PREFACE.
This work contains a collection of the customs, usages, and ceremonies current among gypsies, as regards fortune-telling, witch-doctoring, love-philtering, and other sorcery, illustrated by many anecdotes and instances, taken either from works as yet very little known to the English reader or from personal experiences. Within a very few years, since Ethnology and Archæology have received a great inspiration, and much enlarged their scope through Folk-lore, everything relating to such subjects is studied with far greater interest and to much greater profit than was the case when they were cultivated in a languid, half-believing, half-sceptical spirit which was in reality rather one of mere romance than reason. Now that we seek with resolution to find the whole truth, be it based on materialism, spiritualism, or their identity, we are amazed to find that the realm of marvel and mystery, of wonder and poetry, connected with what we vaguely call “magic,” far from being explained away or exploded, enlarges before us as we proceed, and that not into a mere cloudland, gorgeous land, but into a country of reality in which men of science who would once have disdained the mere thought thereof are beginning to stray. Hypnotism has really revealed far greater wonders than were ever established by the fascinatores of old or by mesmerists of more modern times. Memory, the basis of thought according to Plato, which was once held to be a determined quantity, has been proved, (the word is not too bold), by recent physiology, to be practically infinite, and its perfect development to be identical with that of intellect, so that we now see plainly before us the power to perform much which was once regarded as miraculous. Not less evident is it that men of science or practical inventors, such as Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, Tyndale, Galton, Joule, Lockyer, and Edison, have been or are all working in common with theosophists, spiritualists, Folk-lorists, and many more, not diversely but all towards a grand solution of the Unknown.
Therefore there is nothing whatever in the past relating to the influences which have swayed man, however strange, eccentric, superstitious, or even repulsive they may seem, which is not of great and constantly increasing value. And if we of the present time begin already to see this, how much more important will these facts be to the men of the future, who, by virtue of more widely extended knowledge and comparison, will be better able than we are to draw wise conclusions undreamed of now. But the chief conclusion for us is to collect as much as we can, while it is yet extant, of all the strange lore of the olden time, instead of wasting time in forming idle theories about it.
In a paper read before the Congrès des Traditions populaires in Paris, 1889, on the relations of gypsies to Folk-lore, I set forth my belief that these people have always been the humble priests of what is really the practical religion of all peasants and poor people; that is their magical ceremonies and medicine. Very few have any conception of the degree to which gypsies have been the colporteurs of what in Italy is called “the old faith,” or witchcraft.
As regards the illustrative matter given, I am much indebted to Dr. Wlislocki, who has probably had far more intimate personal experience of gypsies than any other learned man who ever lived, through our mutual friend, Dr. Anthon Herrmann, editor of the Ethnologische Mitteilungen, Budapest, who is also himself an accomplished Romany scholar and collector, and who has kindly taken a warm interest in this book, and greatly aided it. To these I may add Dr. Friedrich S. Krauss, of Vienna, whose various works on the superstitions and Folk-lore of the South Slavonians—kindly presented by him to me—contain a vast mine of material, nearly all that of which he treats being common property between peasants and the Romany, as other sources abundantly indicate. With this there is also much which I collected personally among gypsies and fortune-tellers, and similar characters, it being true as regards this work and its main object, that there is much cognate or allied information which is quite as valuable as gypsy-lore itself, as all such subjects mutually explain one of the others.
Gypsies, as I have said, have done more than any race or class on the face of the earth to disseminate among the multitude a belief in fortune-telling, magical or sympathetic cures, amulets and such small sorceries as now find a place in Folk-lore. Their women have all pretended to possess occult power since prehistoric times. By the exercise of their wits they have actually acquired a certain art of reading character or even thought, which, however it be allied to deceit, is in a way true in itself, and well worth careful examination. Matthew Arnold has dwelt on it with rare skill in his poem of “The Gypsy Scholar.” Even deceit and imposture never held its own as a system for ages without some ground-work of truth, and that which upheld the structure of gypsy sorcery, has never been very carefully examined. I trust that I have done this in a rational and philosophic spirit, and have also illustrated my remarks in a manner which will prove attractive to the general reader.
There are many good reasons for believing that the greatest portion of gypsy magic was brought by the Romany from the East or India. This is specially true as regards those now dwelling in Eastern Europe. And it is certainly interesting to observe that among these people there is still extant, on a very extended scale indeed, a Shamanism which seems to have come from the same Tartar-Altaic source which was found of yore among the Accadian-Babylonians, Etruscan races, and Indian hill-tribes. This, the religion of the drum and the demon as a disease—or devil doctoring—will be found fully illustrated in many curious ways in these pages. I believe that in describing it I have also shown how many fragments of this primitive religion, or cult, still exist, under very different names, in the most enlightened centres of civilization. And I respectfully submit to my reader, or critic, that I have in no instance, either in this or any other case, wandered from my real subject, and that the entire work forms a carefully considered and consistent whole. To perfect my title, I should perhaps have added a line or two to the effect that I have illustrated many of the gypsy sorceries by instances of Folk-lore drawn from other sources; but I believe that it is nowhere inappropriate, considering the subject as a whole. For those who would lay stress on omissions in my book, I would say that I have never intended or pretended to exhaust gypsy superstitions. I have not even given all that may be found in the works of Wlislocki alone. I have, according to the limits of the book, cited so much as to fully illustrate the main subject already described, and this will be of more interest to the student of history than the details of gypsy chiromancy or more spells and charms than are necessary to explain the leading ideas.
What is wanted in the present state of Folk-lore, I here repeat, is collection from original sources, and material, that is from people and not merely from books. The critics we have—like the poor—always with us, and a century hence we shall doubtless have far better ones than those in whom we now rejoice—or sorrow. But material abides no time, and an immense quantity of it which is world-old perishes every day. For with general culture and intelligence we are killing all kinds of old faiths, with wonderful celerity. The time is near at hand when it will all be incredibly valuable, and then men will wish sorrowfully enough that there had been more collectors to accumulate and fewer critics to detract from their labours and to discourage them. For the collector must form his theory, or system great or small, good or bad, such as it is, in order to gather his facts; and then the theory is shattered by the critic and the collection made to appear ridiculous. And so collection ends.
There is another very curious reflection which has been ever present to my mind while writing this work, and which the reader will do well carefully to think out for himself. It is that the very first efforts of the human mind towards the supernatural were gloomy, strange, and wild; they were of witchcraft and sorcery, dead bodies, defilement, deviltry, and dirt. Men soon came to believe in the virtue of the repetition of certain rhymes or spells in connection with dead men’s bones, hands, and other horrors or “relics.” To this day this old religion exists exactly as it did of yore, wherever men are ignorant, stupid, criminal, or corresponding to their prehistoric ancestors. I myself have seen a dead man’s hand for sale in Venice. According to Dr. Block, says a writer in The St. James’s Gazette, January 16, 1889, the corpse-candle superstition is still firmly enshrined among the tenets of thieves all over Europe. In reality, according to The Standard, we know little about the strange thoughts which agitate the minds of the criminal classes. Their creeds are legends. Most of them are the children and grandchildren of thieves who have been brought up from their youth in the densest ignorance, and who, constantly at war with society, seek the aid of those powers of darkness in the dread efficacy of which they have an unshaken confidence.
“Fetishism of the rudest type, or what the mythologists have learned to call ‘animism’ is part and parcel of the robber’s creed. A ‘habit and repute’ thief has always in his pocket, or somewhere about his person, a bit of coal, or chalk, or a ‘lucky stone,’ or an amulet of some sort on which he relies for safety in his hour of peril. Omens he firmly trusts in. Divination is regularly practised by him, as the occasional quarrels over the Bible and key, and the sieve and shears, testify. The supposed power of witches and wizards make many of them live in terror, and pay blackmail, and although they will lie almost without a motive, the ingenuity with which the most depraved criminal will try to evade ‘kissing the book,’ performing this rite with his thumb instead, is a curious instance of what may be termed perverted religious instincts. As for the fear of the evil eye, it is affirmed that most of the foreign thieves of London dread more being brought before a particular magistrate who has the reputation of being endowed with that fatal gift than of being summarily sentenced by any other whose judicial glare is less severe.”
This is all true, but it tells only a small part of the truth. Not only is Fetish or Shamanism the real religion of criminals, but of vast numbers who are not suspected of it. There is not a town in England or in Europe in which witchcraft (its beginning) is not extensively practised, although this is done with a secrecy the success of which is of itself almost a miracle. We may erect churches and print books, but wherever the prehistoric man exists—and he is still to be found everywhere by millions—he will cling to the old witchcraft of his remote ancestors. Until you change his very nature, the only form in which he can realize supernaturalism will be by means of superstition, and the grossest superstition at that. Research and reflection have taught me that this sorcery is far more widely and deeply extended than any cultivated person dreams—instead of yielding to the progress of culture it seems to actually advance with it. Count Angelo de Gubernatis once remarked to one of the most distinguished English statesmen that there was in the country in Tuscany ten times as much heathenism as Christianity. The same remark was made to me by a fortune-teller in Florence. She explained what she meant. It was the vecchia religione—“the old religion”—not Christianity, but the dark and strange sorceries of the stregha, or witch, the compounding of magical medicine over which spells are muttered, the making love-philters, the cursing enemies, the removing the influence of other witches, and the manufacture of amulets in a manner prohibited by the Church.
It would seem as if, by some strange process, while advanced scientists are occupied in eliminating magic from religion, the coarser mind is actually busy in reducing it to religion alone. It has been educated sufficiently to perceive an analogy between dead man’s hands and “relics” as working miracles, and as sorcery is more entertaining than religion, and has, moreover, the charm of secrecy, the prehistoric man, who is still with us, prefers the former. Because certain forms of this sorcery are no longer found among the educated classes we think that superstition no longer exists; but though we no longer burn witches or believe in fairies, it is a fact that of a kind and fashion proportionate to our advanced culture, it is, with a very few exceptions, as prevalent as ever. Very few persons indeed have ever given this subject the attention which it merits, for it is simply idle to speculate on the possibility of cultivating or sympathizing with the lowest orders without really understanding it in all its higher forms. And I venture to say that, as regards a literal and truthful knowledge of its forms and practices, this work will prove to be a contribution to the subject not without value.
I have, in fact, done my best to set forth in it a very singular truth which is of great importance to every one who takes any real interest in social science, or the advance of intelligence. It is that while almost everybody who contributes to general literature, be it books of travel or articles in journals, has ever and anon something clever to say about superstition among the lower orders at home or abroad, be it in remote country places or in the mountains of Italy, with the usual cry of “Would it be believed—in the nineteenth century?” &c.; it still remains true that the amount of belief in magic—call it by what name we will—in the world is just as great as ever it was. And here I would quote with approbation a passage from “The Conditions for the Survival of Archaic Customs,” by G. L. Gomme, in The Archæological Review of January, 1890:—
“If Folk-lore has done nothing else up to this date it has demonstrated that civilization, under many of its phases, while elevating the governing class of a nation, and thereby no doubt elevating the nation, does not always reach the lowest or even the lower strata of the population. As Sir Arthur Mitchell puts it, ‘There is always a going up of some and a going down of others,’ and it is more than probable that just as the going up of the few is in one certain direction, along certain well-ascertained lines of improvement or development, so the going down of the many is in an equally well-ascertained line of degradation or backwardness. The upward march is always towards political improvement, carrying with it social development; the downward march is always towards social degradation, carrying with it political backwardness. It seems difficult indeed to believe that monarchs like Ælfred, Eadward, William, and Edward, could have had within their Christianized kingdom groups of people whose status was still that of savagery; it seems difficult to believe that Raleigh and Spenser actually beheld specimens of the Irish savage; it seems impossible to read Kemble and Green and Freeman and yet to understand that they are speaking only of the advanced guard of the English nation, not of the backward races within the boundary of its island home. The student of archaic custom has, however, to meet these difficulties, and it seems necessary, therefore, to try and arrive at some idea as to what the period of savagery in these islands really means.”
Which is a question that very few can answer. There is to be found in almost every cheap book, or “penny dreadful” and newspaper shop in Great Britain and America, for sale at a very low price a Book of Fate—or something equivalent to it, for the name of these works is legion—and one publisher advertises that he has nearly thirty of them, or at least such books with different titles. In my copy there are twenty-five pages of incantations, charms, and spells, every one of them every whit as “superstitious” as any of the gypsy ceremonies set forth in this volume. I am convinced, from much inquiry, that next to the Bible and the Almanac there is no one book which is so much disseminated among the million as the fortune-teller, in some form or other.[1] That is to say, there are, numerically, many millions more of believers in such small sorcery now in Great Britain than there were centuries ago, for, be it remembered, the superstitions of the masses were always petty ones, like those of the fate-books; it was only the aristocracy who consulted Cornelius Agrippa, and could afford la haute magie. We may call it by other names, but fry, boil, roast, powder or perfume it as we will, the old faith in the supernatural and in “occult” means of getting at it still exists in one form or another—the parable or moral of most frequent occurrence in it being that of the Mote and the Beam, of the real and full meaning of which I can only reply in the ever-recurring refrain of the Edda: “Understand ye this—or what?”
[1] I was once myself made to contribute, involuntarily, to this kind of literature. Forty years ago I published a Folk-lore bock entitled “The Poetry and Mystery of Dreams,” in which the explanations of dreams, as given by Astrampsychius, Artemidorus, and other ancient oneirologists, were illustrated by passages from many poets and popular ballads, showing how widely the ancient symbolism had extended. A few years ago I found that some ingenious literary hack had taken my work (without credit), and, omitting what would not be understood by servant girls, had made of it a common sixpenny dream-book. [↑]
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGIN OF WITCHCRAFT, SHAMANISM, AND SORCERY.—VINDICTIVE AND MISCHIEVOUS MAGIC.
As their peculiar perfume is the chief association with spices, so sorcery is allied in every memory to gypsies. And as it has not escaped many poets that there is something more strangely sweet and mysterious in the scent of cloves than in that of flowers, so the attribute of inherited magic power adds to the romance of these picturesque wanderers. Both the spices and the Romany come from the far East—the fatherland of divination and enchantment. The latter have been traced with tolerable accuracy, if we admit their affinity with the Indian Dom and Domar, back to the threshold of history, or well-nigh into prehistoric times, and in all ages they, or their women, have been engaged, as if by elvish instinct, in selling enchantments, peddling prophecies and palmistry, and dealing with the devil generally in a small retail way. As it was of old so it is to-day—
Ki shan i Romani
Adoi san’ i chov’hani.
Wherever gypsies go,
There the witches are, we know.
