JUGGLERS, THEIR ORIGIN, EXPLOITS, &c.
Those occupations which were of the most absolute necessity to the support of existence, were, doubtless, the earliest, and, in the infancy of society, the sole employments that engaged attention. But when the art and industry of a few were found sufficient for the maintenance of many, property began to accumulate in the hands of individuals, and as all could no longer be engaged in the productions of the necessaries of life, those who were excluded applied their ingenuity to those arts which, by contributing to the convenience of the former, might enable them to participate in the fruits of their labour; and several of these have acquired a pre-eminence over the more useful avocations. A taste for the wonderful seems to be natural to man in every stage of society, and at almost every period of life; we, therefore, cannot wonder that, from the earliest ages, persons have been found, who, more idle or more ingenious than others, have availed themselves of this propensity, to obtain an easy livelihood by levying contributions on the curiosity of the public. Whether this taste is to be considered as a proof of the weakness of our judgment, or of innate inquisitiveness, which stimulates us to enlarge the sphere of our knowledge, must be left to the decision of metaphysicians; it is sufficient for our present purpose to know that it gave rise to a numerous class of persons, whom, whether performers of sleight of hand, rope-dancers, mountebanks, teachers of animals to perform extraordinary tricks, or, in short, who delude the senses, and practice harmless deception on spectators, we include under the common title of Jugglers.
If these arts served no other purpose than that of mere amusement, they yet merit a certain degree of encouragement, as affording at once a cheap and innocent diversion: but Jugglers frequently exhibit instructive experiments in natural philosophy, chemistry, and mechanics; thus, the solar microscope was invented from an instrument to reflect shadows, with which a Savoyard amused a German populace; and the celebrated Sir Richard Arkwright is said to have conceived the idea of the spinning machines, which have so largely contributed to the prosperity of the cotton manufacture in this country, from a toy which he purchased for his child of an itinerant showman. These deceptions have, besides, acted as an agreeable and most powerful antidote to superstition, and to that popular belief in miracles, conjuration, sorcery, and witchcraft, which preyed upon the minds of our ancestors; and the effects of shadows, electricity, mirrors, and the magnet, once formidable instruments in the hands of interested persons for keeping the vulgar in awe, have been stripped of their terrors, and are no longer frightful in their most terrific forms.
That this superstitious dread led to the persecution of many innocent beings, who were supposed to be guilty of witchcraft, is too well known to require illustration: our own statute books are loaded with penalties against sorcery; at no very distant period our courts of law have been disgraced by criminal trials of that nature; and judges who are still cited as models of legal knowledge and discernment, not only permitted such cases to go to a jury, but allowed sentences to be recorded which consigned reputed wizards to capital punishment. In Poland, even so late as the year 1739, a Juggler was exposed to the torture, until a confession was extracted from him that he was a sorcerer, upon which, without further proof, he was immediately hanged; and instances in other countries might be multiplied without end. But this, although it exceeds in atrocity, does not equal in absurdity, the infatuation of the tribunal of the inquisition in Portugal, which actually condemned to the flames, as being possessed with the devil, a horse belonging to an Englishman, who had taught it to perform some uncommon tricks; and the poor animal is confidently said to have been publicly burned at Lisbon, in conformity with his sentence, in the year 1601.
The only parts of Europe in which the arts of sorcery now obtain any credit, is Lapland; where, indeed, supposed wizards still practise incantations, by which they pretend to obtain the knowledge of future events, and in which the credulity of the people induces them to place the most implicit confidence. On such occasions a magic drum is usually employed. This instrument is formed of a piece of wood of a semi-oval form, hollow on the flat side, and there covered with a skin, in which various uncouth figures are depicted; among which, since the introduction of Christianity into that country, an attempt is usually made to represent the acts of our Saviour and the Apostles. On this covering several brass rings of different sizes are laid, while the attendants dispose themselves in many antic postures, in order to facilitate the charm; the drum is then beat with the horn of a rein-deer, which occasioning the skin to vibrate, puts the rings in motion round the figures, and, according to the positions which they occupy, the officiating seer pronounces his prediction.
It is unfortunate that of all the books (and there were several) which treated of the arts of conjuration, as they were practised among the ancients, not one is now extant, and all that we know upon the subject is collected from isolated facts which have been incidentally mentioned in other writings. From these it would, however, appear, that many of the deceptions which still continue to excite astonishment, were then common.
