That made thee once the Saintly Isle.
ANIMAL CHARMING,
OR THE SUBJUGATION OF ANIMALS BY MEANS OF CHARMS, SPELLS, OR DRUGS.
Third and Concluding Article.
In my last paper I endeavoured to show how exceedingly absurd and unfounded was the notion of the Abbé Dubois and Denon, that the serpent-charmers of India were and are a set of juggling impostors, who practise on the credulity of the vulgar, and vainly set forward pretensions to an art which has no actual existence, and which, consequently, possesses no legitimate claims on the attention of the philosophic inquirer. I now wish to bring all that I would observe upon this very curious subject to a conclusion. I acknowledge my inability to furnish my readers with a thorough explanation of the means by which these wonders are performed, but I think I may be able, at all events, to suggest such hints as may place them on the direct path to the attainment of the knowledge they desire; after which, nothing will be necessary but some degree of research and perseverance to afford them a complete gratification of their wishes.
It is evident, that whatever may be the supplementary means employed in serpent-charming, music is necessary to its accomplishment. I should not be satisfied on this point were it merely dependent upon the assertions of the jugglers themselves, as in such case it might not unnaturally be set down as a mere external cloak for some more important secret which the performers did not wish to be discovered; and for this reason I made the observation in my first article on this subject, that the precise importance of the music in these operations was not as yet entirely apparent. I wish it to be understood, however, that although the degree of importance in which music should be held as an adjunct to the charming of snakes, or as a primary part of the process, has not as yet been ascertained by those who have investigated or endeavoured to investigate the business, and published the results of their inquiries, I for my part am fully satisfied on the subject. To return, however, to our more immediate matter of discussion.
Many have conceived that serpent-charming depends in the first instance upon the snakes being previously deprived of their fangs, and thus rendered innocuous. This opinion I have already demonstrated as palpably erroneous. Others, again, hold that the jugglers possess a power, by eating certain herbs, or chewing the leaves or roots of certain plants, of rendering themselves proof against animal poisons. In order to render themselves perfectly secure, it is said that their practice is to chew the herbs, to inoculate various parts of their body with the juice, and even bathe themselves in water in which these herbs have been steeped. It is supposed that the bodies of the charmers thus become not merely proof against the most deadly poison should they chance to be bitten, but that those thus prepared exhale from their persons an odour which produces a benumbing or stupifying effect upon the reptiles, and renders them an easy capture. Whether or not it be true that such is the case, we know that the Psylli not merely profess the power of charming snakes, but also that of curing by spells, and the application of certain herbs, such as have been bitten by them. We are informed by the historian and biographer Plutarch, that Cato in his march through the desert took with him many of those persons called Psylli (then a distinct tribe, though at the present day that name is applied indiscriminately to all professing the art of serpent-charming) to suck out the poison from the wounds of any of his soldiers that might chance to be bitten by any of the numerous venomous serpents which infested his route. The powers of the Psylli were then always attributed to magic, and the performers themselves took care to confirm that opinion by accompanying the application of remedies to their patients with muttered spells or elaborately wrought and imposing incantations. This is a testimony respecting the ancient repute in which charmers were held, not lightly to be rejected.
While some travellers are too sceptical, I have likewise to complain that others are too credulous. For instance, while Dubois and Denon scout the idea of serpents being charmed at all, Bruce asserts, and that from minute personal observation, that all the blacks of Sennaar are completely armed by nature against the bite of either scorpion or viper. “They will,” says he, “take their horned snakes (there the most common and one of the most fatal of the viper tribe) in their hands at all times, put them in their bosoms, and throw them at one another as children will balls or apples, during which sport the serpents are seldom irritated to bite, or if they do, no mischief results from the wound.” Of course it must be evident that Bruce in this instance ascribed rather too much to the bounty of nature, and forgot how far art might have aided in producing the appearance which astonished him.
Don Pedro D’Orbies Y. Vargas, who published in the year 1791 the result of a series of investigations he instituted to ascertain the secret on which serpent-charming depended, informs us that it is also extensively practised by the natives of South America, and that they produce the wished-for end by means of a certain plant named the quacho-mithy, so designated from its having been first observed to have been resorted to by the serpent-hawk, or, as the bird is sometimes styled, the “quacho-mithy,” and by it sucked, preparatory to its encounters with the poisonous reptiles which it fought with and destroyed for its prey. Taking the hint from the naturally and instinctively instructed bird, the Indians chewed the plant thus discovered, and inoculated and washed their bodies with its juice, rubbing it into punctures made in their breasts, hands, and feet; and, thus prepared, they dreaded not the bite of the most venomous snake. Don Pedro himself, and the domestics of his household, used after these simple precautions to venture into the thickest woods and the most dangerous meadows, and fearlessly seize in their hands the largest and most poisonous serpents; the creatures seemed as if under the influence of a sort of charm or fascination, and very rarely attempted to bite; and at any rate, even if they did, no evil consequence resulted from the wound beyond the temporary inconvenience produced by the laceration of the flesh by the animals’ teeth.
The same gentleman to whom I was indebted for the anecdote of the encounter with the cobra de capella, mentioned in a preceding paper, informed me that he had detected a snake-charmer in the act of chewing and inoculating himself with some plant, the name or character of which he could not however ascertain, though he offered the juggler a considerable sum for the information. One of the leaves of this plant, and the only one he saw, he states to have been of a long and narrow form, with the sides indented or scolloped, somewhat like those of our own common dandelion.
Now, it appears to me by no means difficult of deduction from the facts brought forward in this and the preceding papers on the same subject, that the secret of the snake-charmers is dependent upon two ingredients, viz, in the first place the employment of an antidote which will not only mollify the effects of the reptiles’ venom, should the experimenters happen to be bitten, but, from some peculiar odour which it emits, stupify or intoxicate the snake, and indispose it from violence, inclining it rather to appreciate the melody with which they are treating it, and luxuriate in hearing of their fife; and, in the second place, the sounds of music which the whole class of reptiles appear more or less to be sensible of, and which will induce the serpents to quit their holes when they come within the sphere of the influence of the intoxicating odour, and, abandoning themselves to its effects, fall into a state of temporary oblivion, and are taken captive. We ourselves are well acquainted with several substances which are capable of producing upon such creatures as we are conversant with in these islands, effects no less astonishing than those produced upon the snakes by the charmers of India or South America. It is, for instance, a very common thing, and an experiment I have not only often seen tried, but have tried myself dozens of times, and that with success, to charm trout, perch, or roach, with assafœtida. If you sprinkle this substance, finely powdered, upon the surface of the water, you will presently see the fish crowding to the spot; and even if you rub your hands well with it, and, gradually approaching the water, gently immerse them in it, you will ere long find the fish attracted towards you, and, losing their natural timidity, actually permit themselves to be taken. Many have imagined that it was upon the use of a certain drug that the wonderful power possessed and successfully exerted by Sullivan, the whisperer, depended; but for my part I think the circumstance of Sullivan’s son having been unable to produce similar effects, although instructed by his father in the mystery, is sufficient to show that Sullivan’s trick depended upon some means less certain in operation than the mere employment of a drug would be, and in which mechanical dexterity and personal bearing occupied places of no mean importance.