Other and more direct allusions, however, occur to the art of serpent-charming. Thus the obduracy of the wicked is compared to "the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely."[183] And the Aseverity of the Chaldean invaders is depicted under this imagery:—"Behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord."[184]
Among the ancient Romans the Psylli, a people of Africa, and the Marsi, a German tribe who had settled in Italy, were reputed to have the power of charming serpents, and to be endowed with immunity from the results of their venom. Celsus, however, maintains that this power consisted in an acquaintance with the fact, now well known, that animal poisons are hurtful only when mingled with the blood. They may therefore be taken into the mouth with perfect impunity. With reference to so great an authority, however, there is more in the art and mystery of serpent-charming than this.
When Lucian describes the Babylonian magician as walking abroad, and calling to him all the serpents that were near, with certain ceremonies, such as the utterance of sacred words from an ancient book, lustrations made with sulphur and a torch, and solemn marchings in a circle, and when he asserts that the venomous reptiles, nolentes volentes, presented themselves harmless at his feet,—he describes a scene which is sufficiently familiar to European travellers in Egypt and India. And so, when Silius Italicus speaks of Atyr, instructed how to disarm serpents of their dire venom, and to lull to sleep the terrible water-snakes with his magic touch, he refers, whether truly or falsely, to something of a more potent character than the feat by which Queen Philippa saved the life of her royal husband.
Immunity from the poison of serpents, and serpent-charming, are two things. The former, so far as it depends on the natural law already mentioned, scarcely comes within the province of this work. But is there not an innate immunity residing in some persons, and even in some peoples, by which, without the operation of any recognised natural law, or even any effort, they are securely protected either against the bites of venomous serpents, or, at least, against the fatality which is the ordinary result of being bitten?
The Psylli, according to Pliny, were so characteristically endowed with this immunity, that they made it a test of the legitimacy of their children; for they were accustomed to expose their new-born babes (only in doubtful cases, we may suppose) to the most venomous serpents they could find; assured that if their paternity was pure Psyllic, they would be quite unharmed. Of this tribe was the ambassador Hexagon, who, boasting of his power before the Roman consuls, submitted to the crucial test which they suggested, of being inclosed in a vessel swarming with poisonous reptiles, which, says the legendary story, hurt him not.
The same historian tells us that the Psylli, who formerly inhabited the vicinity of the Greater Syrtis,—that is, the modern Tripoli and Barca,—were conquered and almost exterminated by the Nasamones, who possessed their land; but that a remnant fled to some distant region. It is not improbable that the present inhabitants of Sennaar, on the south of Egypt, may be the lineal descendants of these same Psylli; for, since Egypt was densely peopled and highly cultivated, a barbarous tribe could scarcely have made good their footing there; and as on the other side was the Great Desert of the Sâhra, and on the north the sea, there was no resource open to them but to creep along the desert edge of Egypt till they found a thinly-inhabited land sufficiently savage to enable them to form a settlement. The first region of this character that they could possibly find would be Nubia; and there it is most interesting to know that there exists a people at the present time, pretending to the same powers as the old Psylli. Bruce, whose testimony, at first much impugned, has come to be received with confidence, avouches that all the black people in the kingdom of Sennaar, whether Funge or Nuba, are perfectly armed against the bite of either scorpion or viper. They take the Cerastes—a little asp with two horns, of the most deadly venom—into their hands at all times, put them into their bosoms, and throw them at one another as children do balls, without ever irritating them by this usage so much as to make them bite. One day when the traveller was sitting with the brother of the prime minister of Sennaar, a slave of his brought a Cerastes, which he had just taken out of a hole, and was using with every sort of familiarity. Bruce expressed his suspicion that the teeth had been drawn, but was assured that they were not, both by the slave and by his master, who, taking the viper from him, wound it round his arm, and at the traveller's desire, ordered the servant to accompany him with it to his residence. Here Bruce, to test the power of the serpent, took a chicken by the neck, and made it flutter; the seeming indifference of the snake immediately gave place to eagerness, and he bit the fowl with great signs of anger, which died almost immediately. Bruce considers that the indifference was only seeming towards the man,—that it was indeed powerlessness, for he constantly observed that, however lively the snake was before, yet upon being seized by any of the blacks, it seemed as if taken with sudden sickness and feebleness, frequently shut its eyes, and never turned its mouth towards the arm of the person who held it.
How exactly this account agrees with the words of Silius,
"—— tactuque graves sopire chelydros."
The Nubian traveller informs us that the Arabs—meaning apparently the Moslem blacks—have not this secret naturally, but that from infancy they acquire an exemption from the mortal consequences attending the bites of all venomous reptiles by chewing a certain root, and washing themselves (it is not anointing) with an infusion of certain plants in water. This is by no means improbable; and it were much to be desired that the root and the plants were obtained and identified, that their preventive powers might be tested by competent men of science. In all probability they would be found to belong to the Quassia tribe, the natural order Simarubaceæ, plants of the tropical regions of both continents, whose juices are of an intense bitterness. An infusion of the chips of Quassia amara and of Simaruba amara is found to be an effectual poison to flies; and the Brazilian Indians use an infusion of Simaruba versicolor as a specific against the bite of serpents, and use it with great effect in the pediculous diseases which are so common among that people.
It was a plant of this order, Simaba cedron, on which experiments were made a few years ago, at the Zoological Gardens, just before the lamentable death, by the bite of the Cobra, of poor Gurling, who, indeed, assisted in them. Mr Squire, the eminent chemist, was desirous of testing the powers of this plant, which, dried and reduced to powder, is in high repute among the Indians of South America as a serpentifuge. Dr Quain and Mr Evans concurred in this desire; and, with the permission of the Zoological Society of London, a series of experiments, of much interest, if not very conclusive in their results, were performed at the Gardens, on the 8th July 1852.