—there’s naught so swift as Thought. Bear me to Mantua, to her I love, the princess of my heart!’

“The Furio takes Faust on her back, and they fly through the air. The servant makes, as before, critical and sarcastic remarks on what has passed, and the curtain falls.

“In the third act the devil persuades Faust to murder his father, so as to inherit his treasures, ‘for the old man has a tough life.’ In the fourth, maddened by jealousy, he stabs the princess and her supposed lover. The small sarcastic servant takes the murdered pair by the legs, and drags them about, cracking jokes, and giving the corpses cuffs on their ears to bring them again to life.

“In the fifth act, the clock strikes eleven. Faust has now filled to the brim the measure of his iniquity. The devil appears, proves to him that it is time to depart; it strikes twelve; the smoke of a fizzling squib and several diabolical fire-crackers fills the air, and Faust is carried away, while the small servant, as satanical and self-possessed as ever, makes his jokes on the folly of Faust—and the curtain falls.”

This is the true Faust drama of the Middle Ages, with the ante-Shakespearian blending of tragedy and ribald fun. But this same mixture is found to perfection in the early Indian drama—for instance, in “Sakuntala”—and it would be indeed a very curious thing should it be discovered that the gypsies, who were in all ages small actors and showmen of small plays, had brought from the East some rude drama of a sorcerer, who is in the end cheated by his fiend. Such is, in a measure, the plot of the Baital Pachisi or Vikram and the Vampire, which is borrowed from or founded on old traditions, and the gypsies, from their familiarity with magic, and as practical actors, would, in all probability, have a Faust play of some kind, according to the laws of cause and effect. In any case the suggestion may be of value to some investigator.

Gypsies in England—that is those “of the old sort”—regard a shoe-string as a kind of amulet or protection. Many think it is unlucky to have one’s photograph taken, but no harm can come of it if the one who receives the picture gives the subject a shoe-string or a pair of laces.

Dr. F. S. Krauss in his curious work, “Sreća, or Fortune and Fate in the popular belief of the South Slavonians” (Vienna, 1886), draws a line of distinction between the fetish and amulet. “The fetish,” he declares, “has virtue from being the dwelling of a protecting spirit. The amulet, however, is only a symbol of a higher power,” that is of a power whose attention is drawn by or through it to the believer or wearer. This, however, like the distinction between idolatry and worshipping images as symbols of higher beings, becomes in the minds of the multitude (and for that matter, in all minds), a distinction without a dot of difference. The amulet may “rest upon a higher range of ideas, while the fetish stands on its own feet,” but if both are regarded as bringing luck and if, for instance, one rosary or image of the same person is believed to bring more luck than another, it is a fetish and nothing else. An amulet may pretend to be a genteeler kind of fetish, but they are all of the same family.

The gypsies prepare among the Bosniacs, “on the high plains of Malwan,” a fetish in the form of a cradle made of nine kinds of wood, to bring luck to the child who sleeps in it. But Dr. Krauss falls, I presume, into a very great error, when he attributes to her Majesty the Queen of England a belief in fetish, on the strength of the following remarkable passage from the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung:—

“By command of Queen Victoria, Mr. Martin, Director of the Institute for the Blind, has attended to the making a cradle for the newly-born child of the Princess of Battenberg. The cradle is to be made entirely by blind men and women. The Queen firmly believes that objects made by blind people bring luck.”

Truly, if anything could bring luck it ought to be something ordered with a kind and charitable view from poor and suffering people, but it is rather hard to promptly conclude that her Majesty believes in fetish because she benevolently ordered a cradle from the blind, and that she had no higher motive than to get something which would bring luck to her grandchild.

It may be observed in connection with this superstition that among the Hungarian gypsies several spells depend on using different kinds of wood, and that four are said to have been taken for the true cross.

Gypsies, in common with the rest of the “fetishioners” of all the world, believe in the virtue of a child’s caul. Dr. Krauss found in Kobaš on the Save an amulet which contained such a caul with garlic and four-leaved clover. This must have been a very strong charm indeed, particularly if the garlic was fresh.