It is no great problem in ethnology or anthropology as to how gypsies became fortune-tellers. We may find a very curious illustration of it in the wren. This is apparently as humble, modest, prosaic little fowl as exists, and as far from mystery and wickedness as an old hen. But the ornithologists of the olden time, and the myth-makers, and the gypsies who lurked and lived in the forest, knew better. They saw how this bright-eyed, strange little creature in her elvish way slipped in and out of hollow trees and wood shade into sunlight, and anon was gone, no man knew whither, and so they knew that it was an uncanny creature, and told wonderful tales of its deeds in human form, and to-day it is called by gypsies in Germany, as in England, the witch-bird, or more briefly, chorihani, “the witch.” Just so the gypsies themselves, with their glittering Indian eyes, slipping like the wren in and out of the shadow of the Unknown, and anon away and invisible, won for themselves the name which now they wear. Wherever Shamanism, or the sorcery which is based on exorcising or commanding spirits, exists, its professors from leading strange lives, or from solitude or wandering, become strange and wild-looking. When men have this appearance people associate with it mysterious power. This is the case in Tartary, Africa, among the Eskimo, Lapps, or Red Indians, with all of whom the sorcerer, voodoo or medaolin, has the eye of the “fascinator,” glittering and cold as that of a serpent. So the gypsies, from the mere fact of being wanderers and out-of-doors livers in wild places, became wild-looking, and when asked if they did not associate with the devils who dwell in the desert places, admitted the soft impeachment, and being further questioned as to whether their friends the devils, fairies, elves, and goblins had not taught them how to tell the future, they pleaded guilty, and finding that it paid well, went to work in their small way to improve their “science,” and particularly their pecuniary resources. It was an easy calling; it required no property or properties, neither capital nor capitol, shiners nor shrines, wherein to work the oracle. And as I believe that a company of children left entirely to themselves would form and grow up with a language which in a very few years would be spoken fluently,[1] so I am certain that the shades of night, and fear, pain, and lightning and mystery would produce in the same time conceptions of dreaded beings, resulting first in demonology and then in the fancied art of driving devils away. For out of my own childish experiences and memories I retain with absolute accuracy material enough to declare that without any aid from other people the youthful mind forms for itself strange and seemingly supernatural phenomena. A tree or bush waving in the night breeze by moonlight is perhaps mistaken for a great man, the mere repetition of the sight or of its memory make it a personal reality. Once when I was a child powerful doses of quinine caused a peculiar throb in my ear which I for some time believed was the sound of somebody continually walking upstairs. Very young children sometimes imagine invisible playmates or companions talk with them, and actually believe that the unseen talk to them in return. I myself knew a small boy who had, as he sincerely believed, such a companion, whom he called Bill, and when he could not understand his lessons he consulted the mysterious William, who explained them to him. There are children who, by the voluntary or involuntary exercise of visual perception or volitional eye-memory,[2] reproduce or create images which they imagine to be real, and this faculty is much commoner than is supposed. In fact I believe that where it exists in most remarkable degrees the adults to whom the children describe their visions dismiss them as “fancies” or falsehoods. Even in the very extraordinary cases recorded by Professor Hale, in which little children formed for themselves spontaneously a language in which they conversed fluently, neither their parents nor anybody else appears to have taken the least interest in the matter. However, the fact being that babes can form for themselves supernatural conceptions and embryo mythologies, and as they always do attribute to strange or terrible-looking persons power which the latter do not possess, it is easy, without going further, to understand why a wild Indian gypsy, with eyes like a demon when excited, and unearthly-looking at his calmest, should have been supposed to be a sorcerer by credulous child-like villagers. All of this I believe might have taken place, or really did take place, in the very dawn of man’s existence as a rational creature—that as soon as “the frontal convolution of the brain which monkeys do not possess,” had begun with the “genial tubercule,” essential to language, to develop itself, then also certain other convolutions and tubercules, not as yet discovered, but which ad interim I will call “the ghost-making,” began to act. “Genial,” they certainly were not—little joy and much sorrow has man got out of his spectro-facient apparatus—perhaps if it and talk are correlative he might as well, many a time, have been better off if he were dumb.
So out of the earliest time, in the very two o’clock of a misty morning in history, man came forth believing in non-existent terrors and evils as soon as he could talk, and talking about them as fast as he formed them. Long before the conception of anything good or beneficent, or of a Heavenly Father or benevolent angels came to him, he was scared with nightmares and spirits of death and darkness, hell, hunger, torture, and terror. We all know how difficult it is for many people when some one dies out of a house-hold to get over the involuntary feeling that we shall unexpectedly meet the departed in the usual haunts. In almost every family there is a record how some one has “heard a voice they cannot hear,” or the dead speaking in the familiar tones. Hence the belief in ghosts, as soon as men began to care for death at all, or to miss those who had gone. So first of all came terrors and spectres, or revenants, and from setting out food for the latter, which was the most obvious and childlike manner to please them, grew sacrifices to evil spirits, and finally the whole system of sacrifice in all its elaboration.
It may therefore be concluded that as soon as man began to think and speak and fear the mysterious, he also began to appease ghosts and bugbears by sacrifices. Then there sprung up at once—quite as early—the magus, or the cleverer man, who had the wit to do the sacrificing and eat the meats sacrificed, and explain that he had arranged it all privately with the dead and the devils. He knew all about them, and he could drive them away. This was the Shaman. He seems to have had a Tartar-Mongol-mongrel-Turanian origin, somewhere in Central Asia, and to have spread with his magic drum, and songs, and stinking smoke, exorcising his fiends all over the face of the earth, even as his descendant, General Booth, with his “devil-drivers” is doing at the present day. But the earliest authentic records of Shamanism are to be found in the Accadian, proto-Chaldæan and Babylon records. According to it all diseases whatever, as well as all disasters, were directly the work of evil spirits, which were to be driven away by songs of exorcism, burning of perfumes or evil-smelling drugs, and performing ceremonies, many of which, with scraps of the exorcisms are found in familiar use here and there at the present day. Most important of all in it was the extraordinary influence of the Shaman himself on his patient, for he made the one acted on sleep or wake, freed him from many apparently dire disorders in a minute, among others of epilepsies which were believed to be caused by devils dwelling in man—the nearest and latest explanation of which magic power is given in that very remarkable book, “Psycho-Therapeutics, or Treatment by Sleep and Suggestion,” by C. Lloyd Tuckey, M.D. (London: Bailliere and Co., 1889), which I commend to all persons interested in ethnology as casting light on some of the most interesting and perplexing problems of humanity, and especially of “magic.”
It would seem, at least among the Laplanders, Finns, Eskimo, and Red Indians, that the first stage of Shamanism was a very horrible witchcraft, practised chiefly by women, in which attempts were made to conciliate the evil spirits; the means employed embracing everything which could revolt and startle barbarous men. Thus fragments of dead bodies and poison, and unheard-of terrors and crimes formed its basis. I think it very probable that this was the primitive religion among savages everywhere. An immense amount of it in its vilest conceivable forms still exists among negroes as Voodoo.
After a time this primitive witchcraft or voodooism had its reformers—probably brave and shrewd men, who conjectured that the powers of evil might be “exploited” to advantage. There is great confusion and little knowledge as yet as regards primitive man, but till we know better we may roughly assume that witch-voodooism was the religion of the people of the paleolithic period, if they could talk at all, since language is denied to the men of the Neanderthal, Canstadt, Egnisheim, and Podhava type. All that we can declare with some certainty is that we find the advanced Shamanism the religion of the early Turanian races, among whose descendants, and other people allied to them, it exists to this day. The grandest incident in the history of humanity is the appearance of the Man of Cromagnon. He it was who founded what M. de Quatrefages calls “a magnificent race,” probably one which speedily developed a high civilization, and a refined religion. But the old Shamanism with its amulets, exorcisms, and smoke, its noises, more or less musical, of drums and enchanted bells, and its main belief that all the ills of life came from the action of evil spirits, was deeply based among the inferior races and the inferior scions of the Cromagnon stock clung to it in forms more or less modified. Just as the earlier witchcraft, or the worship and conciliation of evil, overlapped in many places the newer Shamanism, so the latter overlapped the beautiful Nature-worship of the early Aryans, the stately monotheism of the Shemites, and the other more advanced or ingenious developments of the idea of a creative cause. There are, in fact, even among us now, minds to whom Shamanism or even witchcraft is deeply, or innately adapted by nature, and there are hundred of millions who, while professing a higher and purer doctrine, cling to its forms or essentials, believing that because the apparatus is called by a different name it is in no respect whatever the same thing. Finally there are men who, with no logical belief whatever in any kind of supernaturalism, study it, and love it, and are moved by it, owing to its endless associations with poetry, art, and all the legends of infancy or youth. Heine was not in his reasoning moments anything more or less than a strict Deist or Monotheist, but all the dreams and spectres, fairies and goblins, whether of the Middle Ages or the Talmud, were inexpressibly dear to him, and they move like myriad motes through the sunshine of his poetry and prose, often causing long rays when there were bars at the window—like that on which the saint hung his cloak. It is probable or certain that Shamanism (or that into which it has very naturally developed) will influence all mankind, until science, by absorbing man’s love of the marvellous in stupendous discoveries shall so put to shame the old thaumaturgy, or wonder-working, that the latter will seem poor and childish. In all the “Arabian Nights” there is nothing more marvellous than the new idea that voices and sounds may be laid aside like real books, and made to speak and sing again years afterwards. And in all of that vast repertory of occult lore, “Isis Unveiled,” there is nothing so wonderful as the simple truth that every child may be educated to possess an infinitely developed memory of words, sights, sounds, and ideas, allied to incredible quickness of perception and practice of the constructive faculties. These, with the vast fields of adjusting improved social relations and reforms—all of which in a certain way opens dazzling vistas of a certain kind of enchantment or brilliant hope—will go fast and far to change the old romance to a radically different state of feeling and association.
It is coming—let it come! Doubtless there was an awful romance of darkness about the old witchcraft which caused its worshippers to declare that the new lights of Shamanism could never dissipate it. Just so many millions of educated people at present cannot be brought to understand that all things to which they are used are not based on immutable laws of nature, and must needs be eternal. They will find it hard to comprehend that there can ever be any kind of poetry, art, or sentiment, utterly different from that to which they and their ancestors have been accustomed. Yet it is clear and plain before them, this New Era, looking them directly in the face, about to usher in a reformation compared to which all the reformations and revolutions, and new religions which the world has ever seen were as nothing; and the children are born who will see more than the beginning of it.
In the next chapter I will examine the Shamanic spells and charms still used among certain gypsies. For, be it observed, all the gypsy magic and sorcery here described is purely Shamanic—that is to say, of the most primitive Tartar type—and it is the more interesting as having preserved from prehistoric times many of the most marked characteristics of the world’s first magic or religion. It treats every disease, disorder, trouble, or affliction as the work of an evil spirit; it attempts to banish these influences by the aid of ceremonies, many of which, by the disgusting and singular nature of the ingredients employed, show the lingering influences of the black witchcraft which preceded Shamanism; and it invokes favourable supernatural agencies, such as the spirits of the air and Mashmurdalo’, the giant of the forests. In addition to this there will be found to be clearly and unmistakably associated with all their usages, symbols and things nearly connected with much which is to be found in Greek, Roman, and Indian mythology or symbolism. Now whether this was drawn from “classic” sources, or whether all came from some ancient and obscure origin, cannot now be accurately determined. But it certainly cannot be denied that Folk-lore of this kind casts a great deal of light on the early history of mankind, and the gradual unfolding or evolution of religion and of mind, and that, if intelligently studied, this of the gypsies is as important as any chapter in the grand work.
The gypsies came, historically speaking, very recently from India. It has not been so carefully observed as it might that all Indians are not of the religion of Brahma, much less of Buddha or of Mahommed, and that among the lower castes, the primæval Altaic Shamanism, with even earlier witchcraft, still holds its own. Witchcraft, or Voodoo, or Obi, relies greatly on poisoning for its magic, and the first gypsies were said to poison unscrupulously. Even to this day there is but one word with them as with many Hindoos for both medicine and poison—id est drab. How exactly this form of witchcraft and Shamanism exists to-day in India appears from the following extract from The St. James’s Gazette, September 8, 1888:—
THE HINDOO PRIEST.
In India, the jadoo-wallah, or exorcist, thrives apace; and no wonder, for is not the lower-caste Hindoo community bhut, or demon-ridden? Every village, graveyard, burning-ghat, has its special bhut or bhuts; and the jadoo-wallah is the earthly mediator between their bhutships and the common folk. The exorcist is usually the spiritual adviser to the population of a low-caste village, and is known as a gooroo, or priest: that is to say, he professes to hold commune with the spirits of defunct Hindoos which have qualified for their unique position in the other world—by their iniquity in this one, perhaps. Every Hindoo has a guardian bhut that requires propitiating, and the gooroo is the medium.
Amongst the Jaiswars and other low-caste Hindoos, caste is regulated by carnal pice, and a man is distinguished amongst them by a regulated monetary scale. One person may be a 14-anna caste man while another may only be a 12-anna caste man. Does the 12-anna caste man wish to supersede the 14-anna caste man, then he consults the gooroo, who will, in consideration of a certain contribution, promote him to a higher-caste grade. A moneyed man having qualms about his future state should join the Jaiswars, where at least he would have an opportunity of utilizing his spare cash for the good of his soul. The average gooroo will be only too glad to procure him everlasting glory for a matter of a few rupees.
The gooroo, then, serves as regulator of the lower-caste Hindoo system. But it is our intention to exhibit him in his peculiar position of exorcist-general to the people. This will perhaps be best explained by an account of the case of one Kaloo. Kaloo was a grass-cutter, and had been offended by Kasi, a brother grass-cutter. Kasi, it appears, had stolen Kaloo’s quilt one night during his temporary absence at a neighbouring liquor-shop. Kaloo, on his return, finding his quilt gone, raised the hue-and-cry; and Mooloo, the village policeman, traced the robbery to Kasi’s hut. Yet, in spite of this damning proof, the village panchayet, or bench of magistrates, decided that, as Kaloo could not swear to the exact colour of his lost quilt—Kaloo was colour-blind—it could not possibly be his. Anyhow, Kaloo kept Kasi in view and hit upon a plan to do him a grievous bodily injury. Scraping together a few rupees, he went to the village gooroo and promised that worthy a reward if he would only exorcise the bhuts and get them to “make Kasi’s liver bad.” The gooroo, in consideration of five rupees cash, promised compliance. So that night we find the gooroo busy with sandal-wood and pig’s blood propitiating the neighbouring bhuts. Needless to say that Kasi had in a very short space of time all the symptoms of liver complaint. Whether the bhuts gave Kasi a bad liver or the gooroo gave him a few doses of poison is a question. Anyhow, Kasi soon died. Another case in point is that of Akuti. Akuti was a retired courtesan who had long plied a profitable trade in the city. We find her, however, at her native village of Ramghur, the wife of one Balu. Balu soon got tired of his Akuti, and longed for the contents of her strong box wherein she kept her rupees, bracelets, nose-rings, and other valuables. This was a rather awkward matter for Balu, for Akuti was still in the prime of life. Balu accordingly visits the gooroo and wants Akuti’s liver made bad. “Nothing easier,” says the gooroo: “five rupees.” Balu has reckoned without his host, however: for the gooroo, as general spiritual adviser to the Ramghur community, visits Akuti and tells her of Balu’s little scheme. Naturally Balu’s liver is soon in a decline, for Akuti’s ten rupees were put in the opposite side of the gooroo’s scales.
