How is it possible for us, either, to imagine that the numerous recorded cases of the Blood Ordeal, which consisted in the suspected assassin touching the body of his victim, can have been either pure fictions or coincidences? Not very long ago, an experiment of a frightful nature is said to have been tried in France on a somnambulic person, by placing on the epigastric region a vial filled with the arterial blood of a criminal just guillotined. The effect asserted to have been produced was the establishment of a rapport between the somnambule and the deceased which endangered the life of the former.
Franz von Baader suggests the hypothesis of a vis sanguinis ultra mortem, and supposes that a rapport or communio vitæ may be established between the murderer and his victim; and he conceives the idea of this mutual relation to be the true interpretation of the sacrificial rites common to all countries, as also of the Blutschuld, or the requiring blood for blood.
With regard to the blood ordeal, the following are the two latest instances of it recorded to have taken place in this country; they are extracted from “Hargrave’s State Trials:”—
“Evidence having been given with respect to the death of Jane Norkott, an ancient and grave person, minister of the parish in Hertfordshire where the murder took place, being sworn, deposed, that the body being taken up out of the grave, and the four defendants being present, were required each of them, to touch the dead body. Okeman’s wife fell upon her knees, and prayed God to show token of her innocency. The appellant did touch the body, whereupon the brow of the deceased, which was before of a livid and carrion color, began to have a dew, or gentle sweat on it, which increased by degrees till the sweat ran down in drops on the face, the brow turned to a lively and fresh color, and the deceased opened one of her eyes and shut it again, and this opening the eye was done three several times; she likewise thrust out the ring, or marriage finger, three times, and pulled it in again, and blood dropped from the finger on the grass.
“Sir Nicholas Hyde, the chief justice, seeming to doubt this evidence, he asked the witness who saw these things besides him, to which he, the witness, answered, ‘My lord, I can not swear what others saw, but I do believe the whole company saw it; and if it had been thought a doubt, proof would have been made, and many would have attested with me. My lord,’ added the witness, observing the surprise his evidence awakened, ‘I am minister of the parish, and have long known all the parties, but never had displeasure against any of them, nor they with me, but as I was minister. The thing was wonderful to me, but I have not interest in the matter, except as called on to testify to the truth. My lord, my brother, who is minister of the next parish, is here present, and, I am sure, saw all that I have affirmed.’ ”
Hereupon, the brother, being sworn, he confirmed the above evidence in every particular, and the first witness added, that having dipped his finger into what appeared to be blood, he felt satisfied that it was really so. It is to be observed, that this extraordinary circumstance must have occurred, if it occurred at all, when the body had been upward of a month dead; for it was taken up in consequence of various rumors implicating the prisoners, after the coroner’s jury had given in a verdict of felo de se. On their first trial, they were acquitted, but an appeal being brought, they were found guilty and executed. It was on this latter occasion that the above strange evidence was given, which, being taken down at the time by Sir John Maynard, then sergeant-at-law, stands recorded, as I have observed, in Hargrave’s edition of “State Trials.”
The above circumstances occurred in the year 1628, and in 1688 the blood ordeal was again had recourse to in the trial of Sir Philip Stansfield for parricide, on which occasion the body had also been buried, but for a short time. Certain suspicions arising, it was disinterred and examined by the surgeons, and, from a variety of indications, no doubt remained that the old man had been murdered, nor that his son was guilty of his death. When the body had been washed and arrayed in clean linen, the nearest relations and friends were desired to lift it and replace it in the coffin; and when Sir Philip placed his hand under it, he suddenly drew it back, stained with blood, exclaiming, “Oh, God!” and letting the body fall, he cried, “Lord, have mercy upon me!” and went and bowed himself over a seat in the church, in which the corpse had been inspected. Repeated testimonies are given to this circumstance in the course of the trial; and it is very remarkable that Sir John Dalrymple, a man of strong intellect, and wholly free from superstition, admits it as an established fact in his charge to the jury.