Another very great magic protector in every country among gypsies as well as Gentiles, is the thunderbolt, known in Germany as the Donneraxt, Donnerstein, Donnerkeil, Albschoss, Strahlstein, and Teufelsfinger. It was called by the Greeks Astropelákia, by the Latins Gemma cerauniæ, by the Spaniards Piedras de rayo, by the dwellers in the French High Alps Peyras del tron (pierres de tonerre), by the Birmans Mogio (the child of lightning), by the Chinese Rai-fu-seki (the battle-axe of Tengu, the guardian of Heaven), by the Hindoos Swayamphu, or “the self-originated.” Dr. Krauss, from whom I have taken these remarks, adds that in America and Australia it is also regarded as a charm protective and luck-bringing. But here there is a confusion of objects. The thunderbolt described by Dr. Krauss is, I believe, a petrified shell, a kind of mucro or belemnite. The thunderbolt of the Red Indians really resembles it, but is entirely different in its nature. The latter results from lightning entering the sand fusing it. It sometimes makes in this way a very long tube or rod, with a point. People, finding these, naturally believed that they were thunderbolts. I knew an old Penobscot Indian who, seeing the lightning strike the earth, searched and found such a thunderbolt, which he greatly prized. In process of time people who found mucrones in rocks believed them to be the same as the glass-like points of fused sand which they so much resembled.

The so-called thunderbolt is confused with the prehistoric stone axe, both bearing the same name in many lands. As this axe is often also a hammer it is evident that it may have been sacred to Thor. “The South Slavonian”—or gypsy—“does not distinguish,” says Dr. Krauss, “between the thunderbolt and prehistoric axe. He calls both strelica.” The possession of one brings luck and prosperity in all business, but it must be constantly carried on the person. Among the “thirties” there lived in Gaj in Slavonia a poor Jewish peddler named David. Once he found a strelica. He always carried it about with him. The peasants envied him greatly its possession. They came to him in the market-place and cried, “Al si sretan, Davide!” (“Ha, how lucky thou art, David!”) The Slavonian Jews called him, for a joke, “Strelica.”

The prehistoric axe was probably regarded as gifted with fetish power, even in the earliest age, especially when it was made of certain rare materials. Thus among the Red Indians of Massachusetts stone “tomahawks” of veined, petrified wood were specially consecrated to burial-places, while in Europe axe-heads of jade were the most coveted of possessions. A. B. Meyer has written a large work, “Jade und Nephrit Objecte aus dem Ethnographische Museum zu Dresden, America und Europe” (Leipzig, 1882). It has always been supposed that the objects of true jade came only from Tartary, and I believe that I was the first person to discover that it existed in quantities in Western Europe. The history of this “finding” is not without interest.

It has been usual—it is said for a thousand years—for pilgrims to Iona to bring away with them as souvenirs a few green pebbles of a peculiar kind, and to this day, as every tourist will remember, the children who come to the steamboat offer handsful of them for sale. When I was there many years ago—in Iona—I also went away with perhaps twenty of them. One evening, after returning to London, there were at my home three Chinese gentlemen attached to the Legation. The conversation turned on Buddhist pilgrimages and Fusang, and the question, founded on passages in the Chinese annals, as to whether certain monks had really passed from the Celestial Kingdom to Mexico in the fifth century and returned. This reminded me of Iona, and I produced my green pebbles, and told what I knew about them.

My visitors regarded the stones with great interest and held an animated conversation over them in Chinese, which I did not understand. Observing this I made them presents of the pebbles, and was thanked with an earnestness which seemed to me to be out of all proportion to the value of the gifts. Thinking this over the next day, I wrote to the clergyman at Iona asking him to be so kind as to send me some of the pebbles, and offering to pay for them. He did so, sending me by mail a box of the stones. Two or three were very pretty, one especially. It is of a dark green colour and slightly transparent.

Two years after, when in Philadelphia, meeting with an old friend, Dr. Joseph Leidy, well known as a man of science, and, inter alia, as a mineralogist. I showed him my pebble and asked him what it was. He replied, “It is jade.” To my query whether it might not be nephrite he answered no, that it was true jade of fine quality.

Jade is in China a talismanic stone, many occult virtues and luck-bringing qualities being ascribed to it. It is very curious, and possibly something more than a mere chance coincidence, that the green pebbles of Iona were also carried as charms. It would be remarkable if even in prehistoric times, or in the stone age, Iona and Tartary had been connected by superstition and tradition.