Knaves of the gooroo genus flourish in India, and when their disposition is vicious the damage they can do is appalling. That these priests exist and do such things as I have illustrated is beyond question. Ask any native of India his views on the bhut question, and he will tell you that there are such things, and, further, that the gooroo is the only one able to lay them, so to speak. According to the low-caste Hindoo, the bhut is a spiteful creature which requires constant supplies of liquor and pork; otherwise it will wreak its vengeance on the forgetful votary who neglects the supply. A strange idea, too, is this of pork being pleasing to the bhuts; but when it is remembered that the Jaiswars, Chamars, and other low-caste Hindoos are inordinately fond of that meat themselves, they are right in supposing pig to be the favourite dish of the bhuts, who, after all, are but the departed spirits of their own people. Naturally bhai (brother) Kaloo, or bahin (sister, English gypsy pen) Akuti, the quondam grass-cutter and courtesan of Ramghur village, who in this life liked nothing better than a piece of bacon and a dram of spirits, will, in their state of bhuthood hanker after those things still. Acting on these notions of the people, the gooroo lives and thrives exceedingly.
Yet of all this there is nothing “Hindoo,” nothing of the Vedas. It is all pre-Aryan, devil-worshipping, poisoning, and Turanian; and it is exactly like voodooing in Philadelphia or any other city in America. It is the old faith which came before all, which existed through and under Brahminism, Buddhism, and Mahommedanism, and which, as is well known, has cropped out again and flourishes vigorously under British toleration. And this is the faith which forms the basis of European gypsy sorcery, as it did of yore that of the Chaldæan and Etrurian, which still survive in the witchcraft of the Tuscan Romagna. Every gypsy who came to Europe a few centuries ago set up as a gooroo, and did his sorceries after the same antique fashion. Even to-day it is much the same, but with far less crime. But the bhut or malignant spirit is, under other names, still believed in, still doctored by gypsies with herbs and smoke, and “be-rhymed like an Irish rat,” and conjured into holes bored in trees, and wafted away into running streams, and naïvely implored to “go where he is wanted,” to where he was nursed, and to no longer bother honest folk who are tired of him. And for all this the confiding villager must pay the gypsy wise-woman “so much monies”—as it was in the beginning and is now in good faith among millions in Europe who are in a much better class of society. And from this point of view I venture to say that there is not a charm or spell set down in this work or extant which will not be deeply interesting to every sincere student of the history of culture. Let me, however, say in this beginning once for all that I have only given specimens sufficient to illustrate my views, for my prescribed limits quite forbid the introduction of all the gypsy cures, spells, &c., which I have collected.
[1] Vide an extremely interesting paper on “The Origin of Languages and the Antiquity of Speaking Man,” by Horatio Hale. [“Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,” vol. xxv.] As I had, owing to studies for many years of baby-talk and jargons, long ago arrived at Mr. Hale’s conclusions, I was astonished to learn that they have been so recently formed by anybody. [↑]
[2] Vide “Practical Education,” by C. G. Leland (London: Whittaker and Co., 1888), in which this faculty is fully discussed, pp. 184–213. [↑]
CHAPTER II.
CHARMS AND CONJURATIONS TO CURE THE DISORDERS OF GROWN PEOPLE. HUNGARIAN GYPSY MAGIC.
Though not liable to many disorders, the gypsies in Eastern Europe, from their wandering, out-of-doors life, and camping by marshes and pools where there is malaria, suffer a great deal from fevers, which in their simple system of medicine are divided into the shilale—i.e., chills or cold—and the tate shilalyi, “hot-cold,” or fever and ague. For the former, the following remedy is applied: Three lungs and three livers of frogs are dried and powdered and drunk in spirits, after which the sick man or woman says:—
“Čuckerdya pal m’re per
Čáven save miseçe!
Čuckerdya pal m’re per
Den miseçeske drom odry prejiál!”
“Frogs in my belly
Devour what is bad!
Frogs in my belly
Show the evil the way out!”
By “the evil” is understood evil spirits. According to the old Shamanic belief, which was the primæval religion of all mankind, every disease is caused by an evil spirit which enters the body and can only be driven out by magic. We have abundant traces of this left in our highest civilization and religion among people who gravely attribute every evil to the devil instead of the unavoidable antagonisms of nature. Nothing is more apparent in the New Testament than that all diseases were anciently regarded as coming from devils, or evil occult, spiritual influences, their negative or cure being holiness in some form. This the Jews, if they did not learn it from the Assyrians in the first place, had certainly studied deeply in Babylon, where it formed the great national cult. “It was the devil put it into my head,” says the criminal; and there is not a point of this old sorcery which is not earnestly and seriously advocated by the Roman Catholic Church and the preachers of the Salvation Army. Among the American Red Indians the idea of evil spirits is carried to logical extremes. If a pen drops from our fingers, or a penny rolls from our grasp, the former of course falls on our new white dress, while the latter nine times out of ten goes directly to the nearest grating, or crack or rat-hole. I aver that it is literally true, if I ever search for a letter or paper it is almost always at the bottom of the rest, while ink-wipers and pens seem to be endowed with more than mere instinct or reason—they manifest genius in concealing themselves. The Indians having observed this have come to the conclusion that it is all the work of certain busy little mischievous goblins, in which I, to a certain extent, agree with them, holding, however, that the dwelling-place of these devilkins, is in our own brain. What are our dreams but the action of our other mind, or a second Me in my brain? Certainly it is with no will or effort, or act of mine, that I go through a diabolical torturing nightmare, or a dreadful dream, whose elaborate and subtle construction betrays very often more ingenuity than I in my waking hours possess. I have had philosophical and literary dreams, the outlines of which I have often remembered waking, which far transcended anything of the kind which I could ever hope to write. The maker of all this is not I or my will, and he is never about, or on hand, when I am self-conscious. But in the inadvertent moments of oblivion, while writing, or while performing any act, this other I, or I’s, (for there may be a multitude of them for aught I know) step in and tease—even as they do in dreams. Now the distinction between this of subjective demons acting objectively, and objective or outside spirits, is really too fine to be seen even by a Darwinian-Carpenterian-Häeckelite, and therefore one need not be amazed that Piel Sabadis or Tomaquah, of the Passamaquoddy tribe, or Obeah Gumbo of New Orleans, should, with these experiences, jump at ghosts and “gobblers,” is not to be wondered at; still less that they should do something to conciliate or compel these haunting terrors, or “buggs,” as they were once called—whence bogeys. It is a fact that if one’s ink-wipers get into the habit of hiding all we have to do is to deliberately destroy them and get others, or at least watch them carefully, and they will soon be cured of wandering. On the other hand, sacrifices to conciliate and please naturally occur, and the more expensive these are the better are they supposed to be. And as human beings were of old the most valuable property, they were as naturally supposed to be most acceptable to the gods, or, by the monotheists, to God. A West Indian voodoo on being reproached for human sacrifices to the serpent, and for eating the bodies slain, replied, “Do you believe that the Son of God was sacrificed to save man, and do you not eat what your priests say is His very body?” So difficult is it to draw distinctions between that which is spiritual and the mockeries which appear to be such!
The scape-goat, or sufferer, who is martyred that many may escape—or in other words, the unfortunate minority—is a natural result of sacrifice. There is a curious trace of it in Hungarian Gypsy Shamanism. On Easter Monday they make a wooden box or receptacle which is called the bicápen, pronounced like the English gypsy word bitchapen and meaning the same, that is—a sending, a thing sent or gift. In this, at the bottom, are two sticks across, “as in a cradle,” and on these are laid herbs and other fetish stuff which every one touches with the finger; then the whole is enveloped in a winding of white and red wool, and carried by the oldest person of the tribe from tent to tent; after which it is borne to the next running stream and left there, after every one has spat upon it. By doing this they think that all the diseases and disorders which would have befallen them during the coming year are conjured into the box. But woe to him who shall find the box and open it, instead of throwing it at once into the stream! All the diseases exorcised by the gypsy band will fall upon him and his in full measure.
It would be an interesting question to know how many good people there are, let us say in London, who, if they had an opportunity to work off all their colds, gouts, scarlet-fevers, tooth- head- and stomach-aches, with the consequent doctors’ bills, or all suffering and expenses, on some other family by means of secret sorcery, would or would not “try it on”? It is curious to observe the resemblance of the gypsy ceremony, with its box full of mischief, and the Jewish goat; not forgetting the red wool handed down from heathen sacrifice and sorcery of old. In the Bible white wool is the symbol of purification (Isaiah i. 18). The feet of the statues of the gods were enveloped in wool—Dü laneos habent pedes—to signify that they are slow to avenge, if sure. It is altogether an interesting object, this gypsy casket, and one would like to know what all the channels were through which the magic ran ere it came to them.
Another cure against the fever is to go to a running stream and cast pieces of wood nine times backwards into the running water, repeating the rhymes:—
“Shilályi prejiá,
Páñori me tut ‘dáv!
Náñi me tut kámáv;
Andakode prejiá,
Odoy tut čučiden,
Odoy tut ferinen,
Odoy tut may kámen!
Mashurdalo sástyár!”
“Fever go away from me,
I give it, water, unto thee!
Unto me thou art not dear,
Therefore go away from here
To where they nursed thee,
Where they shelter thee,
Where they love thee,
Mashurdalo—help!”
This is a very remarkable invocation which takes us into true heathenism. Māshurdálo, or, correctly speaking, Māshmurdálo (it would be Māsmérdo in English gypsy), means meat-killer. He is a sylvan giant—he has his hold by wode and wolde as outlawes wont to do, in far-away forests and lonely rocky places, where he lurks to catch beast and men in order to devour them. It is needless to say to those who are aware that the taste of white people’s flesh is like that of very superior chicken, and a negro’s something much better than grouse, that Māshmurdálo prefers, like a simple, unsophisticated savage as he is, men to animals. Like the German peasant who remarked, “It’s all meat, anyhow,” when he found a mouse in his soup, Māshmurdálo is not particular. He is the guardian of great treasures; like most men in the “advance business” he knows where the “money” is to be found—unlike them he is remarkably stupid, and can be easily cheated of his valuables. But if anybody does this Morgante a service he is very grateful, and aids his benefactor either with a loan or with his enormous strength. In many respects he bears a remarkable resemblance to two giants in the American Algonkin mythology, especially to At-was-kenni ges—the Spirit of the Forest—who is equally powerful, good-natured, and stupid, and to the Chenoo, who is a cannibal giant and yet grateful to friends, and also to several Hindoo gods. The gypsies have here evidently fused several Oriental beings into one. This is a process which occurs in the decline of mythologies as in languages. In the infancy of a speech, as in its old age, many words expressing different ideas, but which sound somewhat alike, become a single term. In English gypsy I have found as many as eight or ten Hindi words thus concentrated into one.
Another cure for a fever. The sufferer goes in the forest and finds a young tree. When the first rays of the rising sun fall on it the patient shakes it with all his might and exclaims:—
“Shilályi, shilályi prejia
Káthe tu beshá, káthe tu beshá!”
“Fever, fever, go away!
Here shalt thou stay. Here shalt thou stay!”
It is here plain that the shaking the sapling is intended to transfer the shakes, as the chill and shuddering of the fever is called in America, to the tree.
“Then the fever passes into the tree.” Perhaps it was in this way that the aspen learned to tremble. But among the gypsies in the south of Hungary, among whom the vaccination or inoculation of trees is greatly the fashion, a hole is bored into the wood, into which the patient spits thrice, repeats the spell, and then stops the hole with a plug. The boring of holes in trees or transferring illness to them is also practised without formulas of speech. Thus, if while a man is lying down or sitting in the spring he hears the song of the cuckoo he believes that he will be ill all the time for a year to come, especially with fevers, unless he goes nine times to a tree, bores a hole in it, and spits into it three times. Then he is safe. In German mythology “the cuckoo is a bird which brings bad luck” (Friedrich), and the inhabitants of Haiterbach were so persuaded of this that they introduced a prayer against it into their church service, whence they got the name of cuckoos (Wolf, “Zeitschrift für Deutsche Myth.,” vol. i. p. 440). It announces to men the infidelity of wives, and tells listeners how many years they have to live.
It is possible that this is a relic of an old form of sacrifice, or proof that the idea occurs to all men of thus making a casket of a tree. The occasional discovery of stone axe-heads in very old trees in America renders this probable. And where the wood grows up and encloses the object it would very rarely happen that it would ever be discovered. It should be added to the previous instance that when they have closed the hole, the Transylvanian gypsies eat some of the bark of the next tree.
Another cure for fever is effected by going in the morning before sunrise to the bank of a stream, and digging a hole with some object—for instance, a knife—which has never been used. Into this hole the patient makes water, then fills up the hole, saying:—
“Shilályi áč kathe
Ná ává kiyá mánge!
Sutyárá andré čik!
Avá kiyá mánge
Káná káthe ná hin páñi!”
“Fever stay here!
Do not come to me!
Dry up in dust,
Come unto me
When no water is here.”
Dr. Wlislocki translates this last line, “When there is no more water in the river,” which is certainly what is meant. “While water runs or grass grows,” &c. is a formula common to all countries. Another cure for fever is this: the patient must take a kreutzer, an egg, and a handful of salt, and before sunrise go with them to a cross-road, throw them away backwards, and repeat:—
“Káná ádálá kiyá mánge áven
Āvā tu kiyā mánge shilályi.”
“When these things again I see,
Fever then return to me.”
Or literally, “When these things to me come.” For the next three days the invalid must not touch money, eggs, or salt. There is an old MS. collection of English charms and ceremonies, professedly of “black witchcraft,” in which we are told that if a girl will walk stark-naked by the light of the full moon round a field or a house, and cast behind her at every step a handful of salt, she will get the lover whom she desires. Salt, says Moresinus, was sacred to the infernal deities, and it was a symbol of the soul, or of life, because it preserved the body while in it (Pitiscus, “Leg. Ant. Rom.” ii. p. 675). The devil never eats salt. Once there was in Germany a peasant who had a witch for a wife, and the devil invited them to supper. But all the dishes were without any seasoning, and the peasant, despite all nudges and hints to hold his tongue kept crying for salt. And when it was brought and he said, “Thank God, here is salt at last!” the whole Spuck, or ghastly scene, vanished (Horst, “Dæmonomagie,” Frankfurt, 1818, vol. ii. p. 213). For a great deal of further information and symbolism on and of salt, including all the views of the ancient Rabbis and modern rationalists on the subject of Lot’s wife, the reader may consult “Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur,” by J. B. Friedrich, Würzburg, 1859: “Salt is put into love-philtres and charms to ensure the duration of an attachment; in some Eastern countries it is carried in a little bag as an amulet to preserve health.”