A century and a half before our æra, during the revolt of the slaves in Sicily, a Syrian of their number, named Eunus, a man of considerable talent, who after having witnessed many vicissitudes, was reduced to that state, became the leader of his companions by pretending to an inspiration from the gods; and in order to confirm the divinity of his mission by miracles, he used to breath flames from his mouth when addressing his followers. By this art the Rabbi Barchschebas also made the credulous Jews believe that he was the Messiah, during the sedition which he excited among them in the reign of Adrian; and, two centuries afterwards, the Emperor Constantius was impressed with great dread, when informed that one of the body-guards had been seen to breathe out fire. Historians tell us that these deceptions were performed by putting inflammable substances into a nut-shell pierced at both ends, which was then secretly conveyed into the mouth and breathed through. Our own fire-eaters content themselves with rolling a little flax, so as to form a small ball, which is suffered to burn until nearly consumed; more flax is then tightly rolled round it, and the fire will thus remain within for a long time, and sparks may be blown from it without injury, provided the air be inspired, not by the mouth but through the nostrils. The ancients also performed some curious experiments with that inflammable mineral oil called Naphtha, which kindles on merely exposing near a fire. Allusion is supposed to have been made to this in the story of the dress of Herculus, when it is said to have been dipped in the blood of Nessus. Many assert that it was with this substance Medea destroyed Creusa, by sending to her a dress impregnated with it, which burst into flames when she drew near the fire of the altar; and there can be no doubt that it was used by the priests on those occasions when the sacrificial offerings took fire imperceptibly.
The trial by Ordeal, in the middle ages, in which persons accused of certain crimes were forced to prove their innocence by walking blindfold among burning ploughshares, or by holding heated iron in their hands, was probably little else than a juggling trick, which the priests conducted as best suited their views. The accused was committed to their care during three entire days previous to the trial, and remained in their custody for the same space after it was over; the Ordeal took place in the church under their own immediate inspection; they not only consecrated, but heated, the iron themselves; mass was then said, and various ceremonies were performed, all calculated to divert the attention of the spectators; and when the operation was over, the part which had been exposed to the fire was carefully bound up and sealed, not to be opened until the end of the third day; doubtless, therefore, the time before the trial was occupied in preparing the skin to resist the effects of the heat, and that afterwards in obliterating the marks of any injury it might have sustained. That such was the fact has, indeed, been acknowledged in the works of Albertus Magnus, a Dominican friar, who, after the trial by Ordeal had been abolished, published the secret of the art, which, if his account be correct, consisted in nothing more than covering the hands and feet at repeated intervals with a paste made of the sap of certain herbs mixed together with the white of an egg.
This deception was, however, practised in times more remote than the period to which we have alluded. There was anciently an annual festival held on Mount Soracte, in Etruria, at which certain people called Hirpi, used to walk over live embers, for which performance they were allowed some peculiar privileges by the Roman senate; the same feat was achieved by women at the temple of Diana, at Castabala, in Cappadocia; and allusion is even made, in the Antigone of the Grecian poet Sophocles, who wrote nearly five centuries anterior to our æra, to the very species of Ordeal which has been just noticed.
In modern times, much notice has been excited by jugglers, who practised deceptions by fire. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, one Richardson, an Englishman, excited great astonishment at Paris, by pretending to chew burning coals and to swallow melted lead, with many other equally extraordinary feats; some of which are thus recorded in Evelyn’s diary:—“October the 8th, 1672, took leave of my Lady Sunderland, who was going to the Hague to my Lord, now ambassador there. She made me stay dinner at Leicester House, and afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He, before us, devoured brimstone on glowing coals, chewing and swallowing them. He melted a beere glasse and eate it quite up; then taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster; the coal was blowne on with bellows till it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained until the oyster was quite boiled; then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he dranke down as it flamed.” Many of our readers must recollect Signora Girardelli; and Miss Rogers, the American fire-eater, who was announced as having entered a heated oven with a leg of mutton in her hand, and having remained there until it was baked! This young lady exhibited all the tricks usually performed by such persons; she washed her hands in boiling oil, and then suffered aquafortis to be poured over them; but below the oil, there, no doubt, was a quantity of water, the air from which, when heated, forcing itself through the supernatant oil, gave it the appearance of boiling, when in reality its temperature probably did not exceed a hundred degrees of Fahrenheit; and when the hands were once well coated with oil, there was no danger from the aquafortis. She had also a ladle of melted lead, out of which she appeared to take a little with a spoon and pour into her mouth, and then to return in the shape of a solid lump; but in pretending to take the lead into the spoon, it was, in fact, quicksilver that was received, through a dexterous contrivance in the ladle, and this she swallowed, the solid lead having been previously placed in her mouth. She, besides, repeatedly placed her foot on a bar of hot iron; but the rapidity with which she removed it scarcely allowed time to injure the most delicate skin, even had it not been previously prepared: the cuticle of the hands and of the soles of the feet may, however, be easily rendered sufficiently callous to support a longer experiment. This effect will be produced if it be frequently punctured, or injured by being in continual contact with hard substances; repeatedly moistening it with spirit of vitriol will also at length render it horny and insensible; and thus it is not uncommon to see the labourers at copper-works take the melted ore into their hands.