Among the gypsies as well as Christians in Servia, nuts, especially those which are heart-shaped (i.e., double), are carried as fetishes or amulets. In very early times a nut, as containing like a seed the principle of germination and self-reproduction, was typical of life. Being enclosed in a shell it seemed to be in a casket or box which was of itself a mystical symbol. Hence nuts are often found in ancient graves. There are many stories accordingly in all countries in which a nut or egg is represented as being connected with the life of some particular being or person. The ogre in several tales can live until a certain egg is broken. In the Graubunden or Grisons there is the following legend:—

“Once there lived near Fideriseau a rich peasant. To him came a poor beggar, who asked for alms in vain. Then the man replied, ‘If thou wilt give me nothing yet will I give thee something. Thou shalt keep thy treasure and also thy daughter after thee; yea, and for years after she is dead her spirit shall know no rest for taking care of it. But I give thee this nut. Plant it by yonder great stone, thou stony-hearted fool. From the nut will grow a tree, and from the tree twigs from which a cradle will be made in which a child will be rocked who will redeem thy daughter from her penance.’ And after the girl died, a spirit of a pale woman with dark hair was seen flying nightly near Fideris, and that for many years, for it takes a long time for an acorn to grow up into an oak. But as she is no longer seen it is believed that the cradle has been made and the child born who became the deliverer.”

A. B. Elysseeff, in his very interesting article based on Kounavine’s “Materials for the Study of the Gypsies,” gives the representation of four gypsy amulets, also “a cabalistic token” that brings good luck to its wearer.

“The amulets,” writes M. Elysseeff, “are made of wrought iron and belong to M. Kounavine. The cabalistic sign is designed” (copied?) “by ourselves, thanks to the amiability of a gypsy djecmas (sorcerer) of the province of Novogorod. The amulet A was found by M. Kounavine among the gypsies who roam with their camps in the Ural neighbourhood; some Bessarabian gypsies supplied B; C was obtained from a gypsy sorcerer of the Persian frontier, and D formed a part of some ornaments placed with their dead by gypsies of Southern Russia.

“The cabalistic sign” (vide illustration at head of chapter) “represents roughly a serpent, the symbol of Auromori, the evil principle in gypsy mythology. The figure of an arch surrounded with stars is, according to M. Kounavine, held by the gypsies as symbolizing the earth, the meaning of the triangle △ is not known. The moon and stars which surround the earth and which are, so to speak, enclosed in the serpent’s coils, symbolize the world lying in evil. This sign is engraved by gypsies upon the plates of the harness of the horses, of garments, and as designed ornaments.”

It may be here remarked that the symbolism of M. Kounavine, while it may be quite accurate, must be taken with great reserve. If the “arch” be simply a horse-shoe, all these ornaments, except the serpent, may be commonly found on the trappings of London dray-horses.

“Amulet A, which also represents the sun, the moon, the stars, earth, and a serpent, can equally serve as a symbol of the universe. According to M. Kounavine, Ononi” (the Ammon of the Egyptians) “and Auromori, are symbolized upon this amulet. Amulet B represents a man surrounded by a halo, aided by the moon and the stars, and armed with a sword and arrows. Beneath is represented the horse; the serpent symbolizes Auromori. As a whole this amulet represents the conflict between the good and evil principle, Jandra (Indra) against Auromori.

“Amulet C represents a gleaming star and the serpent, and is called Baramy (Brama), symbolizing, according to M. Kounavine, the gypsy proto-divinity.

“Or amulet D, which represents a flaming pyre and some hieroglyphics, may also symbolize the prayer addressed to the divinity of the fire.”

If these explanations were given by gypsy sorcerers the amulets are indeed very curious. But, abstractly, the serpent, arrows, stars, the moon, an archer, a fox, and a plant, occur, all the world over, on coins or in popular art, with or without symbolism, and I confess that I should have expected something very different as illustrating such a remarkable mythology as that given by M. Kounavine. However, the art of a nation—as, for instance, that of the Algonkin Indians—may be very far indeed behind its myths and mental conceptions.

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[1] See the “Algonkin Legends of New England,” by Charles G. Leland. [↑]

CHAPTER XVI.

GYPSIES, TOADS, AND TOAD-LORE.

“I went to the toad that lies under the wall,

I charmed him out, and he came at my call.”

(“Masque of Queens,” Ben Johnson.)