Another cure for fever. The patient must drink, from a new jug, water from three brooks, and after every drink throw into the running stream a handful of salt. Then he must make water into the first and say:—
“Káthe hin t’ro sherro!”
“Here is thy head!”
At the second he repeats the sacred ceremony and murmurs:—
“Káthe hin t’ro perá!”
“Here is thy belly!”
And again at the third he exclaims:—
“Te kathehin t’re punrá.
Já átunci ándre páñi!”
“And here are thy feet.
Go now into the water!”
But while passing from one stream to another he must not look back once, for then he might behold the dread demon of the fever which follows him, neither must he open his mouth, except while uttering the charm, for then the fever would at once enter his body again through the portal thus left unclosed. This walking on in apprehension of beholding the ugly spectre will recall to the reader a passage in the “Ancient Mariner,” of the man who walks in fear and dread,
“Nor turns around his head,
For well he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”
The wise wives among the gypsies in Hungary have many kinds of miraculous salves for sale to cure different disorders. These they declare are made from the fat of dogs, bears, wolves, frogs, and the like. As in all fetish remedies they are said to be of strange or revolting materials, like those used by Canidia of yore, the witches of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, and of Burns in Tam O’Shanter.
When a man has been “struck by a spirit” there results a sore, swelling or boil, which is cured by a sorceress as follows: The patient is put into a tent by himself, and is given divers drinks by his attendant; then she rubs the sufferer with a salve, the secret of which is known only to her, while she chants:—
“Prejiá, prejiá, prejiá,
Kiyá miseçeske, ác odoy;
Trianda sapa the çaven tut,
Trianda jiuklá tut čingeren,
Trianda káçná tut čunáven!”
“Begone, begone, begone
To the Evil One; stay there.
May thirty snakes devour thee,
Thirty dogs tear thee,
Thirty cocks swallow thee!”
After this she slaughters a black hen, splits it open, and lays it on the boil. Then the sufferer must drink water from three springs or rivulets, and throw wood nine times into the fire daily until he is well. But black hens cost money, according to Wlislocki; albeit the gypsies, like the children of the Mist in “Waverley,” are believed to be acquainted with a far more economical and direct method of obtaining such commodities. Therefore this expensive and high-class cure is not often resorted to, and when it is the sorceress generally substitutes something cheaper than poultry. It may be here observed that the black hen occurs frequently in mediæval witch-lore and legend as a demon-symbol (Wolf, “Niederländische Sagen,” pp. 647, 650). Thus the bones of sorcerors turn into black hens and chickens, and it is well if your black hen dies, for if she had not you would have perished in her place. Black hens were walled up in castles as sacrifices to the devil, that the walls might long endure; hence the same fowl occurs in the arms of the family of Henneberg (Nork, “Mythologie der Volkssagen,” p. 381). The lore on this subject is very extensive.
The following remedy against headache is in general use among Transylvanian gypsies. The patient’s head is rubbed, and then washed, with vinegar or hot water while the following charm is repeated:—
“Oh duk ándro m’ro shero
The o dád miseçescro,
Adá dikhel ákáná,
Man tu máy dostá, márdyás,
Miro shero tu márdyás!
Tu ná ač tu ándre me.
Já tu, já tu, já kere.
Káy tu miseç čučides,
Odoy, odoy sikoves!
Ko jál pro m’ro ushályin,
Adáleske e duk hin!”
“Oh, pain in my head,
The father of all evil,
Look upon thee now!
Thou hast greatly pained me,
Thou tormentest my head,
Remain not in me!
Go thou, go thou, go home,
Whence thou, Evil One, didst suck,
Thither, thither hasten!
Who treads upon my shadow,
To him be the pain!”
It will be seen that the principle of treading on the tail of the coat practised in Ireland is much outdone by the gypsies who give a headache to any one who so much as treads on their shadows. And it is not difficult to understand that, as with children, the rubbing the head, the bathing it with warm water or vinegar, and, finally, the singing a soothing song, may all conduce to a cure. The readers of “Helen’s Babies” will remember the cures habitually wrought on Budge by singing to him, “Charley boy one day.” Gypsies are in many respects mere children, or little Budges. There can be no doubt that where faith is very strong, and imagination is lively, cures which seem to border on the miraculous are often effected—and this is, indeed, the basis of all miracle as applied to relieving bodily afflictions. All of this may be, if not as yet fully explained by physiology, at least shown to probably rest on a material basis. But no sound system of cure can be founded on it, because there is never any certainty, especially for difficult and serious disorders, that they can ever be healed twice in succession. The “faith” exacted is sometimes a purely hereditary gift, at other times merely a form of blind ignorance and credulity. It may vividly influence all the body, and it may fail to act altogether. But the “Faith Healer” and “Christian Scientist,” or “Metaphysical Doctor,” push boldly on, and when they here and there heal a patient once, it is published to the four winds as a proof of invariable infallibility. And as everybody believes that he has “faith,” so he hopes to be cured. In popular custom for a man to say he believes in anything, and to be sure that he really has nothing against it, constitutes as much “faith” as most men understand. A man may be utterly destitute of any moral principle and yet live in a constant state of “faith” and pious conviction. Here the capacity for cure by means of charms is complete.
In connection with these charms for the head we may find not less interesting those in reference to the hair, as given by the same authority, Dr. von Wlislocki. The greatest pains are taken to ensure even for the new-born child what is called a full head, because every one who dies bald is turned into a fish, and must remain in this form till he has collected as many hairs as would make an ordinary wig. But this lasts a long time, since he can find but a single hair every month or moon. The moon is in many ways connected in gypsy faith with the hair. He who sleeps bare-headed in its light will lose his hair, or else it will become white. To have a heavy growth a man must scoop up with his left hand water from a running brook, against the current, and pour it on his head.
Immediately after the first bathing of a newly-born child, and its anointing, its forehead and neck are marked with a semicircle—perhaps meant to indicate the moon—made with a salve called barcali, intended to promote the growth of the hair. A brew, or mess, is made from beans and the blood of a cow. Hairs are taken from the heads of the father and mother, which hairs are burnt to a powder and mixed with the brew. It is remarkable that the beans are only used for a boy, their object being to insure for him great virile or sexual power. “The bean,” says Friedrich (“Sym. d. N.”), “is an erotic symbol, or one signifying sexual pleasure.” Hence it was forbidden to the Egyptian priests, the Pythagoreans, the priests of Jupiter in Rome, and to the Jewish high priests on certain festivals. But if the child is a girl, the seeds of the pumpkin or sunflower are substituted for beans, because the latter would make her barren.
It is an old belief, and one widely spread, that if the witches or the devil can get a lock of anybody’s hair, they can work him evil. The gypsies have the following articles of faith as regards hairs:—
Should birds find any, and build them into their nests, the man who lost them will suffer from headaches until, during the wane of the moon, he rubs his head with the yolk of eggs and washes it clean in running water. It would be very curious if this method of cleaning the hair and giving it a soft gloss, so much in vogue among English ladies, should have originated in sorcery. Beyond this, the sufferer must mix some of his hairs with food and give them to a white dog to eat.
If hairs which have fallen or been cut away are found by a snake and carried into its hole, the man from whom they came will continue to lose more until those in the snake’s nest are quite decayed.
If you see human hairs in the road do not tread on them, since, in that case, if they came from a lunatic, you, too, will go mad. According to Marcellus Burdigalensis, if you pick up some hairs in the road just before entering a city gate, tie one to your own head, and, throwing the rest away, walk on without looking behind you, you can cure a headache. I have found nearly the same charm for the same purpose in Florence, but accompanied by the incantation which is wanting in Marcellus. Also his cure for headache with ivy from the head of a statue, which is still used in Tuscany with the incantation which the Roman omits.
Finding a hair hanging to your coat, carefully burn it, since you may by so doing escape injury by witchcraft. And we may remark in confirmation of this, that when you see a long hair on a man’s coat it is an almost certain sign that he has been among the witches, or is bewitched; as the Countess thought when she found one clinging to the button of her lover, Von Adelstein, as set forth in “Meister Karl’s Sketch-book.”
But to bewitch your enemy get some of his combed-out hair, steep it in your own water, and then throw it on his garments. Then he will have no rest by night or day. I have observed that in all the Tuscan charms intended to torment a foe, the objects employed are like this of a disgusting nature.
If a wife will hold her husband to her in love, she must take of her own hair and bind it to his. This must be done three times by full moonlight.
Or if a maid will win the love of a young man, she must take of her own hair, mix it with earth from his footsteps—“und mischt diese mit dem Speichel einer läufigen Hundinn auf”—burn the whole to powder, and so manage that the victim shall eat it—which, it is needless to say, it is not likely that he will do, knowing what it is. Earth from the footsteps of any one is regarded as a very powerful means of bewitching him in Italian and ancient sorcery.
If a man bind the combings of his hair to the mane of a strange horse it will be wild and shy till the hairs are removed.
For easy childbirth red hair is sewed in a small bag and carried on the belly next the skin during pregnancy. Red hair indicates good luck, and is called bálá kámeskro, or sun-hairs, which indicates its Indian origin.
If any one dreams much of the dead, let him sew some of his hair into an old shoe, and give it to any beggar. Thereby he will prevent evil spirits from annoying him.
If a child suffers from sleeplessness, some of its mother’s hair should be sewed into its wrappings, and others pulverized, mixed with a decoction of elderberries, be given it to drink. In German Folk-lore, as I shall show more fully anon, the elder often occurs as a plant specially identified with sorcery. In gypsy it is called yakori bengeskro, or the devil’s eye, from its berries.
Nails cut on Friday should be burned, and the ashes mingled with the fodder of cattle, who are thus ensured against being stolen or attacked by wild beasts. If children are dwarfish, the same ashes in their food will make them grow. If a child suffers from pains in the stomach, a bit of nail must be clipped from its every finger; this is mixed with the dried dung of a foal, and the patient exposed to the smoke while it is burned.
A child’s first tooth must, when it falls out, be thrown into a hollow tree. Those which come out in the seventh year are carefully kept, and whenever the child suffers from toothache, one is thrown into a stream.
Teeth which have been buried for many years, serve to make a singular fetish. They are mingled with the bones of a tree-frog, and the whole then sewed up in a little bag. If a man has anything for sale, and will draw or rub this bag over it, he will have many offers or customers for the articles thus enchanted. The bones are prepared by putting the frog into a glass or earthen receptacle full of small holes. This is buried in an ant-hill. The ants enter the holes and eat away all the flesh, leaving the bones which after a few weeks are removed.[1]
To bear healthy and strong children women wear a string of bears’ claws and children’s teeth. Dr. von Wlislocki cites, apropos of this, a passage from Jacobus Rueff, “Von Empfengnussen”: “Etlich schwanger wyber pflägend einen bären klauen von einem bären tapen yngefaszet am hals zuo tragen” (Some women when with child are accustomed to wear mounted bears’ claws on their necks). In like manner boars’ teeth, which much resemble them, are still very commonly worn in Austria and Italy and almost over all Europe and the East. It is but a few days since I here, in Florence, met with a young English lady who had bought a very large one mounted in silver as a brooch, but who was utterly unaware that there was any meaning attached to it.[2] I have a very ancient bear’s tooth and whistle in silver, meant for a teething child. It came from Munich.
Pain in the eyes is cured with a wash made of spring or well water and saffron. During the application the following is recited:—
“Oh dukh ándrál yákhá
Já ándré páñi
Já andrál páñi
André safráne
André pçuv.
Já andrál pçuv
Kiyá Pçuvusheske.—
Odoy hin cerçá,
Odoy ja te ça.”
“Oh, pain from the eyes
Go into the water,
Go out of the water
Into the saffron,
Go out of the saffron
Into the earth.
To the Earth-Spirit.
There’s thy home.
There go and eat.”
This incantation casts light upon the earliest Shamanic remedies. When it was discovered that certain herbs really possessed curative qualities, this was attributed to inherent magic virtues. The increase of their power by combining them with water, or mingling them, was due to mystic affinities by which a spirit passed from one to another. The Spirit of Earth went into saffron, that of saffron into water. The magician thus by a song sent the pain into its medical affinity, and so on back to the source whence it came. From early times saffron, as one of the earliest flowers of spring, owing to its colour, was consecrated to magic and love. Eos, the goddess of the Aurora, was called κροκοτιεπλος, the one with the saffron garment. Therefore the public women wore a yellow robe. Even in Christian symbolism it meant love, as Portalis declares: “In the Christian religion the colours saffron and orange were the symbols of God embracing the heart and illuminating the souls of the faithful” (“Des Couleurs Symboliques,” Paris, 1837, p. 240). So we can trace the chain from the prehistoric barbarous Shamanism, preserved by the gypsies, to the Greek, and from the Greek to the mediæval form still existent.
The same sympathetic process of transmission may be traced in the remedy for the erysipelas. The blood of a bullfinch is put into a new vessel with scraped elder-bark, and then laid on a cloth with which the eyes are bound up overnight. Meanwhile the patient repeats:—
“Duy yákhá hin mánge
Duy punrá hin mánge
Dukh ándrál yákhá
Já ándre punrá
Já ándrál punrá.
Já ándre pçuv,
Já ándrál pçuv
Andro meriben!”
“I have two eyes,
I have two feet,
Pain from my eyes
Go into my feet!
Go from my feet,
Go into the earth!
Go from the earth
Into death!”
