THE YOUNG CONJUROR
INCLUDING SLEIGHT OF HAND WITH OBJECTS OR CARDS, WITH AND WITHOUT APPARATUS.
From the very early ages of the world the art of legerdemain, commonly called conjuring, has been known and practised. In some of the old heathen ceremonies the priests made use of skilful deceptions, in order to impose upon the people; and in ancient Egypt, in Greece, and in Rome, the worship of the gods was frequently associated with mere tricks, which were used for the purpose of obtaining an influence by a pretence of extraordinary and supernatural powers. Among the Eastern nations juggling was a profession, and to this day the jugglers of Hindustan and other Oriental nations are so skilful that they are able to deceive even the most acute observers. In our own country, after the Norman Conquest, the juggler (who was called jongleur, or joculator) was a minstrel as well as a conjurer, a reader of the stars or astrologer, and at the same time a jester, a merry-andrew, and a teller of droll stories. These jongleurs travelled from place to place, and exhibited at fairs, feasts, and merrymakings, as well as in the houses of noblemen, where they diverted the company in the great halls. In the fourteenth century they gave more attention to tricks and feats of skill, and became known as tregetours. The performances of some of these gentry were so marvellous, that the common people believed them to be the result of witchcraft, and classed the tregetour with the warlock and the sorcerer. Chaucer, who no doubt had frequently an opportunity of seeing the tricks exhibited by the tregetours of his time, says, “There I sawe playenge jogelours, magyciens, tragetours, phetonysses, charmeresses, old witches, and sorceresses;” and the old poet goes on to say of them, “Sometimes they will bring on the similitude of a grim lion, or make flowers spring up as in a meadow; sometimes they cause a vine to flourish, bearing white and red grapes, or show a castle built with stone, and when they please they cause the whole to disappear:” and in another part of his works he says:—
“There saw I Coll Tregetour
Upon a table of sycamour
Play an uncouthe thynge to tell;
I sawe hym cary a wyndemell
Under a walnot shale.”—House of Fame, book iii.
Our learned monarch James I. was perfectly convinced that these and other inferior feats exhibited by the tregetours of his day could only be performed by diabolical agency. The profession had already fallen very low, and at the close of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the performers were ranked by the moral writers of that time not only with ruffians, blasphemers, thieves, and vagabonds, but also with Jews, Turks, heretics, pagans, and sorcerers; and in more modern times, by way of derision, the juggler was called a mocus-pocus, or hokus-pokus, a term applicable to a pickpocket or a common cheat.
The following pages are not intended to make the young reader either a cheat or a trickster; there is nothing perhaps so utterly contemptible in every-day life as trickery and deceit, and we would caution our young friends not to cultivate a love of deception, which is only allowable in such feats of amusement, because it is in fact not deception at all, when everybody expects to be puzzled, and is only left to find out the mystery the best way he can.
With this sage advice we shall present a collection of amusing conjuring tricks, premising that a considerable number of tricks usually embodied in this division will be found in that part of our work relating to [Scientific Experiments and Amusements], as they more properly belong to “Natural Magic,” and are to be referred to the various operations of nature in the several departments of art, science, and philosophy.