The toad plays a prominent part in gypsy (as in other) witchcraft, which it may well do, since in most Romany dialects there is the same word for a toad or frog and the devil. Paspati declares that the toad suggested Satan, but I incline to think that there is some as yet undiscovered Aryan word, such as beng, for the devil, and that the German Bengel, a rascal, is a descendant from it. However, gypsies and toads are “near allied and that not wide” from one another, and sometimes their children have them for pets, which recalls the statements made in the celebrated witch trials in Sweden, where it was said by those who professed to have been at the Blockula, or Sabbat, that the little witch children were set to play at being shepherds, their flocks being of toads.

I have been informed by gypsies that toads do really form unaccountable predilections for persons and places. The following is accurately related as it was told me in Romany fourteen years ago, in Epping Forest, by a girl. “You know, sir, that people who live out of doors all the time, as we do, see and know a great deal about such creatures. One day we went to a farmhouse, and found the wife almost dying because she thought she was bewitched by a woman who came every day in the form of a great toad to her door and looked in. And, sure enough, while she was talking the toad came, and the woman was taken in such a way with fright that I thought she’d have died. But I had a laugh to myself; for I knew that toads have such ways, and can not only be tamed, but will almost tame themselves. So we gypsies talked together in Romany, and then said we could remove the spell if she would get us a pair of shears and a cup of salt. Then we caught the toad, and tied the shears so as to make a cross—you see!—and with it threw the toad into the fire, and poured the salt on it. So the witchcraft was ended, and the lady gave us a good meal and ten shillings.” (For a Romany poem on this incident vide “English Gypsy Songs,” Trübner and Co., 1875). And there is a terrible tale told by R. H. Stoddard, in a poem, that one day a gentleman accidentally trod on a toad and killed it. Hearing a scream at that instant in the woods at a little distance, followed by an outcry, he went to see what was the matter, and found a gypsy camp where they were lamenting the sudden death of a child. On looking at the corpse he was horrified to observe that it presented every appearance of having been trampled to death, its wounds being the same as those he had inflicted on the toad. This story being told by me to the gypsy girl, she in no wise doubted its truth, being in fact greatly horrified at it; but was amazed at the child chovihani, or witch, being in two places at once.

In the Spanish Association of Witches in the year 1610 (vide Lorent, “Histoire de l’Inquisition”) the toad played a great part. One who had taken his degrees in this Order testified that, on admission, a mark like a toad was stamped on his eyelid, and that a real toad was given to him which had the power to make its master invisible, to transport him to distant places, and change him to the form of many kinds of animals. There is a German interjection or curse “Kroten-düvel!” or “toad-devil,” which is supposed to have originated as follows: When the Emperor Charlemagne came into the country of the East Saxons and asked them whom they worshipped they replied, “Krodo is our god;” to which the Emperor replied “Krodo is all the same as Kroten-düvel!” “And he made them pay bitterly by the sword and the rope for the crime of calling God, according to their language, by a name different from that which he used; for he put many thousands of them to death, like King Olof of Norway, to show that his faith was one of meekness and mercy.”

It is bad to have one’s looks against one. The personal appearance of the toad is such as to have given it a bad place in the mythology of all races. The Algonkin Indians—who, like Napoleon and Slawkenbergius, were great admirers of men with fine bold noses—after having studied the plane physiognomy of the toad, decided that it indicated all the vices, and made of the creature the mother of all the witches. Nothing could have been more condemnatory; since in their religion—as in that of the Accadians, Laps, and Eskimo—a dark and horrible sorcery, in which witches conciliated evil spirits, was believed to have preceded their own nobler Shamanism, by which these enemies of mankind were forced or conquered by magic. Once the Great Toad had, as she thought, succeeded in organizing a conspiracy by which Glooskap, the Shamanic god of Nature, was to be destroyed. Then he passed his hand over her face and that of her fellow-conspirator the Porcupine; and from that time forth their noses were flat, to the great scorn of all honest well-beaked Indians.