We have here in the elder-bark associations of magic which are ancient and widely spread, and which still exist; for at the present day country people in New England attribute to it curative virtues which it really does not possess. From the earliest times among the Northern races the Lady Elder, as we may learn from the Edda, or Fin Magnusen (“Priscæ veterum Borealium Mythologiæ Lexicon,” pp. 21, 239), and Nyerup (“Worterbuch der Scandinavischen Mythologie”), had an unearthly, ghostly reputation. Growing in lonely, gloomy places its form and the smell of its flowers seemed repulsive, so that it was associated with death, and some derived its name from Frau Holle, the sorceress and goddess of death. But Schwenki (“Mythologie der Slaven”) with more probability traces it from hohl, i.e., hollow, and as spirits were believed to dwell in all hollow trees, they were always in its joints. The ancient Lithuanians, he informs us, worshipped their god Puschkeit, who was a form of Pluto, in fear and trembling at dusk, and left their offerings under the elder-tree. Everybody has seen the little puppets made of a piece of elder-pith with half a bullet under them, so that they always stand upright, and jump up when thrown down. Among the Slovaks these seem to have had some magical application. Perhaps their priests persuaded them that these jumping Jacks were miraculous, for they called them Pikuljk, a name derived from Peklo, the under-world. They still believe in a Pikuljk, who is a servant of the Evil One. He does all kinds of favours for men, but ends by getting their souls. The ancestors of the Poles were accustomed to bury all their sins and sorrows under elder-trees, thinking that they thereby gave to the lower world what properly belonged to it. This corresponds accurately to the gypsy incantation which passes the disease on from the elder bark into the earth, and from earth unto death. Frau Ellhorn, or Ellen, was the old German name for this plant. “Frau, perhaps, as appropriate to the female elf who dwelt in it” (Friedrich, “Symbolik,” p. 293). When it was necessary to cut one down, the peasant always knelt first before it and prayed: “Lady Ellhorn, give me of thy wood, and I will give thee of mine when it shall grow in the forest.” Grimm (“Deutsche Mythologie,” cxvi.) cites from a MS. of 1727 the following: “Paga nismo ortum debet superstitio, sambucam non esse exscindendum nisi prius rogata permissione his verbis: Mater Sambuci permitte mihi tuæ cœdere sylvam!” On the other hand, Elder had certain protective and healing virtues. Hung before a stable door it warded off witchcraft, and he who planted it conciliated evil spirits. And if a twig of it were planted on a grave and it grew, that was a sign that the soul of the deceased was happy, which is the probable reason why the very old Jewish cemetery in Prague was planted full of elders. In a very curious and rare work, entitled “Blockesberge Berichtung” (Leipzig, 1669), by John Prætorius, devoted to “the Witch-ride and Sorcery-Sabbath,” the author tells us that witches make great use of nine special herbs—“nam in herbis, verbis et lapidibus magna vis est.” Among these is Elder, of which the peasants make wreaths, which, if they wear on Walpurgis night, they can see the sorceresses as they sweep through the air on their brooms, dragons, goats, and other strange steeds to the Infernal Dance. Or when they anderswo herumvagiren—“go vagabonding anywhere else.” “Yea, and I know one fellow who sware unto men, that by means of this herb he once saw certain witches churning butter busily, and that on a roof, but I mistrust that this was a sell (Schnake), and that the true name of this knave was Butyrolambius” (“Blocksberg,” p. 475). The same author informs us that Hollunder (or Elder) is so called from hohl, or hollow, or else is an anagram of Unholden, unholy spirits, and some people call it Alhuren, from its connection with witches and debauchery, even as Cordus writes:—
“When elder blossoms bloom upon the bush,
Then women’s hearts to sensual pleasure rush.”
He closes his comments on this subject with the dry remark that if the people of Leipzig wear, as is their wont, garlands of elder with the object of preventing breaches of the seventh commandment among them, it has in this instance, at least, utterly failed to produce the expected effect. “Quasi! creadt Judæus Apella!”
It should be mentioned that in the gypsy spell the next morning the cloth with the elder-bark must be thrown into the next running water. To cure toothache the Transylvanian gypsies wind a barley-straw round a stone, which is thrown into a running stream, while saying:—
“Oh dukh ándre m’re dándá,
Tu ná báres cingerá!
Ná ává kiyá mánge,
Mire muy ná hin kere!
Tut ñikáná me kámáv,
Ač tu mánge pál páčá;
Káná e pçus yárpakri
Avel tele páñori!”
“Oh, pain in my teeth,
Trouble me not so greatly!
Do not come to me,
My mouth is not thy house.
I love thee not all,
Stay thou away from me;
When this straw is in the brook
Go away into the water!”
Straw was anciently a symbol of emptiness, unfruitfulness, and death, and it is evidently used in this sense by the gypsies, or derived by them from some tradition connected with it. A feigned or fruitless marriage is indicated in Germany by the terms Strohwittwer and Strohwittwe. From the earliest times in France the breaking a straw signified that a compact was broken with a man because there was nothing in him. Thus in 922 the barons of Charles the Simple, in dethroning him, broke the straws which they held (Charlotte de La Tour, “Symbols of Flowers”).
Still, straws have something in them. She who will lay straws on the table in the full moonlight by an open window, especially on Saturday night, and will repeat—
“Straw, draw, crow craw,
By my life I give thee law”—
then the straws will become fairies and dance to the cawing of a crow who will come and sit on the ledge of the window. And so witches were wont to make a man of straw, as did Mother Gookin, in Hawthorne’s tale, and unto these they gave life, whence the saying of a man of straw and straw bail, albeit this latter is deemed by some to be related to the breaking of straws and of dependence, as told in the tale of Charles the Simple. Straw-lore is extensive and curious. As in elder-stalks, small fairies make their homes in its tubes. To strew chopped straw before the house of a bride was such an insult to her character, in Germany, and so common that laws were passed against it. I possess a work printed about 1650, entitled “De Injuriis quæ haud raro Novis Nuptis inferri solent. I. Per sparsionem dissectorum culmorum frugum. Germ. Dusch das Werckerling Streuen,” &c. An immense amount of learned quotation and reference by its author indicates that this custom which was influenced by superstition, was very extensively written on in its time. It was allied to the binding of knots and other magic ceremonies to prevent the consummation of marriages.
There is a very curious principle involved in curing certain disorders or afflictions by means of spells or verses. A certain word is repeated many times in a mysterious manner, so that it strikes the imagination of the sufferer. There is found in the Slavonian countries a woolly caterpillar called Wolos, whose bite, or rather touch, is much dreaded. I have myself, when a boy, been stung by such a creature in the United States. As I remember, it was like the sting of a bee. The following (Malo Russian) spell against it was given me by Prof. Dragomanoff in Geneva. It is supposed that a certain kind of disorder, or cutaneous eruption, is caused by the Wolos:—
“Wolosni—Wolosnicéh!
Holy Wolos.
Once a man drove over empty roads
With empty oxen,
To an empty field,
To harvest empty corn,
He gathered the empty sheaves,
Laid them in empty wagons,
Drove over empty roads,
Unto an empty threshing-floor.
The empty labourers threshed it,
And bore it to the empty mill.
The empty baker (woman)
Mixed it in an empty trough,
And baked it in an empty oven.
The empty people ate the empty bread.
So may the Wolos swallow this disorder
From the empty —— (here the name of the patient.)
What is here understood by “empty” is that the swelling is taken away, subtracted, or emptied, by virtue of the repetition of the word, as if one should say, “Be thou void. Depart! depart! depart! Avoid me!”
There is a very curious incantation also apparently of Indian-gypsy origin, since it refers to the spirits of the water who cause diseases. In this instance they are supposed to be exorcised by Saint Paphnutius, who is a later Slavonian-Christian addition to the old Shamanic spell. In the Accadian-Chaldæan formulas these spirits are seven; here they are seventy.
The formula in question is against the fever:—
“In the name of God and his Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen!
“Seventy fair maids went up out of the ocean.
“They met the Saint Paphnutius, who asked:
“ ‘Whence come ye, oh Maidens?’
“They answered, ‘From the ocean-sea.
“ ‘We go into the world to break the bones of men.
“ ‘To give them the fever. (To make hot and cold).’ ”
Then the holy Paphnutius began to beat them, and gave them every one seventy-seven days:—
“They began to pray, ‘O holy Paphnutius!
“ ‘Forgive us, (and) whoever shall bear with him (thy) name, or write it, him we will leave in peace.
“ ‘We will depart from him
“Over the streams, over the seas.
“ ‘Over the reeds (canes) and marshes.
“ ‘O holy Paphnutius, sua misericordia, of thy mercy,
“ ‘Have pity on thy slave, even on the sick man —— (the name is here uttered),
“ ‘Free him from fever!’ ”
It is remarkable that, as a certain mysterious worm, caterpillar, or small lizard (accounts differ) among the Algonkin Indians is supposed to become at will a dragon, or sorcerer, or spirit, to be invoked or called on, so the Wolos worm is also invoked, sometimes as a saint or sorcerer, and sometimes as a spirit who scatters disease. The following gypsy-Slavonian incantation over an invalid has much in common with the old Chaldæan spells:—
“Wolosni, Wolosnicéh!
Thou holy Wolos!
God calls thee unto his dwelling,
Unto his seat.
Thou shalt not remain here,
To break the yellow bones.
To drink the red blood,
To dry up the white body.
Go forth as the bright sun
Goes forth over the mountains,
Out from the seventy-seven veins,
Out from the seventy limbs (parts of the body).
Before I shall recognize thee,
Before I did not name thee (call on thee).
But now I know who thou art;
I began to pray to the mother of God,
And the mother of God began to aid me.
Go as the wind goes over the meadows or the shore (or banks),
As the waves roll over the waters,
So may the Wolos go from ——
The man who is born,
Who is consecrated with prayer.”
The Shamanic worship of water as a spirit is extremely ancient, and is distinctly recognized as such by the formulas of the Church in which water is called “this creature.” The water spirits play a leading part in the gypsy mythology. The following gypsy-Slav charm, to consecrate a swarm of bees, was also given to me by Prof. Dragomanoff, who had learned it from a peasant:—
“One goes to the water and makes his prayer and greets the water thus:—
“Hail to thee, Water!
Thou Water, Oliana!
Created by God,
And thou, oh Earth, Titiana!
And ye the near springs, brooks and rivulets,
Thou Water, Oliana,
Thou goest over the earth,
Over the neighbouring fountains and streams,
Down unto the sea,
Thou dost purify the sea,
The sand, the rocks, and the roots—
I pray thee grant me
Of the water of this lake,
To aid me,
To sprinkle my bees.
I will speak a word,
And God will give me help,
The all-holy Mother of God,
The mother of Christ,
Will aid me,
And the holy Father
The holy Zosimos, Sabbateus and the holy Friday Parascabeah!
“When this is said take the water and bear it home without looking back. Then the bees are to be sprinkled therewith.”
The following Malo-Russian formula from the same authority, though repointed and gilt with Greek Christianity, is old heathen, and especially interesting since Prof. Dragomanoff traces it to a Finnic Shaman source:—
“Charm Against the Bite of a Serpent.
“The holy Virgin sent a man
Unto Mount Sion,
Upon this mountain
Is the city of Babylon,
And in the city of Babylon
Lives Queen Volga.
Oh Queen Volga,
Why dost thou not teach
This servant of God
(Here the name of the one bitten by a serpent is mentioned)
So that he may not be bitten
By serpents?”
(The reply of Queen Volga)
“Not only will I teach my descendants
But I also will prostrate myself
Before the Lord God.”
“Volga is the name of a legendary heathen princess of Kief, who was baptized and sainted by the Russian Church. The feminine form, Olga, or Volga, corresponds to the masculine name Oleg, or Olg, the earliest legendary character of Kief. His surname was Viechtchig—the sage or sorcerer” (i.e., wizard, and from a cognate root). “In popular songs he is called Volga, or Volkh, which is related to Volkv, a sorcerer. The Russian annals speak of the Volkv of Finland, who are represented as Shamans.” Niya Predania i Raskazi (“Traditions and Popular Tales of Lesser Russia,” by M. Dragomanoff, Kief, 1876) in Russian.
I have in the chapter on curing the disorders of children spoken of Lilith, or Herodias, who steals the new-born infants. She and her twelve daughters are also types of the different kinds of fever for which the gypsies have so many cures of the same character, precisely as those which were used by the old Bogomiles. The characteristic point is that this female spirit is everywhere regarded as the cause of catalepsy or fits. Hence the invocation to St. Sisinie is used in driving them away. This invocation written, is carried as an amulet or fetish. I give the translation of one of these from the Roumanian, in which the Holy Virgin is taken as the healer. It is against cramp in the night:—
“Spell Against Night-cramp.
“There is a mighty hill, and on this hill is a golden apple-tree.
“Under the golden apple-tree is a golden stool.
“On the stool—who sits there?
“There sits the Mother of God with Saint Maria; with the boxes in her right hand, with the cup in her left.
“She looks up and sees naught, she looks down and sees my Lord and Lady Disease.
“Lords and Ladies Cramp, Lord and Lady Vampire—Lord Wehrwolf and his wives.
“They are going to —— (the sufferer), to drink his blood and put in him a foul heart.
“The Mother of God, when she saw them, went down to them, spoke to them, and asked them, ‘Whither go ye, Lord and Lady Disease, Lords and Ladies Cramp, &c.?’
“ ‘We go to —— to drink his blood, to change his heart to a foul one.’
“ ‘No, ye shall return; give him his blood back, restore him his own heart, and leave him immediately.’
“Cramps of the night, cramps of the midnight, cramps of the day, cramps wherever they are. From water, from the wind, go out from the brain, from the light of the face, from the hearing of the ears, from his heart, from his hands and feet, from the soles of his feet.
“Go and hide where black cocks never crow,[3] where men never go, where no beast roars.
“Hide yourself there, stop there, and never show yourself more!
“May —— remain pure and glad, as he was made by God, and was fated by the Mother of God!
“The spell is mine—the cure is God’s.”
In reference to the name Herodias (here identified with Lilith, the Hebrew mother of all devils and goblins); it was a great puzzle to the writers on witchcraft why the Italian witches always said they had two queens whom they worshipped—Diana and Herodias. The latter seems to have specially presided at the witch-dance. In this we can see an evident connection with the Herodias of the New Testament.
I add to this a few more very curious old Slavonian spells from Dr. Gaster’s work, as they admirably illustrate one of the principal and most interesting subjects connected with the gypsy witchcraft; that is to say, its relation to early Shamanism and the forms in which its incantations were expressed. In all of these it may be taken for granted, from a great number of closely-allied examples, that the Christianity in them is recent and that they all go back to the earliest heathen times. The following formula, dating from 1423, against snake-bites bears the title:—
“Prayer of St. Paul against Snakes.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I once was a persecutor, but am now a true follower; and I went from my dwelling-place in Sicily, and they set light to a trunk, and a snake came therefrom and bit my right hand and hung from it. But I had in me the power of God, and I shook it off into the burning fire and it was destroyed, and I suffered no ill from the bite. I laid myself down to sleep; then the mighty angel said: ‘Saul, Paul, stand up and receive this writing’; and I found in it the following words:
“ ‘I exorcise you, sixty and a half kinds of beasts that creep on the earth, in the name of God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, and in the name of the immovable throne.
“ ‘Serpent of Evil, I exorcise thee in the name of the burning river which rises under the footstool of the Saviour, and in the name of His incorporeal angels!
“ ‘Thou snake of the tribe of basilisks, thou foul-headed snake, twelve-headed snake, variegated snake, dragon-like snake, that art on the right side of hell, whomsoever thou bitest thou shalt have no power to harm, and thou must go away with all the twenty-four kinds. If a man has this prayer and this curse of the true, holy apostle, and a snake bites him, then it will die on the spot, and the man that is bitten shall remain unharmed, to the honour of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, now and for all time. Amen.’ ”
It is not improbable that we have in Paul and the Serpent and the formula for curing its bite (which is a common symbol for all disease) a souvenir of Esculapius, the all-healer, and his serpent. The following is “a prayer against the toothache, to be carried about with one,” i.e., as an amulet prayer:—
“Spell for the Toothache.
