Strange Survivals: Some Chapters in the History of Man

by S. Baring-Gould

These meetings always took place at night. There is reason to believe that during each day there is a normal alteration in the functions of the intellectual and emotional parts of the brain; that during the sunlight the perceptive faculties and the reflective are chiefly active; and that these, reposing during the night, permit the feelings to be mostly dominant; and it is well-known that general and simultaneous activity, both of the intellect and of the emotions, is unnatural; that thought and feeling are antagonistic to each other. Prayer meetings and witches’ assemblies alike began after dark and were often continued till the small hours of the morning. Ignorant men and women, and the youth of both sexes, were crowded together to partake in some mysterious spiritual rite. The quiescence of the observant and reflective faculties was facilitated, the imagination goaded and stimulated until it conjured up conceptions of hell and visions of devils with a vividness approaching reality; then came cries, tremblings, fallings on the ground, and raptures.

During Wesley’s preaching at Bristol, “one after another,” we are told, “sank to the earth.” Men and women by “scores were sometimes strewed on the ground at once, insensible as dead men.” During a Methodist revival in Cornwall, 4000 people, it was computed, fell into convulsions. “They remained during this condition so abstracted from every earthly thought, that they stayed two and sometimes three days and nights together in the chapels, agitated at the time by spasmodic movements, and taking neither repose nor refreshment. The symptoms followed each other usually as follows:—A sense of faintness and oppression, shrieks as if in the agony of death, convulsions of the muscles of the eyelids—the eyes being fixed and staring—and of the muscles of the neck, trunk, and arms, sobbing respiration, tremors, and general agitation, and all sorts of strange gestures. When the exhaustion came on, patients usually fainted and remained in a stiff and motionless state until their recovery.”[31]

Now let the reader turn back to the account of the Tungu Schaman, at the beginning of this article. Is it not obvious that we have here precisely the same phenomenon?

While at Newcastle, Wesley investigated the physical effects that resulted from his preaching. “He found, first, that all persons who had been thus affected were in perfect health, and had not before been subject to convulsions of any kind.” Secondly, that they were affected suddenly. Thirdly, that they usually fell on the ground, lost their strength, and were afflicted with spasms. “Some thought a great weight lay upon them, some said they were quite choked, and found it difficult to breathe.” Wesley believed these phenomena were of diabolic origin. One section of Methodists, in Cornwall and Wales, was seized with a dancing or jumping mania. Because David danced before the ark, these fanatics concluded that jumping and dancing must form an acceptable form of service. The practice became epidemic. Each devotee would caper for hours, till, completely exhausted, he or she fell insensible.

During a great Presbyterian revival, which passed over Kentucky and Tennessee in the beginning of this century, persons swooned away and lay as dead on the ground for a quarter of an hour; this “falling exercise” was succeeded by that of the “jerks.” A Backwoods preacher who has left us his valuable biography, says:—

“A new exercise broke out among us, called the jerks, which was overwhelming in its effects upon the bodies and minds of the people. No matter whether they were saints or sinners, they would be taken under a warm song or sermon, and seized with a convulsive jerking all over, which they could not by any possibility avoid, and the more they resisted, the more they jerked. I have seen more than five hundred persons jerking at one time in my large congregations. Most usually persons taken with the jerks would rise up and dance. Some would run, but could not get away. To see those proud young gentlemen, and young ladies dressed in their silks, jewelry, and prunella, from top to toe take the jerks, would often excite my risibilities. The first jerk or so, you would see their fine bonnets, caps, and combs fly; and so sudden would be the jerking of the head that their long, loose hair would crack almost as loud as a waggoner’s whip.”[32]

Another revivalist in Kentucky says; “While preaching, we have after a smooth and gentle course of expression suddenly changed our voice and language, expressing something awful and alarming, and instantly some dozen or twenty persons, or more, would simultaneously be jerked forward, where we were sitting, and with a suppressed noise once or twice, somewhat like the barking of a dog. One young woman went round like a top, we think, at least fifty times in a minute, and continued without interruption for at least an hour, and one young woman danced in her pew for twenty or thirty minutes with her eyes shut and her countenance calm, and then fell into convulsions; some ran with amazing swiftness, some imitated the motion of playing on a fiddle, others barked like dogs.”

Surely we have here a scene precisely identical in character with that described by Dr. Hecker as having broke out in Germany in 1374. He says: “It was called the dance of St. John or of St. Vitus, on account of the Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterised. The dancers, appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion.... While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out.”[33]

It has happened in some cases, especially in that of women, that they have tried to tear off their clothes, and this explains the account given by those who had attended the Witches’ Sabbath, that many present were stark naked. We know that some of the wilder congregations of the Hussites developed their fanaticism in this form. So did the Anabaptists in Amsterdam.

We will now take a case or two from the Roman Communion. Hysteria, as we might suppose, would be likely to manifest itself in the monastic orders. St. Joseph of Cupertino was one Christmas Eve in church, when the pifferari began to play their carols. Joseph, who was a Franciscan friar, carried away by religious emotion, began to dance in the midst of the choir, and then, with a howl, he took a flying leap and lighted on the high altar. He was then vested in a gorgeous cope, conducting the service. The carollers were amazed, no less than the friars; and their amazement was increased when they saw him jump from the altar on to the pulpit ledge, fifteen feet above the ground. One day he went into the convent choir of the Sisters of St. Clara, at Cupertino. When the nuns began to sing, Joseph, unable to restrain his emotion, ran across the chancel, caught the old confessor of the convent in his arms, and danced with him before the altar. Then he span himself about like a teetotum, with the confessor clinging to his hands, and his legs flying out horizontally.