The old Persians made the toad the symbol and pet of Ahriman, the foe of light, and declared that his Charfester, or attendant demons, took that form when they persecuted Ormuzd. Among the Tyrolese it is a type of envy; whence the proverb, “Envious as a toad.” In the Middle Ages, among artists and in many Church legends, it appears as Greed or Avarice: there is even to this day, in some mysterious place on the right bank of the Rhine between Laufenberg and Binzgau, a pile of coals on which sits a toad. That is to say, coals they seem to the world. But the pile is all pure gold, and the toad is a devil who guards it; and he who knows how can pronounce a spell which shall ban the grim guardian. And there is a story told by Menzel (“Christliche Symbolik,” vol. i. p. 530), that long ago there lived in Cologne a wicked miser, who when old repented and wished to leave his money to the poor. But when he opened his great iron chest, he found that every coin in it had turned to a horrible toad with sharp teeth. This story being told to his confessor, the priest saw in it divine retribution, and told him that God would have none of his money—nay, that it would go hard with him to save his soul. And he, being willing to do anything to be free of sin, was locked up in the chest with the toads; and lo! the next day when it was opened the creatures had eaten him up. Only his clean-picked bones remained.

But in the Tyrol it is believed that the toads are themselves poor sinners, undergoing penance as Hoetschen or Hoppinen—as they are locally called—for deeds done in human form. Therefore, they are regarded with pity and sympathy by all good Christians. And it is well known that in the Church of Saint Michael in Schwatz, on the evening before the great festivals, but when no one is present, an immense toad comes crawling before the altar, where it kneels and prays, weeping bitterly. The general belief is that toads are for the most part people who made vows to go on pilgrimages, and died with the vows unfulfilled. So the poor creatures go hopping about astray, bewildered and perplexed, striving to find their way to shrines which have perchance long since ceased to exist. Once there was a toad who took seven years to go from Leifers to Weissenstein; and when the creature reached the church it suddenly changed to a resplendent white dove, which, flying up to heaven, vanished before the eyes of a large company there assembled, who bore witness to the miracle. And one day as a wagoner was going from Innsbruck to Seefeld, as he paused by the wayside a toad came hopping up and seemed to be desirous of getting into the wagon; which he, being a benevolent man, helped it to do, and gave it a place on the seat beside him. There it sat like any other respectable passenger, until they came to the side-path which leads to the church of Seefeld; when, wonderful to relate! the toad suddenly turned to a maiden of angelic beauty clad in white, who, thanking the wagoner for his kindness to her when she was but a poor reptile, told him that she had once been a young lady who had vowed a pilgrimage to the church of Seefeld.

In common with the frog, the toad is an emblem of productiveness, and ranks among creatures which are types of erotic passion. I have in my possession a necklace of rudely made silver toads, of Arab workmanship, intended to be worn by women who wish to become mothers. Therefore the creature, in the Old World as well as in the New, appears as a being earnestly seeking the companionship of men. Thus it happened to a youth of Aramsach, near Kattenberg, that, being one day in a lonely place by a lake, there looked up at him from the water a being somewhat like a maid but more like a hideous toad, with whom he entered into conversation; which became at last friendly and agreeable, for the strange creature talked exceeding well. Then she, thinking he might be hungry, asked him if he would fain have anything in particular to eat. He mentioned in jest a kind of cakes; whereupon, diving into the lake, she brought some up, which he ate. So he met her many times; and whenever he wished for anything, no matter what, she got it for him from the waters: the end of it all being that, despite her appalling ugliness, the youth fell in love with her and offered marriage, to which she joyfully consented. But no sooner had the ceremony been performed than she changed to a lady of wonderful beauty; and, taking him by the hand, she conducted him to the lake, into which she led him, and “in this life they were seen never more.” This legend evidently belongs to frog-lore. According to one version, the toad after marriage goes to a lake, washes away her ugliness, and returns as a beauty with the bridegroom to his castle, where they live in perfect happiness.

I have also a very old silver ring, in which there is set a toad rudely yet artistically carved in hæmatite, or blood-stone. These were famous amulets until within two or three hundred years.

If you are a gypsy and have a tame toad it is a great assistance in telling fortunes, and brings luck—that commodity which, as Callot observed, the gypsies are always selling to everybody while they protest they themselves have none. As I tested with the last old gypsy woman whom I met: “What bāk the divvus?”—“What luck to-day?” “Kekker rya”—“None, sir,” was the reply, as usual, “I never have any luck.” So like a mirror they reflect all things save themselves, and show you what they know not.

“I’ve seen you where you never were

And where you never will be;

And yet within that very place

You can be seen by me.

For to tell what they do not know

Is the art of the Romany.”

Sleep well