“Saint Peter sat on a stone and wept. Christ came to him and said, ‘Peter, why weepest thou?’ Peter answered, ‘Lord, my teeth pain me.’ The Lord thereupon ordered the worm in Peter’s tooth to come out of it and never more go in again. Scarcely had the worm come out when the pain ceased. Then spoke Peter, ‘I pray you, O Lord, that when these words be written out and a man carries them he shall have no toothache.’ And the Lord answered, ‘’Tis well, Peter; so may it be!’ ”
It will hardly be urged that this Slavonian charm of Eastern origin could have been originated independently in England. The following, which is there found in the north, is, as Gaster remarks, “in the same wording”:—
“Peter was sitting on a marble stone,
And Jesus passed by.
Peter said, ‘My Lord, my God,
How my tooth doth ache!’
Jesus said, ‘Peter art whole!
And whosoever keeps these words for My sake
Shall never have the toothache.’ ”
The next specimen is a—
“Charm against Nose-bleeding.
“Zachariah was slain in the Lord’s temple, and his blood turned into stone. Then stop, O blood, for the Lord’s servant, ——. I exorcise thee, blood, that thou stoppest in the name of the Saviour, and by fear of the priests when they perform the liturgy at the altar.”
Those who sell these charms are almost universally supposed to be mere quacks and humbugs. If this were the case, why do they so very carefully learn and preserve these incantations, transmitting them
“as a rich legacy
Unto their issue.”
But they really do believe in them, and will give great prices for them. Prof. Dragomanoff told me that once in Malo-Russia it became generally known that he had made a MS. collection of such spells. A peasant who was desirous of becoming a sorcerer, but who had very few incantations of his own, went whenever he could by stealth into the Professor’s library and surreptitiously copied his incantations. And when Prof. Dragomanoff returned the next year to that neighbourhood, he found the peasant doing a very good business as a conjuring doctor, or faith-healer. I have a lady correspondent in the United States who has been initiated into Voodoo and studied Indian-negro witchcraft under two eminent teachers, one a woman, the other a man. The latter, who was at the very head of the profession, sought the lady’s acquaintance because he had heard that she possessed some very valuable spells. In the fourth or highest degree, as in Slavonian or Hungarian gypsy-magic, this Indian-Voodoo deals exclusively with the spirits of the forest and stream.
M. Kounavine, as set forth by Dr. A. Elysseeff (Gypsy-Lore Journal, July, 1890), gives a Russian gypsy incantation by which the fire is invoked to cure illness. It is as follows:—
“Great Fire, my defender and protector, son of the celestial fire, equal of the sun who cleanses the earth of foulness, deliver this man from the evil sickness that torments him night and day!”
The fire is also invoked to punish, or as an ordeal, e.g.:—
“Fire, who punishest the evil-doer, who hatest falsehood, who scorchest the impure, thou destroyest offenders; thy flame devoureth the earth. Devour —— if he says what is not true, if he thinks a lie, and if he acts deceitfully.”
These are pronounced by the gypsy sorcerer facing the burning hearth. There is another in which fire is addressed as Jandra, and also invoked to punish an offender:—
“Jandra, bearer of thunderbolts, great Periani (compare Parjana, an epithet of Indra, Slavonic Perun), bearer of lightning, slay with thy thunderbolt and burn with thy celestial fire him who dares to violate his oath.”
[1] “It is said that if the bones of a green frog which has been eaten by ants are taken, those on the left side will provoke hatred, and those on the right side excite love” (“Div. Cur.,” c. 23)…. “One species of frog called rubeta, because it lives among brambles, is said to have wonderful powers. Brought into an assembly of people it imposes silence. If the little bone in its right side be thrown into boiling water it chills it at once. It excites love when put into a draught” (“Castle Saint Angelo and the Evil Eye,” by W. W. Story). [↑]
[2] According to Pliny, the tooth of a wolf hung to the neck of an infant was believed to be an efficient amulet against disease; and a child’s tooth caught before it falls to the ground and set in a bracelet was considered to be beneficial to women. Nat. Hist. lib. xxvi., cap. 10 (“Castle Saint Angelo and the Evil Eye,” by W. W. Story). [↑]
[3] This cannot fail to remind many readers of the land—
“Where the cock never crew,
Where the sun never shone and the wind never blew.”
CHAPTER III.
GYPSY CONJURATIONS AND EXORCISMS—THE CURE OF CHILDREN—HUNGARIAN GYPSY SPELLS—A CURIOUS OLD ITALIAN “SECRET”—THE MAGIC VIRTUE OF GARLIC—A FLORENTINE INCANTATION LEARNED FROM A WITCH—LILITH, THE CHILD-STEALER, AND QUEEN OF THE WITCHES.
In all the schools of Shamanic sorcery, from those of the Assyrian-Accadian to the widely-spread varieties of the present day, the Exorcism forms the principal element. An exorcism is a formula, the properties or power of which is that when properly pronounced, especially if this be done with certain fumigations and ceremonies, it will drive away devils, diseases, and disasters of every description; nay, according to very high, and that by no means too ancient, authority, it is efficacious in banishing bugs, mice, or locusts, and it is equal to Persian powder as a fuge for fleas, but is, unfortunately, too expensive to be used for that purpose save by the very wealthy. It has been vigorously applied against the grape disease, the Colorado beetle, the army worm, and the blizzard in the United States, but, I believe, without effect, owing possibly to differences of climate or other antagonistic influences.
Closely allied to the Exorcism is the Benediction, which soon grew out of it as a cure. The former being meant to repel and drive away evil, the latter very naturally suggested itself, by a law of moral polarity, as a means of attracting good fortune, blessings, health, and peace. As the one was violently curative, the other was preventive. The benediction would keep the devils and all their works away from a man or his home—in fact, if stables be only well blessed once a year, no mishaps can come to any of the animals who inhabit them; and I myself have known a number of donkeys to receive a benediction in Rome, the owner being assured that it would keep them safe from all the ills which donkeys inherit. And in the year 1880, in one of the principal churches of Philadelphia, blessed candles were sold to a congregation under guarantee that the purchase of one would preserve its possessor for one year against all disorders of the throat, on which occasion a sermon was preached, in the which seven instances were given in which people had thus been cured.
Between blessing and banning it soon became evident that many formulas of words could be used to bring about mysterious results. It is probable that the Exorcism in its original was simply the angry, elevated tone of voice which animals as well as men instinctively employ to repel an enemy or express a terror. For this unusual language would be chosen, remembered, and repeated. With every new utterance this outcry or curse would be more seriously pronounced or enlarged till it became an Ernulphian formula. The next step would be to give it metric form, and its probable development is very interesting. It does not seem to have occurred to many investigators that in early ages all things whatever which were remembered and repeated were droned and intoned, or sing-sung, until they fell of themselves into a kind of metre. In all schools at the present day, where boys are required to repeat aloud and all together the most prosaic lessons, they end by chanting them in rude rhythm. All monotone, be it that of a running brook, falls into cadence and metre. All of the sagas, or legends, of the Algonkin-Wabanaki were till within even fifty years chants or songs, and if they are now rapidly losing that character it is because they are no longer recited with the interest and accuracy which was once observed in the narrators. But it was simply because all things often repeated were thus intoned that the exorcisms became metrical. It is remarkable that among the Aryan races it assumed what is called the staff-rhyme, like that which Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, and Byron, and many more employ, as it would seem, instinctively, whenever witches speak or spells or charms are uttered. It will not escape the reader that, in the Hungarian gypsy incantations in this work, the same measure is used as that which occurs in the Norse sagas, or in the scenes of Macbeth. It is also common in Italy. This is intelligible—that its short, bold, deeply-marked movement has in itself something mysterious and terrible. If that wofully-abused word “weird” has any real application to anything, it is to the staff-rhyme. I believe that when a man, and particularly a woman, does not know what else to say, he or she writes “lurid,” or “weird,” and I lately met with a book of travels in which I found the latter applied seventy-six times to all kinds of conundrums, until I concluded that, like the coachman’s definition of an idea in Heine’s “Reisebilder,” it meant simply “any d——d nonsense that a man gets into his head.” But if weird really and only means that which is connected with fate or destiny, from the Anglo-Saxon Weordan, to become, German, Werden, then it is applicable enough to rhymes setting forth the future and spoken by the “weird sisters,” who are so-called not because they are awful or nightmarish, or pokerish, or mystical, or bug-a-boorish, but simply because they predict the future or destiny of men. “The Athenians as well as Gentiles excelled in these songs of sorcery, hence we are told (Varro, “Q. de Fascin”) that in Achaia, when they learned that a certain woman who used them was an Athenian they stoned her to death, declaring that the immortal gods bestowed on man the power of healing with stones, herbs, and animals, not with words” (“De Rem. Superstit. Cognos cendis”). Truly, doctors never agree.
It was in 1886 that I learned from a girl in Florence two exorcisms or invocations which she was accustomed to repeat before telling fortunes by cards. This girl, who was of the Tuscan Romagna and who looked Etruscan with a touch of gypsy blood, was a repertory of popular superstitions, especially witch-lore, and a maker and wearer of fetishes, always carrying a small bag full of them. Bon sang ne peut mentir.
The two formulas were as follows. I omit a portion from each:—
“Venti cinque carte siete!
Venti cinque diavoli diventerete,
Diventerete, anderete
Nel’ corpo, nel’ sangue nell’ anima,
Nell’ sentimenti del corpo;
Del mio amante non posso vivere,
Non passa stare ne bere,
Ne mangiare ne …
Ne con uomini ne con donne non passa favellare,
Finche a la porta di casa mia
Non viene picchiare!”
“Ye are twenty-five cards,
Become twenty-five devils!
Enter into the body, into the blood, into the soul;
Into the feelings of the body
Of my lover, from whom I cannot live.
For I cannot stand (exist), or drink,
Or eat …
Nor can I converse with men or women
Till at the door of my house
He shall come to knock.”
The second incantation was the same, but beginning with these words:—
“I put five fingers on the wall,
I conjure five devils,
Five monks and five friars,
That they may enter the body
Into the blood, into the soul,” &c.
If the reader will take Le Normant’s “Magie Chaldaienne,” and carefully compare these Italian spells with those of ancient Nineveh, he will not only find a close general resemblance, but all the several details or actual identity of words. And it is not a little curious that the same formulas which were repeated—
“Once on a time when Babylon was young”—
should still be current in Italy. So it passed through the ages—races came and went—and among the people the old sorcery was handed across and adown, so that it still lives. But in a few years more the Folk-lorist will be its only repository.
This chapter is devoted to conjuring diseases of children by gypsies. It bears a great likeness to one in the very devout work of Peter Pipernus, “De Pueris affectis morbis magicis” (“Of Boys who have been Bewitched into Disease”), only that Pipernus uses Catholic incantations, which he also employs “pro ligatis in matrimonio,” “pro incubo magico,” “de dolóribus stomachi magicis,” &c., for to him, as he declares, all disease is of magic origin.
The magic of the gypsies is not all deceit, though they deceive with it. They put faith themselves in their incantations, and practise them on their own account. “And they believe that there are women, and sometimes men, who possess supernatural power, partly inherited and partly acquired.” The last of seven daughters born in succession, without a boy’s coming into the series, is wonderfully gifted, for she can see hidden treasure or spirits, or enjoy second sight of many things invisible to men. And the same holds good for the ninth in a series of boys, who may become a seer of the same sort. Such a girl, i.e., a seventh daughter, being a fortune in herself, never lacks lovers. In 1883 the young Vojvode, or leader, of the Kukaya gypsy tribe, named Danku Niculai, offered the old gypsy woman, Pale Boshe, one hundred ducats if she would persuade her seventh daughter to marry him. In the United States of America there are many women who advertise in the newspapers that they also are seventh daughters of seventh daughters at that, and who make a good thing of it as fortune-tellers; but they have a far more speedy, economical, and effective way of becoming the last note in an octave, than by awaiting the slow processes of being begotten or born, inasmuch as they boldly declare themselves to be sevenths, which I am assured answers every purpose, as nobody ever asks to see their certificates of baptism any more than of marriage.[1]
Most of these witch-wives—also known in Hungary as cohalyi, or “wise women,” or gule romni, “sweet” or “charming women”—are trained up from infancy by their mothers in medicine and magic. A great part of this education consists in getting by heart the incantations or formulas of which specimens will be given anon, and which, in common with their fairy tales, show intrinsic evidence of having been drawn at no very distant period from India, and probably in common with the lower or Shamanic religion of India from Turanian sources. But there is among the Hungarian gypsies a class of female magicians who stand far above their sisters of the hidden spell in power. These are the lace romni, or “good women,” who draw their power directly from the Nivasi or Pchuvusi, the spirits of water and earth, or of flood and fell. For the Hungarian gypsies have a beautiful mythology of their own which at first sight would seem to be a composition of the Rosicrucian as set forth by Paracelsus and the Comte de Gabalis, with the exquisite Indo-Teutonic fairy tales of the Middle Ages. In fact, in some of the incantations used we find the Urme, or fairies, directly appealed to for help.
With the gypsies, as among the early Accadians, diseases are supposed to be caused by evil supernatural influences. This is more naturally the case among people who lead very simple lives, and with whom sickness is not almost a natural or normal condition, as it is with ladies and gentlemen, or the inhabitants of cities, who have “always something the matter with them.” Nomadic life is conducive to longevity. “Our grandfathers died on the gallows—we die from losing our teeth,” said an old gypsy to Doctor von Wlislocki, when asked what his age was. Therefore among all people who use charms and spells those which are devoted to cure occupy the principal position. However, the Hungarian Romany have many medicines, more or less mysterious, which they also apply in connection with the “healing rhymes.” And as in the struggle for life the weakest go first to the wall, the remedies for the diseases of children are predominant.
When a mother begins to suffer the pangs of childbirth, a fire is made before her tent, which is kept up till the infant is baptized, in order to drive away evil spirits. Certain women feed this fire, and while fanning it (fans being used for bellows) murmur the following rhyme:—
“Oh yakh, oh yakh pçabuva,
Pçabuva,
Te čavéstár tu trádá,
Tu trada,
Pçúvushen te Nivashen
Tire tçuva the traden!
Lače Urmen ávená,
Čaves báçtáles dena,
Káthe hin yov báçtáles,
Andre lime báçtáles!
Motura te ráná,
Te átunci but’ ráná,
Motura te ráná,
Te átunci, but’ ráná,
Me dav’ andre yákherá!
