Some years before this time, Sigismund, Baron of Herbestein, tells us, in his commentaries on Muscovy, that at Troki, eight miles from Wilna, his host acquainted him, that he had chanced to buy a hive of bees from one of the serpent-worshippers, whom he persuaded, with much reluctance, to worship the true God and kill his serpent. A short time after, in passing that way, he found the poor fellow miserably tortured and deformed, his face wrinkled and twisted away; and inquiring the cause, he answered, "That this judgment had come upon him for killing his god, and that he would have to endure greater torments if he did not return to his former worship."
In the sacred writings, but more particularly in the 8th chapter of Jeremiah and the 58th Psalm, are allusions to the taming or keeping of serpents; and Dr. Thomas Shaw found the same superstition prevailing in Barbary in 1757 (Travels).
Indian serpent-charming to this day, as we have said, is no doubt a remnant of that form of worship which spread all over the world, it may be from some dim tradition of the serpents of Eden and of Aaron's rod, that we have the Scandinavian jormagundr, among the fictions of the Edda, and to which Scott refers as—
"That sea-snake, tremendous curled,
Whose monstrous circle guards the world."
The serpent and the circle were alike the emblem of eternity, and Odin was supposed to have at times the power of taking the aspect of the former; and a remnant of the same superstition is still to be found in Scotland in the knot-work upon Celtic crosses and Highland dirk-hilts.
In June, 1721 (as we are told in the "Historical Register" for the following year, sold by T. Norris, at the Looking-Glass on London Bridge), there appeared a terrible snake off the coast of Naples, not far from the Ponte-della-Maddalena, under which the river Sebeto flows into the sea, and it devoured a fisherman in presence of many of his friends, who had barely time to effect their escape.
The latter, fearing that the presence of this monster might destroy their fishery, and anxious to avenge their companion, made several weapons (harpoons?) of iron, and large hooks, and, putting to sea on the 6th of June in strong boats, discovered the great fish, and baited their lines with large pieces of horse-flesh, and ran a strong rope with a slip from the stem to the stern of a ship.
Rushing furiously at the boat, the snake was caught into the slip-knot, and ultimately drawn on shore, when, on being measured, it was found to be "twenty Neapolitan palms long. His mouth was excessively wide, having three rows of teeth in the form of a saw in the upper jaw, and but one row in the under. He weighed sixteen coutares, or about four hundred-weight. In the stomach were found the skull of a man, two legs, part of the backbone and ribs."
These were supposed to have been portions of the unfortunate fisherman, whom he had devoured some days before. By order of the Council of Health it was burned, lest it might infect the air.
The writer adds, that Johnson (to whom we shall refer presently) mentions similar fish—one that weighed eight hundred-weight; another that weighed four thousand pounds, and in the stomach of which was found a man, in a complete suit of armour!