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!