Oh yákh, oh yákh pçabuva,
Rovel čavo: áshuna!”
It may here be remarked that the pronunciation of all these words is the same as in German, with the following additions. C = teh in English, or to ch in church. C = ch in German as in Buch. J = azs, or the English j, in James; n, as in Spanish, or nj in German, while sh and y are pronounced as in English. Á is like ah. The literal translation is:—
“Oh Fire, oh Fire, burn!
Burn!
And from the child (do) thou drive away
Drive away!
Pçuvuse and Nivashi
And drive away thy smoke (pl.)
(Let) good fairies come (and)
Give luck to the child,
Here it is lucky (or fortunate)
In the world fortunate
Brooms and twigs (fuel)
And then more twigs,
And then yet more twigs
I put (give) to the fire.
Oh fire, oh fire—burn!
The child weeps: listen!”
In South Hungary the gypsy women on similar occasions sing the following charm:—
“Eftá Pçuvushá, efta Niváshá
André mal avená
Pçabuven, pçabuven, oh yákhá!
Dáyákri punro dindálen,
Te gule čaves mudáren;
Pçabuven, pçabuven, oh yákhá;
Ferinen o čaves te daya!”
“Seven Pçuvushe, seven Nivasi
Come into the field,
Burn, burn, oh fire!
They bite the mother’s foot,
They destroy the sweet child;
Fire, fire, oh burn!
Protect the child and the mother!”
When the birth is very difficult, the mother’s relations come to help, and one of them lets an egg fall, zwischen den Beinen derselben. On this occasion the gypsy women in Southern Hungary sing:—
“Ánro, ánro in obles,
Te e pera in obles:
Ava čavo sástávestes!
Devlá, devlá, tut akharel!”
“The egg, the egg is round,
And the belly is round,
Come child in good health!
God, God calls thee!”
If a woman dies in child-bed two eggs are placed under her arms and the following couplet is muttered:—
“Kana anro kirnes hin,
Kathe nañi tçudá hin!”
“When this egg is (shall be) decayed,
Here (will be) is no milk!”
When the after-pains begin it is the custom with some of the gypsy tribes in the Siebenburgen to smoke the sufferer with decayed willow-wood which is burned for the purpose while the women in attendance sing:—
“Sik te sik o tçu urál,
Te urál o čon urál!
Kana len hádjináven
Sasčipená tut’ áven;
Káná o tçu ná urál—
Tute náñi the dukhal,
Tute náñi the dukhal.”
“Fast and fast the smoke flies,
And flies, the moon flies,
When they find (themselves)
Health (yet) will come to thee,
“When the smoke no (longer) flies
Thou wilt feel pain no more!”
There is a strange, mysterious affinity between gypsies and the moon. A wonderful legend, which they certainly brought from India since in it Mekran is mentioned as the place where its incident occurred, details that there, owing to the misrepresentations of a sorcerer, the gypsy leader, Chen, was made to marry his sister Guin, or Kan, which brought the curse of wandering upon his people. Hence the Romany are called Chen-Guin. It is very evident that here we have Chon and Kan, or Kam, the Moon and Sun, which is confirmed by another gypsy legend which declares that the Sun, because he once violated or still seeks to seduce his sister, the Moon, continually follows her, being destined to wander for ever. And as the name Chen-Kan, or Zingan, or Zigeuner, is known all over the East, and, as this legend shows, is of Indian origin, it is hardly worth while to believe with Miklosich that it is derived from an obscure Greek heretical sect of Christians—the more so as it is most difficult to believe that the Romany were originally either Greeks or Christians or Christian heretics.
When a gypsy woman is with child she will not, if she can help it, leave her tent by full moonshine. A child born at this time it is believed will make a happy marriage. So it is said of birth in the Western World:—
“Full moon, high sea,
Great man thou shalt be;
Red dawning, cloudy sky,
Bloody death shalt thou die.
“Pray to the Moon when she is round,
Luck with you will then abound,
What you seek for shall be found
On the sea or solid ground.”
Moon-worship is very ancient; it is alluded to as a forbidden thing in the Book of Job. From early times witches and other women worked their spells when stark-naked by the light of the full moon, which is evidently derived from the ancient worship of that planet and the shameless orgies connected with it. Dr. Wlislocki simply remarks on this subject that the moon has, in the gypsy incantation, “eine Phallische Bedeutung.” In ancient symbolism the horns of the moon were regarded as synonymous with the horns of the ox—hence their connection with agriculture, productiveness, and fertility, or the generative principle, and from this comes the beneficent influence not only of the horns, but of horse-shoes, boars’ tusks, crabs’ claws, and pieces of coral resembling them.
The great love of gypsy mothers for their children, says Wlislocki, induces their friends to seek remedies for the most trifling disorders. At a later period, mother and child are left to Mother Nature—or the vis medicatrix Naturæ. What is greatly dreaded is the Berufen, or being called on, “enchanted,” in English “overlooked,” or subjected to the evil eye. An universal remedy for this is the following:—
A jar is filled with water from a stream, and it must be taken with, not against, the current as it runs. In it are placed seven coals, seven handfuls of meal, and seven cloves of garlic, all of which is put on the fire. When the water begins to boil it is stirred with a three-forked twig, while the wise woman repeats:—
“Miseç’ yakhá tut dikhen,
Te yon káthe mudáren!
Te átunci eftá coká
Te çaven miseçe yakhá;
Miseç’ yakhá tut dikhen,
Te yon káthe mudáren!
But práhestár e yakhá
Atunci kores th’ávená;
Miseç’ yakhá tut dikhen
Te yon káthe mudáren!
Pçábuvená pçábuvená
Andre develeskero yakhá!”
“Evil eyes look on thee,
May they here extinguished be!
And then seven ravens
Evil eyes (now) look on thee,
May they soon extinguished be!
Much dust in the eyes,
Thence may they become blind,
Evil eyes now look on thee;
May they soon extinguished be!
May they burn, may they burn
In the fire of God!”
Dr. Wlislocki remarks that the “seven ravens” are probably represented by the seven coals, while the three-pointed twig, the meal and the garlic, symbolize lightning. He does not observe that the stick may be the triçula or trident of Siva—whence probably the gipsy word trushul, a cross; but the connection is very obvious. It is remarkable that the gypsies assert that lightning leaves behind it a smell like that of garlic. As garlic forms an important ingredient in magic charms, the following from “The Symbolism of Nature” (“Die Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur”), by J. B. Friedrich, will be found interesting:—
“We find in many forms spread far and wide the belief that garlic possesses the magic power of protection against poison and sorcery. This comes, according to Pliny, from the fact that when it is hung up in the open air for a time, it turns black, when it is supposed to attract evil into itself—and, consequently, to withdraw it from the wearer. The ancients believed that the herb which Mercury gave to Ulysses to protect him from the enchantment of Circe, and which Homer calls moly, was the alium nigrum, or garlic, the poison of the witch being a narcotic. Among the modern Greeks and Turks, garlic is regarded as the most powerful charm against evil spirits, magic, and misfortune. For this reason they carry it with them, and hang it up in their houses as a protection against storms and bad weather. So their sailors carry with them a sack of it to avert shipwreck. If any one utters a word of praise with the intention of fascinating or of doing harm, they cry aloud ‘Garlic!’ or utter it three times rapidly. In Aulus Persius Flaccus (Satyr. V.) to bite garlic averts magic and the evils which the gods send to those who are wanting in reverence for them. According to a popular belief the mere pronunciation of ‘Garlic!’ protects one from poison.”
It appears to be generally held among them and the Poles that this word prevents children from “beschreien werden” that is, from being banned, or overlooked, or evil-eyed. And among the Poles garlic is laid under children’s pillows to protect them from devils and witches. (Bratraneck, “Beiträge zur Æsthetik der Pflanzenwelt,” p. 56). The belief in garlic as something sacred appears to have been very widely spread, since the Druids attributed magic virtues to it; hence the reverence for the nearly allied leek, which is attached to King David and so much honoured by the Welsh.
“Tell him I’ll knock his leek about his pate
Upon Saint David’s Day.”—Shakespeare.
The magic virtues of garlic were naturally enough also attributed to onions and leeks, and in a curious Italian work, entitled “Il Libro del Comando,” attributed (falsely) to Cornelius Agrippa, I find the following:—
“Segreto magico d’indovinare, colle cipole, la salute d’una persona lontana. A magic secret to divine with onions the health of a person far distant. Gather onions on the Eve of Christmas and put them on an altar, and under every onion write the name of the persons as to whom one desires to be informed, ancorche non scrivano, even if they do not write.
“The onion (planted) which sprouts the first will clearly announce that the person whose name it bears is well.
“And in the same manner we can learn the name of the husband or wife whom we should choose, and this divination is in use in many cantons of Germany.”
Very much allied to this is the following love charm from an English gypsy:—
“Take an onion, a tulip, or any root of the kind (i.e. a bulbous root?), and plant it in a clean pot never used before; and while you plant it repeat the name of the one whom you love, and every day, morning and evening, say over it:—
“ ‘As this root grows
And as this blossom blows,
May her heart be
Turned unto me!’
“And it will come to pass that every day the one whom you love will be more and more inclined to you, till you get your heart’s desire.”
A similar divination is practised by sowing cress or lettuce seed in the form of names in gardens. If it grows well the one who plants it will win the love of the person indicated.
As regards the use of coals in incantations, Marcellus Burdigalensis,[2] a Latin physician of the third century, who has left us a collection of Latin and Gaelic charms, recommends for a cure for toothache: “Salis granum, panis micam, carbonem mortuum in phœnicio alligabis,” i.e., to carry a grain of salt, a crumb of bread, and a coal, in a red bag.
When the witch-brew of coals, garlic, and meal is made, and boiled down to a dry residuum, it is put into a small three-cornered bag, and hung about the child’s neck, on which occasion the appropriate rhyme is repeated nine times. “And it is of special importance that the bag shall be made of a piece of linen, which must be stolen, found, or begged.”
To learn whether a child has been overlooked, or evil-eyed, or enchanted, the “wise woman” takes it in her arms, and goes to the next running stream. There she holds the face of the babe as nearly as she can to the water, and repeats:—
“Páñi, páñi sikova,
Dikh the upré, dikh télé!
Buti páñi sikovel
Buti pál yákh the dikhel
Te ákáná mudárel.”
“Water, water, hasten!
Look up, look down!
Much water hastens
(May) as much come into the eye
Which looked evil on thee,
And may it now perish.”
If the running brook makes a louder sound than usual then it is supposed to say that the child is enchanted, but if it runs on as before then something else is the matter, and to ascertain what it is other charms and ceremonies are had recourse to. This incantation indicates, like many others, a constant dwelling in lonely places, by wood and stream, as gypsies wont to do, and sweet familiarity with Nature, until one hears sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and voices in the wind.[3] Civilized people who read about Red Indian sorcerers and gypsy witches very promptly conclude that they are mere humbugs or lunatics—they do not realize how these people, who pass half their lives in wild places watching waving grass and falling waters, and listening to the brook until its cadence speaks in real song, believe in their inspirations, and feel that there is the same mystical feeling and presence in all things that live and move and murmur as well as in themselves. Now we have against this the life of the clubs and family, of receptions and business, factories and stock-markets, newspapers and “culture.” Absolutely no one who lives in “the movement” can understand this sweet old sorcery. But nature is eternal, and while grass grows and rivers run man is ever likely to fall again into the eternal enchantments. And truly until he does he will have no new poetry, no fresh art, and must go on copying old ideas and having wretchedly worn-out exhibitions in which there is not one original idea.
If it appears that the child is overlooked, or “berufen,” many means are resorted to, “one good if another fails,” but we have here to do only with those which are connected with incantations. A favourite one is the following: Three twigs are cut, each one from a different tree, and put into a pipkin which has been filled with water dipped or drawn with, not against, the current of a stream. Three handfuls of meal are then put in and boiled down to a Brei, or pudding. A horse hair is then wound round a needle, which is stuck not by the point but by the head into the inner bottom of a tub, which is filled with water, and placed upon this is the pipkin with the pudding. Then the “overlooked,” or evil-seen child is held over the tub while the following rhyme is chanted:—
“Páñi, páñi lunjárá,
Páñi, páñi isbiná;
Te náshválipen çucá
Náshválipen mudárá,
Mudára te ákáná,
Káthe beshá ñikáná,
Sár práytiña sutyárel,
Káthe ándre piri, ándre piri,
Nivasheshe les dávás!”
“Water, water, spread!
Water, water, stretch!
And sickness disappear,
Sickness be destroyed,
Be destroyed now.
Remain not here at all!
Who ever has overlooked this child
As this leaf in the pot (maybe)
Be given to the Nivashi!”
This is repeated nine times, when the water in the tub, with the pipkin and its contents, are all thrown into the stream from which the water was drawn. This is a widely-spread charm, and it is extremely ancient. The pipkin placed across the tub or trough—trog—here signifies a bridge, and Wlislocki tells us that no Transylvanian tent-gypsy will cross a bridge without first spitting thrice over the rails into the water. The bridge plays an important part in the mythology and Folk-lore of many races. The ancient Persians had their holy mountain, Albordi, or Garotman, the abode of gods and blessed souls, to which they passed by the bridge Cin-vat, or Chinevad, whence the creed: “I believe in the resurrection of the dead; that all bodies shall live renewed again, and I believe that by the bridge Cin-vat all good deeds will be rewarded, and all evil deeds punished.” The punishment is apparent from the parallel of the bridge Al Sirat, borrowed by the Mahommedans from the Persians, over which the good souls passed to reward, and from which the wicked tumbled down into hell.
When I first met Emerson in 1849 I happened to remark that a bridge in a landscape was like a vase in a room, the point on which an eye trained to the picturesque involuntarily rested. Nearly thirty years after, when we were both living at Shepherd’s Hotel in Cairo, he reminded me of this one day when by the Nile we were looking at a bridge. As a bridge must cross a stream, or a torrent which is generally beautiful by itself, and as the cross or span has the effect of defining and framing the picture, as a circlet or tiara sets off a beautiful head, it is not remarkable that in all ages men have made such objects subjects of legend and song. Hence the oft-repeated Devil’s Bridge, so-called because it seemed to simple peasants impossible for mere mortals to build, although bridges are habitually and more naturally connected with salvation and saints. He who in early ages built a bridge, did a great deed in times when roads were rare; hence the great priest was called the Pontifex.
Another spell for the purpose of averting the effects of the evil eye is as follows: The mother of the overlooked child fills her mouth with salt water, and lets it drop or trickle on the limbs of the infant, and when this has been done, repeats:—
“Miseç yákhá tut dikhen
Sár páñori—
Mudaren!
Náshvalipen prejia:
Andral t’ro shero
Andral t’re kolyin,
Andral t’re por
Andral t’re punrá
Andral t’re vástá
Kathe prejánen,—
Andre yákhá yon jánen!”
