In France the conjuration of field-mice bears a more distinctly religious stamp. On the first Sunday in Lent, the so-called Feast of the Torches (la Fête des Brandons ou des Bures), the peasants wander in all directions through the fields and orchards with lighted torches of twisted straw, uttering the following incantation, which not only threatens to burn the whiskers of obdurate mice, but also hints at the wine-bibbing propensities of the curate:
“Sortez, sortez d’ici, mulots!
Ou je vais vous bruler les crocs!
Quittez, quittez ces blés!
Allez, vous trouverez
Dans la cave du curé
Plus à boire qu’à manger.”
The form of imprecation varies in different provinces, but usually includes some threat of breaking the bones or burning the beards of the refractory rodents, in case they refuse to quit the close, as in the following summons:
“Taupes et mulots,
Sors de mon clos,
Ou je te casse les os;
Barbassione! Si tu viens dans non clos,
Je te brûle la barbe jusqu’aux os.”
The utterance of these words is emphasized by loud and discordant noises of cat-calls, tin horns, and similar instruments of “Callithumpian” music.
Gregory, who was Bishop of Tours in the latter half of the sixth century, states in his History of the Franks (VIII. 35) that bronze talismans representing dormice and serpents were used in Paris to protect the city against the ravages of these creatures; and when the town of Le Mans was rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1145, a toad with a gold chain round its neck, was enclosed in a block of stone as a preservative against venomous reptiles. (Le Corvasier: Hist, des Évêques du Mans, 1648, p. 441. Cf. Desnoyers: Recherches, etc., p. 7.)
The use of the above-mentioned means of conjuration is unquestionably of very ancient date. Thus in a treatise on agriculture entitled τὰ γεωπονικά and consisting of twenty books, written in the tenth century by the Bithynian Byzantine, Kassianos Bassos, the following prescription is given for getting rid of field-mice:
“Take a slip of paper and write on it these words: I adjure you, O mice, who dwell here not to injure me yourselves nor to permit any other mouse to do so; and I make over to you this field (describing it). But should I find you staying here after having been warned, with the help of the mother of the gods I will cut you in seven pieces.” The author quotes this recipe, in order, as he says, that nothing may remain unrecorded, but expressly declares that he has no confidence in its efficiency and advises the husbandman to put his trust in good rat-bane. Bassos derived the materials for his popular encyclopædia chiefly from the “Geoponics” composed by Anatolios and Didymos some six centuries earlier, and even most of his citations of classical writers are taken from the same sources. That the above-mentioned exorcism is pagan in its origin is evident from the invocation of the aid of Cybele for the destruction of disobedient vermin. In a Christian conjuration the Mother of God would have been substituted for the mother of the gods, whom the Greeks revered as the personification of all-creating and all-sustaining nature. The resemblance of this formula, which the Greeks may have borrowed with the worship of Cybele from the Phrygians, to the Yankee’s letter of advice is peculiarly interesting.
In the ancient conjuration the harmful or undesirable animals were commanded to go to a certain locality, set apart for them, and this injunction was accompanied with dire threats in case of disobedience; the milder epistolary form of the present day is more advisory and persuasive and offers them inducements to migrate and to take up their abode elsewhere. Sometimes this kind counsel is given verbally, as, for example, in Thuringia, where it is customary to get rid of cabbage-worms by going into the garden, requesting them to depart, and calling out: “In yonder village is church-ale (Kirmes)”; thus implying that they will find better entertainment at this festival. (Witzschel: Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen. Wien, 1878, p. 217.) The willingness of peasant communities to ward off evil from themselves at the expense of their neighbours is a survival of the primitive ethics, which recognizes only the rights of the family or tribe and treats all aliens as foes. It is the same feeling that causes the inhabitants of the Alps to erect so-called weather-crosses (Wetterkreuze) for the purpose of averting thunder-storms and hailstones from themselves by diverting them into an adjacent valley. This method of protection is based upon the theory that tempests, hurricanes, and all violent commotions of nature are the work of demons or witches, who avoid the symbol of Christ’s death and the world’s redemption and direct their fury elsewhere. A like egotism is expressed in the inscription on many houses of peasants entreating St. Florian to preserve their habitation from flames and to set fire to others, as though the holy man must indulge his incendiary passion by pouring out upon some human abode the blazing vessel, which he is represented as bearing in his hand. The inscription is the same as that with which Reynard the Fox adorned his castle Malepartus, and which might be translated:
“Saint Florian, thou martyr blessed,
Protect this house and burn the rest.”