In short, we are all, though in different degrees, the subjects of a variety of subtle influences, which, more or less, neutralize each other, and many of which, therefore, we never observe; and frequently when we do observe the effects, we have neither time nor capacity for tracing the cause; and when in more susceptible organisms such effects are manifested, we content ourselves with referring the phenomena to disease or imposture. The exemption, or the power, whichever it may be, by which certain persons or races are enabled to handle venomous animals with impunity, is a subject that deserves much more attention than it has met with; but nobody thinks of investigating secrets that seem rather curious than profitable; besides which, to believe these things implies a reflection on one’s sagacity. Yet, every now and then, I hear of facts so extraordinary, which come to me from undoubted authority, that I can see no reason in the world for rejecting others that are not much more so. For example, only the other day, Mr. B. C——, a gentleman well known in Scotland, who has lived a great deal abroad, informed me, that having frequently heard of the singular phenomenon to be observed by placing a scorpion and a mouse together under a glass, he at length tried the experiment; and the result perfectly established what he had been previously unable to believe. Both animals were evidently frightened, but the scorpion made the first attack, and stung the mouse, which defended itself bravely, and killed the scorpion. The victory, however, was not without its penalties, for the mouse swelled to an unnatural size, and seemed in danger of dying from the poison of its defeated antagonist, when it relieved itself and was cured by eating the scorpion, which was thus proved to be an antidote to its own venom; furnishing a most interesting and remarkable instance of isopathy.
There is a religious sect in Africa, not far from Algiers, who eat the most venomous serpents alive, and certainly, it is said, without extracting their fangs. They declare they enjoy the privilege from their founder. The creatures writhe and struggle between their teeth; but possibly, if they do bite them, the bite is innocuous.
Then, not to mention the common expedients of extracting the poisonous fangs, or forcing the animal by repeated bitings to exhaust their venom, the fact seems too well established to be longer doubted, that there are persons in whom the faculty of charming, or, in other words, disarming serpents, is inherent, as the psylli and marsi of old, and the people mentioned by Bruce, Hassequist, and Lempriere, who were themselves eye-witnesses of the facts they relate. With respect to the marsi, it must be remembered, that Heliogabalus made their priests fling venomous serpents into the circus when it was full of people, and that many perished by the bites of these animals, which the marsi had handled with impunity. The modern charmers told Bruce that their immunity was born with them; and it was established beyond a doubt, during the French expedition into Egypt, that these people go from house to house to destroy serpents, as men do rats in this country. They declare that some mysterious instinct guides them to the animals, which they immediately seize with fury and tear to pieces with their hands and teeth. The negroes of the Antilles can smell a serpent which they do not see, and of whose presence a European is quite insensible; and Madame Calderon de la Barca mentions, in her letters from Mexico, some singular cases of exemption from the pernicious effects of venomous bites; and further relates, that in some parts of America, where rattlesnakes are extremely abundant, they have a custom of innoculating children with the poison, and that this is a preservative from future injury. This may or may not be true; but it is so much the fashion in these days to set down to the account of fable everything deviating from our daily experience, that travellers may repeat these stories for ages before any competent person will take the trouble of verifying the report. However, taking the evidence altogether, it appears clear that there does exist in some persons a faculty of producing in these animals a sort of numbness, or engourdissement, which renders them for the time incapable of mischief; though of the nature of the power we are utterly ignorant, unless it be magnetic. The senses of animals, although generally resembling ours, are yet extremely different in various instances; and we know that many of them have one faculty or another exalted to an intensity of which we have no precise conception. Galen asserted, on the authority of the marsi and psylli themselves, that they obtained their immunity by feeding on the flesh of venomous animals: but Pliny, Elian, Silius Italicus, and others, account for the privilege by attributing it to the use of some substance of a powerful nature, with which they rubbed their bodies; and most modern travellers incline to the same explanation. But if this were the elucidation of the mystery, I suspect it would be easily detected.