“False (evil) eyes see thee,
Like this water
May they perish!
Sickness depart
From thy head,
From thy breast,
From thy belly,
From thy feet,
From thy hands,
May they go hence
Into the evil eyes!”
It may be observed that meal forms an ingredient in several of these sorceries. It is a very ancient essential to sacrifices, and is offered to the spirits of the stream to appease them, as it was often given for the same purpose to the wind. The old Germans, says Prætorius, imagined the storm-wind as a starving, ravenous being, and sought to appease it by throwing meal to it. So it happened once even of later years near Bamberg when a mighty wind was raging one night that an old woman took her meal-bag and threw its contents out of the window, saying:—
“Lege dich, lieber Wind,
Bringe dies deinem Kind!”
“Dear Wind, be not so wild,
Take that unto thy child!”
“In which thing,” adds the highly Protestant Prætorius (“Anthropodemus Plutonicus,” p. 429), “she was like the Papists who would fain appease the Donnerwetter, or thunderstorms, with the sound of baptized bells, as though they were raging round like famished lions, or grim wolves, or a soldier foraging, seeking what they may devour.” The Wind here represents the Wild Hunter, or the Storm, the leader of the Wüthende Heer, or “raging army,” who, under different names, is the hero of so many German legends.
That the voice of the wind should seem like that of wild beasts roaring for food would occur naturally enough to any one who was familiar with both.
When a child refuses the breast the gypsies believe that a Pçuvus-wife, or a female spirit of the earth has secretly sucked it. In such a case they place between the mother’s breasts onions, and repeat these words:—
“Pçuvushi, Pçuvushi,
Ac tu náshvályi
Tiro tçud ač yakhá,
Andre pçuv tu pçábuvá!
Thávdá, thávdá miro tçud,
Thávdá, thávdá, parno tçud,
Thávdá, thávdá, sár kámáv,—
Mre čáveske bokhale!”
“Earth-spirit! Earth-spirit!
Be thou ill.
Let thy milk be fire!
Burn in the earth!
Flow, flow, my milk!
Flow, flow, white milk!
Flow, flow, as I desire
To my hungry child!”
The same is applied when the milk holds back or will not flow, as it is then supposed that a Pçuvus-wife has secretly suckled her own child at the mother’s breast. It is an old belief that elves put their own offspring in the place of infants, whom they sometimes steal. This subject of elf-changelings is extensively treated by all the writers on witchcraft. There is even a Latin treatise, or thesis, devoted to defining the legal and social status, rights, &c., of such beings. It is entitled, “De Infantibus Supposititiis, vulgo Wechsel-Bälgen,” Dresden, 1678. “Such infants,” says the author (John Valentine Merbitz), “are called Cambiones, Vagiones (à continuo vagitu), Germanis Küllkräpfe, Wechselkinder, Wechselbälge, all of which indicates, in German belief, children which have nothing human about them except the skin.”
When the child is subject to convulsive weeping or spasms, and loses its sleep, the mother takes a straw from the child’s sleeping-place and puts into her mouth. Then, while she is fumigated with dried cow-dung, into which the hair of the father and mother have been mingled, she chants:—
“Bala, bálá pçubuven,
Čik te bálá pçubuven,
Čik te bálá pçubuven,
Pçábuvel náshvályipen!”
“Hair, hair, burn!
Dirt and hair burn!
Dirt and hair burn!
Illness be burned!”
This bears manifest mark of Hindoo origin, and I have no doubt that the same ceremony in every detail is practised in India at the present day. In Southern Hungary convulsive weeping in children is cured as follows: In the evening, when the fire burns before the tent, the mother takes her child in her arms and carries it three times around the fire, putting on it a pipkin full of water, into which she puts three coals. With this water she washes the head of her child, and pours some of it on a black dog. Then she goes to the next stream or brook, and lets fall into it a red twist, saying:—
“Lává Niváshi ádá bolditori te láhá m’re čaveskro rovipen! Káná sástavestes ánáv me tute pçábáyá te yándrá.”
“Nivashi take this twist, and with it the weeping of my child. When it is well I will bring thee apples and eggs.”
When a child “bumps” its head the swelling is pressed with the blade of a knife, and the following spell is muttered thrice, seven, or nine times, according to the gravity of the injury:—
“Ač tu, ač tu, ač kovles,
The may sik tu mudarés!
Andre pcuv tu jiá,
Dikav tut me ñikáná!
Shuri, shuri, áná,
De pal pçuv!”
“Be thou, be thou, be thou weak (i.e., soft)
and very soon perish!
Go thou into the earth,
May I see thee never more!
Bring knives, knives,
Give (i.e., put) into the earth.”
Then the knife is stuck three, seven, or nine times into the earth. If the child or a grown person has a bleeding at the nose, some of the blood is covered with earth, and the following verse repeated:—
“Pçuvush, dáv tute
Pçuvush, lává mánge,
De tre cáveske
Hin may táte!
Sik lava!”
“Pcuvus, I give to thee,
Pcuvus, oh take from me,
Give it to thy child,
It is very warm,
Take it quickly!”
If the child has pains in the stomach, the hair of a black dog is burned to powder and kneaded with the mother’s milk and some of the fæces of the child into a paste. This prescription occurs in the magical medical formulas of Marcellus Burdigalenis, the court-physician at Rome in the fourth century: “Cape mel atticum et stercus infantis quod primum demittit, statim ex lacte mulieris quœ puerum allactat permiscebis et sic inunges,” &c. Most of the prescriptions of Marcellus were of ancient Etrurian origin, and I have found many of them still in use in the Romagna Toscana. This is put into a cloth and bound on the belly of the child. When it falls asleep a hole is bored in a tree and the paste put into it. The hole is then stopped up with a wooden plug, and while this is being done the following is repeated:—
“Andrál por prejiá,
André selene beshá!
Beshá beshá tu káthe!
Penáv, penáv me tute!”
“Depart from the belly
Live in the green! (tree)
Remain, remain thou here!
I say, I say to thee!”
The black dog is in many countries associated with sorcery and diabolical influences, and “in European heathendom it was an emblem of the evil principle. The black demon Černobog was represented by the Slavs as a black dog. Among the Wallachians there is a horrible vampire-like creature called Priccolitsh, or Priculics, who appears as a man in fine healthy condition, but by night he becomes a dog, kills people by the mere touch, and devours them.” The black dogs of Faust and of Cornelius Agrippa will occur to most readers.
Gypsies have always been regarded as sorcerers and child-stealers, and it is remarkable that Lilith, the mother of all witchcraft, did the same. At the present day the Slavonian gypsies have spells against such a spirit.
In the Chaldæan magic, as set forth by Lenormant, as I have already stated, the powers of evil are incarnate diseases, they are seven in number, and they are invoked by means of verses which bear an extraordinary resemblance to those which are still current in Italy as well as in other countries. According to some writers this is all mere chance coincidence, or due to concurrent causes and similar conditions in different countries. That diseases, like hunger, or death, or the terrors of the night, may have been incarnated as evil spirits naturally by all mankind may be granted, but when we find them arranged in categories of numbers, in widely different countries, employing the same means of banishing them—that is, by short songs and drum-beating—when we find these incantations in the same general forms, often with the same words, our belief as to the identity of origin is confirmed at every step. We can admit that the Jews were in Babylon and wandered thence all over the world, but that any other religious or superstitious system should have done the same would be obstinately denied. And by an incredible inconsistency, scholars who admit the early migrations of whole races on a vast scale, from the remotest regions of the East to Western Europe, deny that legends and myths come with them or that they could have spread in like manner.
One of the attributes of the witch of the Middle Ages in which she has been confused with the Queen of the Fairies, and fairies in general, is that she steals newly-born children. This is a very ancient attribute of the female demon or sorceress or strega, and it is found among Jews at the present day who believe in the Benemmerinnen, or witches who haunt women in childbirth as well as in Lilith. “The Jews banish this first wife of Adam by writing on the walls, ‘Adam chava chuz Lilith,’ (‘Keep away from here, Lilith!’)” (“Anthropodemus Plutonicus,” by John Prætorius, 1666). That it is very ancient is rendered probable because the famous Bogomile formula of incantation against the twelve fever-fits (Tresevica), or kinds of fever, turns entirely on the legend of six children stolen by the demon who is compelled to restore them. Here we have the very oldest form of witchcraft known, that is incarnate disease in numbers allied to child-stealing. This spell of the Tresevica is attributed, says Dr. Gaster, to Pope Jeremia, the founder of Bogomilism (the great Oriental Slavonian heresy which spread over Europe in the Middle Ages and prepared the way for Protestanism). “There is no doubt, therefore, that the spell is derived from the East, and I have elsewhere proved its existence in that quarter as early as the eighth century. It may have been of Manichæan origin. It has been preserved up to the present day in all the lands of Eastern Europe and, with certain modifications, exists among Germans and Jews.” Though attributed to Sisynios, the immediate follower of Manes, as chief of the Manichæans, it seems to have been derived from an earlier Oriental tale which became the basis of all later formulæ. I give it here in the Roumanian form, which closely resembles the old one. Here, as in all the other variants, the demon is a feminine one. The following is the legend:—
“I, Sisveas, I came down from the Mount of Olives, saw the Archangel Gabriel as he met the Avestitza, wing of Satan, and seized her by the hair and asked her where she was going. And she answered that she was going to cheat the holy Virgin by her tricks, steal the new-born child, and drink its blood. The archangel asked her how she could get into houses so as to steal the children, and she answered that she changed herself into a fly or a cat or such forms. But whosoever knew her twelve and a half (nineteen) names and wrote them out she could not touch. She told him these names, and they were written down.”
There is a Coptic as well as a Greek parallel to this. The fairy who steals the children is called Lilith, and is further identified with Herodias and her twelve daughters as personifications of different kinds of fever. This is extremely interesting, as it casts some light on a question which has greatly puzzled all writers on witchcraft as to how or why Herodias was so generally worshipped in company with Diana by witches as a goddess in Italy. This is mentioned by Pipernus, Grillandus, Mirandola, and Horst. The name is probably much older than that of the Herodias of the New Testament.
[1] Of the seventh son, Pipernus remarks in his book, “De Effectibus Magicis” (1647): “Est ne sanandi superstitiosus modus eorum, qui orti sunt die Parasceves, et quotquot nullo fœmines sexu intercedente, ac ab ortu septimi masculi legitimo thoro sunt nati? memorat Vairus, I. de fascinatione, II. Del Rius, lib. i., part 21. Garzonius nel Serraglio. J. Cæsar Baricellus secundus scriptor in hort. genialé.” [↑]
[2] “Über Marcellus Burdigalensis, von Jacob Grimm. Gelesen in der Academie der Wissenschaften,” 28 Juni, 1847 (Berlin. Dummler). In this work, as well as in the German Mythology, by the same author, and in Rudolf Roth’s “Litteratur und Geschichte des Veda” (Stuttgart, 1846), the reader will find, as also in the works of the elder Cato and Pliny, numbers of these incantations. [↑]
[3] The divination by the running brook has been known in other lands. The Highlanders when they consulted an oracle took their seer, wrapped him in the hide of a newly-killed ox or sheep, and left him in some wild ravine by a roaring torrent to pass the night. From such sights and sounds there resulted impressions which were reflected in his dreams (Vide Scott, “Lady of the Lake,” and notes). The fact that running water often makes sounds like the human voice has been observed by the Algonkin Indians of Maine and Nova Scotia (Vide “The Algonkin Legends of New England,” by Charles G. Leland). [↑]
CHAPTER IV.
SOUTH SLAVONIAN AND OTHER GYPSY WITCH-LORE.—THE WORDS FOR A WITCH—VILAS AND THE SPIRITS OF EARTH AND AIR—WITCHES, EGG-SHELLS, AND EGG-LORE—EGG PROVERBS—OVA DE CRUCIBUS.
There is current in the whole of the Southern Slavonian provinces a vast mass of legends and other lore relating to witches, which, in the opinion of Dr. Friedrich S. Krauss, may also be regarded as Romany, since it is held in common with the gypsies. There can, indeed, be very little doubt that most of it was derived from, or disseminated by, them, since they have been the principal masters in magic and doctors in medicine in the Slavonic lands for many centuries. There are others deeply learned in this subject who share the same opinion, it being certain that the gypsies could hardly have a separate lore for themselves and one for magic practices on others, and I entertain no doubt that they are substantially the same; but to avoid possible error and confusion, I give what I have taken in this kind from Dr. Krauss[1] and others by itself.
As the English word witch, Anglo-Saxon Wicca, comes from a root implying wisdom,[2] so the pure Slavonian word vjestica, Bulgarian, vjescirica (masculine, viestae), meant originally the one knowing or well informed, and it has preserved the same power in allied languages, as Veaa (New Slovenish), knowledge, Vedavica, a fortune-teller by cards, Viedma (Russian), a witch, and Vedwin, fatidicus. In many places, especially in Dalmatia, witches are more gently or less plainly called Krstaca, the crossed, from Krst, a cross, i.e., χριστός, or Rogulja, “horned,” derived from association with the horns of devils. In Croatia the Italian Striga is used, while among the Slovenes and Kai-Kroats the term copernica (masculine, coprnjak). “But it enrages the witches so much to be called by this word that when they hear that any one has used it they come to his house by night and tear him in four pieces, which they cast afar into the four quarters of the earth, yea, and thereunto carry away all the swine, horses, and cattle, so intolerable is their wrath.” Therefore men use the word hmana zena, or “common woman,” hmana being the Slavonic pronunciation of the German word gemein, or common. In Dalmatia and far into Servia a witch is called macisnica, and magic, mačija, which is, evidently enough, the Italian magia. But there are witches and witches, and it appears that among the learned the vjestica differs from the macionica, and this from the Zlokobnica who, as the “evil-meeter,” or one whom it is unlucky to encounter in the morning, is probably only one who has the evil eye. A quotation from a Servian authority, given by Dr. Krauss, is as follows:—
“I have often heard from old Hodzas and Kadijas, that every female Wallach, as soon as she is forty years old, abandons the ‘God be with us!’ and becomes a witch (vjestica), or at least a zlokobnica or macionica. A real witch has a mark of a cross under her nose, a zlokobnica has some hairs of a beard, and a macionica may be known by a forehead full of dark folds (frowns), with blood-spots in her face” (“Niz srpskih pripoviedaka. Vuk. vit. Vecevica. Pancevo,” p, 93. 1881).
Of the great number of South Slavonian terms for the verb to enchant or bewitch, it may suffice to say that the commencement, carati, cari carani, carovnik, &c., appear to have much more affinity to the gypsy chor-ava, to steal or swindle, and chov-hani, a witch, than to the Italian ciarlatano, and the French and English charlatan, from which Dr. Krauss derives them.